Loyal Blue Issiminger: The Greatest Teacher Of My Life

1975

I sat down in my first class at my new high school in Madrid, Spain. I looked around wondering as the 10th grade watched in fear, perplexed and nervously laughing while Loyal Issiminger led me down the path of hellfire and brimstone into early American literature.

It was a true 20-minute marathon sermon based mostly on Jonathan Edwards's legendary Great Awakening piece complete with spitting, mad jumping, diabolical shrieking and infernal shaking as if to fill the classroom and the shaking students with the fear of the lord as they might have feared the lord in 17th century colonial America. The dude? He was medium large, 5'10"ish, dancing wild eyes, a graying comb over, black horned rim spectacles and a salt-and-pepper beard.

He wore a black turtleneck, tweed jacket, gray slacks and handmade boots from Sevilla everyday I knew him for the rest of my high school days. The inspiration? Pure knowledge through original material. Never have a I met a man so enthused about writing, never have I been so enthused about a single topic... Issiminger took us through the entire canon of American literature classics starting with Ben Franklin's autobiography and Edwards Sinners through Paine's Common Sense and Irving's Rip Van Winkle into Poe, past Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, through Emerson and Thoreau and civil responsibility and American transcendentalism.

Each step so clearly presented with such a juicy and spirit filled, nearly savage passion about the topic, about the classroom about us the students each filled with potential and point of view, tools for his molding, albeit willing participants in the crazy journey that good classrooms can be into the knowledge that can self generate and make more knowledge out of the clumsy hungry raw materials we were.

Testing and assignments were filled with potential for both failure and heroics and a great test or project score was not the guarantee of a great semester. It was always a full court press in the classroom and his often frightening excitement about the subject matter never swayed... he lived for this stuff!!!! In my life there was no other single teacher who so filled me with the self-awareness of my own potential, no single person who pushed me and pushed me in such subtle ways. He handed us The Sound and the Fury without a word about technique or the stream of conscious style and laughed for 10 minutes when we walked in the next day, literally mindf---ed by the whole assignment.

Later that year he handed us Djuna Barnes and John Hawkes, all the while watching for signs of life in our awake and yet nascent self-confidence he gave and we received and he was without a doubt the greatest teacher of my life until that point and someone who instilled in me a constant unquenchable thirst for knowledge all based on the original documents, Loyal Issiminger was a cheerleader for the home team in my heart of hearts.

National Mentoring Month is spearheaded by the Harvard School of Public Health, MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership, and the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Comments

[Nancy Sun]

Loyal Isiminger was one of the best teachers I have had. You are so correct about the Sound and the Fury.

[Formulaplot3]

Don Anderson taught philosophy at Pierce College in Woodland Hills during the early 80's. In many respects he had no peer. His lectures over a series of six courses provided a lucid and inestimable survey of the history of thought from the pre-Socaratic philosophers to Wittgenstien. He lectured and we read a tome from each major philosopher. His lectures were a true gift of Enlightenment!

Thank you!

[canadagirl76]

My favorite teacher was from third grade, Madame Peacock, we were her first class. My father died that year. I did not realize it at the time, but she really helped me handle it.
I saw her a few years ago & was amazed that she not only remembered me & my brother, she also named others who were in the class... 25 years later!
Teachers are a valuable resource and most deserve more credit than they receive.

[mlaiuppa]

Mrs. Lytwyn.

And Kathleen Faklis. I attended her funeral a few years ago.

[Topfeeder]

My greatest and favorite teacher was Mr. Stewart, AP English, 11th and 12 grade. Though you'd never know it from my writing here, I was an attentive student. He always showed up 1st and last days of class and all holidays in kilt and piping the bags. He could quote Yeats for hours and LOVED all his students. He is gone now and every time I hear a Scottish brogue I think of him.

[BlueZoo]

Mario, you must have had some masterful teachers in addition to Issiminger! Your English and writing skills would be hard pressed to excel over even your cooking skills which are also superb. What a lucky man you are!

[FreeThinkn1]

My Loyal Blue Issiminger was John Wayne Dykes. He was an extraordinary storyteller who taught history with humor and passion.

[musselmanm]

Mario, thank you so much! I enjoy your style in all catagories of the entertainment you have provided me for quite a few years now.
I very much look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on any subject of your choice.
Obviously being a chief and media pesonality is just the tip of the ice berg inside your mind.
Please do not wait too long before posting again here at Huff or any other media. I will be looking for it.

[tibetanterrier]

Thanks Mario. yo quiero tripa a la romana

[PlaceboStudman]

Words are the sustinence on which humanity feeds, and good literature, taught by excellent mentors and teachers are the smorgasborg on which humanity sustains itself

[MomfromTexas]

I think that having a great teacher is one of the true gifts we can receive in life--so unexpected and often life changing. Thanks for this beautiful essay.

[fed up in kansas]

"Each step so clearly presented with such a juicy and spirit filled, nearly savage passion about the topic." Hummm. Couldn't that also be said of this chef-writer as he approaches his own "raw materials?" Bravo, chef for writing passionately about literature. Excellence always requires passion. Thank you for many lovely memories of my own teachers, particularly Dr. Male at the University of Oklahoma. I've been a student of words and food for years. Your essay was a feast.

[nodirectionhome]

While not a teacher, one of my greatest influences in high school had to be the principal at MSJ in Baltimore, MD. The guy was simply amazing !

[cktirumalai]

This is the first time I have heard of Loyal Issiminger but he seems to have taught American literature by living it. Perhaps a man after Walt Whitman's heart.
It came as something of a revelation to me that Jonathan Edwards incorporated Newton and Locke, still new in his time, into his theological understanding.
" The Sound and the Fury," which I first read in my twenties more than forty years ago, was and continues to be a literary and emotional revelation. The South lost the Civil War, and gave us this masterpiece.
Even those who reject America's foreign policy can respond powerfully to its literature.

[lewes17266]

I am so excited to see an essay by Mario Batali here. I read it so fast and will read it again and again. Mario Batali is himself a wonderful teacher, not only of Italian cooking, but of Italian history and geography and sociology.
I had a college professor that I loved this way. Dr. Simpson turned boring history into a romantic novel.