From 1976-79 I attended Fridley (now Totino) Grace High School while living with my parents in North Minneapolis. We were a tight-knit Catholic family and my parents were willing to pay the high tuition just to give us kids a safe, Christian education. 

 

After my junior year at Grace, I was informed by the school I was going to be short credits for graduation and thus would have to attend summer school leading up to my senior year.

 

I was devastated. All I could ask myself was how am I going to face my friends knowing they knew I had to go to summer school? Summer school at that time had a stigma attached to it. Stupid people went to summer school.

 

I talked to my best friend at the time and after he talked to people at his school (Patrick Henry), he found out they had a different credit system and if I went there, I would have enough credits to graduate.

 

The decision came down to this, either go to summer school and graduate with all my school friends or, transfer to Patrick Henry and graduate with a few friends but mostly strangers.

 

The stigma attached to summer school influenced me. But that meant I had to ask for permission from my parents.

 

Surprisingly, they okayed the idea.

 

Though I didn’t know a lot of kids at Henry, I did have a core group of kids I knew from the neighborhood. All along, I had heard  rumors about the school being full of drugs, gangs and bullies — even rats in the hallways, but I soon found out those rumors were not entirely true.

 

I remember my first day in art class with a teacher named Mr. Bobgan. He was a quiet sort of guy, rather timid and very knowledgeable and talented. After my  first few classes, he passed by my table and noticed a notebook I had that had page-after-page of hand-drawn pictures. He reached out, grabbed it and asked if he could look through it.

 

I shrugged and said, “I don’t care”.

 

After the bell rang to end the class, he approached me and asked if he could hold onto the notebook and get it back to me the next day.

Again, I shrugged, said “okay” and walked off.

 

The next day, when I came to school, I was approached by several students who grabbed me by the arms and kept saying “you gotta see this, it’s so cool.”

Not knowing what to expect, I followed them up the stairs to the third floor and right there outside Mr. Bobgan’s classroom was all my drawings pulled from my notebook — ornamentally arranged in a display case.

 

It had a title that read: Artwork by Billy Morgan.

 

I was shocked. I didn’t really know what to say when I entered his classroom later that day for class. He came up to me and said, “I hope it was okay I put your artwork up on the walls, your work is outstanding.”

 

Another shrug as my face turned beet red.

 

After the first trimester, I decided to take another art class from my new, favorite teacher, Mr. Bobgan. As I sat down at my table in the art room, Mr. Bobgan began telling the students what kinds of projects we’d be working on while in his class that session.

 

Shortly thereafter, he came over to me and whispered in my ear, “You don’t have to do any of the assignments if you don’t want to, I’d just like to see you sit there and draw.”

 

Wow! I felt I got a “get out of jail free” card. After all, I loved to draw but to get permission to do it during class time was a gift!

 

But, the most dramatic and important thing Mr. Bobgan had done for me was yet to be.

 

As the third trimester of school was winding down, Mr. Bobgan asked me where I was going to school to further my art. I told him I hadn’t really given it much thought. With my average grades and poor schooling habits, the last thing I had on my mind was continuing for another two to four years in some college.

 

While the rest of the class worked on their assignments, Mr. Bobgan brought me over to the classroom telephone and dialed it up. Before I knew it, he had someone on the line asking me questions which led to me getting registered to go to North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park.

 

And sure enough, that’s where I went the following fall.

 

I owe a lot to that man, Mr. Bobgan. I never did see him or reach out to him after I left high school, but I sure wish I had. My life would be completely different if I hadn’t taken his art class.

 

And if I hadn’t transferred to Henry.

 

And if I hadn’t been such a lousy student at Grace.

 

Teachers can come and go but every once in a while, they can have such a profound effect on one student’s life that it changes their fortunes forever. I’m sure just about every teacher out there dreams of impacting a child’s life as much as  Mr. Bobgan did for me.

 

Graduating class, don’t forget to thank that special teacher who you feel influenced you. It’d be worth it.

 

Here’s to the teachers!