I was privileged to have Tommy Harper as a colleague and count him as a friend. However brief, in the time we worked together, he became a standard, an idea, a role model. In 2006, I re-entered the Literature classroom (as opposed to the classroom in which we were more concerned with questions of statistics and ROI). After a long self-imposed exile I returned, if only temporarily, to having my days revolve around the likes of Keats, Shakespeare, and Hemingway. My classroom was at the very end of a wing on the periphery of the campus, practically my own little universe — I thought I couldn’t have been happier with the arrangement. But it did get even better because, as it turned out, Tommy’s classroom was right across the hall from mine.

After many, many years as a public school teacher, he’d semi-retired to the role of a part-time teacher at this private school, teaching a couple of classes back to back each morning; he was seventy years old, and it was his goal to teach until he was seventy-five. Unlike myself, Tommy was a morning person. While I was still working on my first cup of coffee and therefore only slowly coming into full consciousness, Tommy would be in his classroom bright and early, very often helping a student before the school day officially began. Always, he’d have some classical music playing. He’d often tell me it was a piece he was currently practicing himself; I suspect an ulterior motive was to expose his students to music outside their normal scope of influence, because that was the kind of teacher he was. Beyond that, Tommy Harper was someone who surrounded himself with beauty, in the truest Keatsian sense of the word, and you couldn’t help feeling like some of this magical world he lived in would rub off on you whenever you were near him. Sometimes I’d deliberately set my door wide open, so that the sounds of the cellos and violins would bleed across the hall and into my room. I believe most of the students who had him as a teacher during these last years of his career will remember Tommy fondly as the sweet old man who loved to talk about books… and also manners. Then there will be those who really listened, and who let themselves be changed by the experience of having him in their lives. They will be the ones who more fully appreciated the breadth of his knowledge and the personal wisdom that infused his interpretations of Hardy and Plato.

Tommy himself was like something that stepped right out of an Austen novel. The best way I can describe him is that he was a gentleman. His voice and his mannerisms were soft, but he had a sharp intellect and wit. As much as I relished my classroom discussions with the students, it was the conversations with Tommy that I most looked forward to during my time at the school. We would sit around, losing track of time, and talk about fictional characters like they were our real-life friends with real-life problems. And he was equally passionate about good writing and teaching. I don’t think I will ever know another person who can make me laugh so hard with one offhand comment about a student’s misuse of the semi-colon. And we talked about life. He would talk about his wife and his eyes would light up just the same, I imagined, as they did when the two of them first fell in love. He’d encourage me to take time to explore places in Arizona such as the White Mountains, making sure to recommend a very particular bed and breakfast, offering details of the warm rolls served at breakfast and the breathtaking views. Or to try the new vegetarian restaurant a few blocks away; the way he talked about things, he’d make their hummus sound poetic. Tommy also had to keep an eye on his blood sugar, so he always had some fruit around his room, and sometimes he’d send a banana or an orange my way before leaving for the day. Tommy was all about simple gestures and modest offerings that could literally change the entire tone of the day.

The last time I saw Tommy, he and his wife had been kind enough to invite my husband and me into their home, among a small group of their friends. The intimacy of the gathering was like stepping back in time, a glimpse of Americana from the movies of the 1940s. When we arrived, Tommy was excited to introduce us to his wife, and then to the others. It was one of the warmest welcomes I’ve ever been given. The house itself was welcoming, decorated in a way that spoke of the years lived here, the children now grown and off having families of their own, a life built and a family sustained. We sat in their parlor while Tommy played the piano for us and then everyone mingled over refreshments. It was a lovely afternoon.
I have been blessed to know so many amazing people in my life, some who have achieved great heights by the world’s standards, great success and great wealth. Tommy Harper was an English teacher in a public high school for most of his life. He wasn’t famous; he wasn’t even a college professor. I have admired many, and yet I can honestly say I have never admired anyone more than I did him. HIs passion for literature and teaching; his constant enthusiasm for learning and life; his devotion to his family; his discipline and his faith: the sum of the man, an enduring inspiration.

Tommy Harper played sonatas. More to the point, he was a sonata himself, a true masterpiece. I think he would approve of an allusion to Wordsworth here as an appropriate close to a meditation about a life well-lived, and about a friend who will be missed:

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

( from “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”)