Peak, Moynihan, Goerner
Posted Saturday, May 23, 2009 08:19 PM

Mrs. Peak (English) and Mrs. Moynihan were my two favorite teachers because they had such great senses of humor. Mrs. Moynihan encouraged Zia Gipson and me to enter the interscholastic league French singing contest with our pathetic verson of Joan Baez' "Dona, Dona, Dona" translated into French. Neither one of us could play the guitar, but there were only two chords, so Zia played one and I played the other, alternating. For some reason, we placed second....

Mrs. Peak, who had the same pair of shoes in every possible color, taught me grammar trivia that I remember to this day (drapes vs. draperies, because of vs. due to, etc.) Caswell used to get As copying off my English papers while I got Bs. She had a wonderful wit and appreciated the wit of her students as well--and let us get away with murder.

I was crazy about Mr. Goerner in 9th grade and, for some reason, still remember his birthday was May 14. My parents even had him and his wife over for cocktails one time, along with, I think, Coach Floyd and his wife. We lived on 5 acres in Hill Country Village and there were some wild goats that had been wandering around, and my dad somehow roped these two guys into trying to catch them. I can still see them flying across the yard trying to tackle goats.

I don't remember Mr. Katzer being as scary as the boys do--maybe it was a man thing!

I hated Laneal Tankersly--she had her favorites and didn't let you forget it--but I don't remember disliking any other teachers. We must have been lucky!