Teacher Leaves $30,000 to Children : Mr. D--Even the Tough Kids Cried When He Died

His name was Monte Duckworth, but the kids at Cerritos Elementary School called him “Mr. D.” That tells something about the kind of teacher he was.

His 11-year-old car carried a personalized license plate that read simply: KIDS. That tells more about the kind of teacher he was.

And the tape-recorded “will” found in Duckworth’s Lakewood apartment after he died last week of an apparent heart attack told even more.

On the tape Duckworth said he wanted his estate--which he figured would be about $30,000--to go to kids. He said he wanted half of the money to be divided among the 32 kids in his fifth-grade home-room class at Cerritos Elementary.

He wanted the other half to help support an annual track meet sponsored for local youngsters by the Artesia-Cerritos Lions Club.

No one who knew the 53-year-old Duckworth seemed very surprised at the unusual way that he made his last wishes known--or that he wanted kids to be beneficiaries of his small fortune.

“I guess you could call him eccentric,” said Donald Duckworth, younger brother and sole known survivor of the teacher. “He definitely marched to a different drummer--he always did it his own way.”

The brother, a Stockton insurance agent, said “it’s all right by me” that the legacy be dispersed as Duckworth stipulated because his whole life was devoted almost entirely to his profession and the children he taught for more than 20 years.

The younger Duckworth said his brother was a gentle man but also tough enough to have served as a forward observer in a Marine combat unit in the Korean War.

Duckworth said he is not sure that the total estate will be $30,000--largely in the form of a teachers’ retirement fund in the ABC School District here--because there may be some outstanding loans still owed by his brother. It will be some time, he said, before anyone actually gets any money from the estate.

The estate of the teacher they called Mr. D was not much on the minds of the kids at Cerritos Elementary as they talked about him Wednesday at lunch break. They were talking about the memories he had left behind.

Fond Memories

Shari Metcalfe, 10, was not in Duckworth’s home room, but did take a math class from him. She smiled when she talked about him.

“He was a teacher, but like more than a teacher,” she said. “He was like our best friend. You could talk to him. Like, if you had a problem, like a fight with your friend, he would get you together and make you be friends again.”

She blushed a little and admitted that Mr. D had done exactly that for her. “He got us together and told us, ‘You girls shake hands right now!’ And we did and now we’re best friends again.”

Shari and the other three kids gathered at the lunch table agreed that he was a different kind of teacher, who often used plays, skits and movies that he had made himself to bring interest to his classroom.

But Brandi Jones, 11, a math classmate of Shari, wanted it known that “it wasn’t all fun and games--he really taught us, too, I think, and my mother said she thinks he was the best teacher I’ve ever had at Cerritos.”

Rewards for Achievement

Mike Sarno, 11, said Mr. D often rewarded kids when they did well--sometimes with a grin and a kind word, sometimes with a morsel of candy when they did especially well--and he always encouraged them to do better.

“If he found that a student had never been to the mountains, he’d find a way to take him,” said Jim Italiano, a longtime friend who did his student-teaching under Duckworth.

“He reminded me of Santa Claus,” Mike said, “because he was kind of fat and he gave you things.”

Anthony Gonzales, 10, who was in Mr. D’s home room with Mike, said he had heard that the teacher had left some money to some of the kids.

Once, Anthony recalled, Mr. D had told the class that if they ever came into some sudden money, “We should spend some of it and put some away for college.”

And, he said, that’s exactly what he is going to do if and when he gets his share of Mr. D’s legacy. Mike, however, thought he might invest all of his in a bike.

Each in his or her own way, the four youngsters said they would miss Mr. D. and thought they would always remember him.

100 at Funeral

“I didn’t want to believe it at first, when I heard,” Brandi said. “We all cried. Even the boys, even the toughest boys, they cried.”

Shari was one of the nearly 100 people who attended Duckworth’s funeral in San Pedro last Saturday. So was Sheriff’s Capt. Steve Batchelor, a friend since he and Duckworth had worked together on the Olympic Games last summer.

Duckworth had a history of serious health problems and it was Batchelor to whom he addressed the envelope containing the taped “will” and other personal papers. Batchelor--who said he thought of his friend as “an empowering man with a genius of letting people know they were special”--remembered that the words of a young former student were the most moving of the day.

“She was crying,” he said, “but still articulate. She said, ‘He was the most special man I ever knew--and I loved him.’ ” Shari Metcalfe remembered she was most moved by something else.

“On his casket was his picture, and beside his picture was his license plate, the one that said KIDS.”