{mr. skarpohl}

it has been a sad couple of weeks at the hunter house.

madison's beloved 5th grade teacher, mr. skarpohl, died after a short battle with stomach cancer.

not only was he madison's teacher, but he was also the 5th grade teacher at john's school {central elementary} and a good friend to john.

the funeral was last night and even though the two of them {madison and john} are the two in my family who show little emotion.....they both were really upset at the funeral.

i don't think madison had really thought much about it until we were actually sitting in the church listening to everyone talk about him and watching the video.

as a matter of fact, i don't know that she has even really been to a funeral before.

we took her sweet friend jessie with us and we sat in the rows sectioned off for keith's "central family."

the girls recalled stories about their favorite teacher on the car ride to the funeral. madison talked about how he never made her feel like she was asking a dumb questions. he always told them that "the only dumb questions are the ones you don't ask." she also said that even if you got an answer wrong he was quick to point out something good about your answer {like "well, if we were doing the problem this way you would be absolutely right!}.

she said that before she was in his class she had never wanted to talk in front of people. he would make the kids get up on a "soap box" and make speaches and talk about their day. she hated it at first and learned to love it in the end.

he was also a huge duck fan, so madison loved that! they were the minority in the class, as most of the kids are beavers!!

she had bought him a donald duck mug when we went to disneyland that year and it always sat proudly on his desk.

in the slide show at his funeral he was also wearing the baseball hat she had bought him in several pictures. she pointed that out to us on the car ride home. she also remembered that he used to wear it in class all of the time.

i think this was a good lesson to her. she will miss mr. skarpohl a lot, as we all will.

he was an amazing teacher and much too young to die.