Thank A Teacher Today & Everyday

[kpete]

Decades Later, Student Finds Teacher To Say 'Thank You'
December 28, 2012 3:25 AM


John Cruitt reunited with his third-grade teacher, Cecile Doyle, to tell her about the impact she had on him as he coped with his mother's death.

"Then you bent over and kissed me on the head. It was really the only time someone said to me, 'I know what you're feeling, and I know what you're missing,' " Cruitt says. "And I felt, in a very real way, that things really would be OK."

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Decades after his mother's death, when Cruitt became a teacher himself, he began to think more and more of Doyle.

"And I started to think to myself, here I am, with a memory of a teacher who changed my life, and I've never told her that," he says.

So, that's when he finally wrote a letter:

Dear Mrs. Doyle,

If you are not the Cecile Doyle who taught English at Emerson School in Kearny, N.J., then I'm embarrassed, and you can disregard the sentiments that follow.

My name is John Cruitt, and I was in your third-grade class during the 1958-1959 school year. Two days before Christmas, my mother passed away, and you told me that you were there if I needed you. I hope life has been as kind to you as you were to me.

God bless you, always. With great fondness,

John

Doyle says his letter, which arrived in February, could have not come at a better time. Her husband, who passed away this August, was struggling with Parkinson's disease.

http://www.npr.org/2012/12/28/168142027/decades-later-student-finds-teacher-to-say-thank-you