Old Master in Tune With Modish Youth : Substitute Teacher, Who is 89 or 90, Is a Role Model for the ‘80s

The end-of-class bell rings at Glendale’s Hoover High School and a sea of teen-agers, dressed in surfers, preppy and punker style, floods the campus.

Cutting briskly through that youthful tide is a diminutive, silver-haired figure, dressed in black, with a hearing aid in one ear and a pair of bifocals over eyes which have had their struggles with cataracts. It is substitute teacher Louis List, probably the oldest working teacher in the Los Angeles area, if not the state.

There is some confusion over whether List is 89 or 90 years old. But either way, he is a remarkably spry raconteur with no intention of quitting. “I want to die with my boots on, like a cowboy,” he says. “I love teaching.”

List, who works a couple of days a week, is a beloved grandfather figure in the Glendale school system and, officials say, a role model for both teachers and youngsters. That was evident last week when, after a six weeks’ recovery from a cornea implant, he was greeted in the hallways with kisses, handshakes and backslaps from students and faculty.

“He really relates well to the kids and tells us interesting stories. He’s not cranky like some other subs,” said Karen Murphy, a Hoover junior. “So the kids don’t act up in his classes. They all respect him.”

Hoover’s principal, Don Duncan, concurred. “My own children attended Glendale High and they loved to have Louie, as they called him, come in. We don’t have to stick our heads in to see if his class is under control because it is under control,” Duncan said, dismissing questions of whether he worries about having a nonagenarian on staff.

List was a full-time foreign language teacher in Riverside at the high school and college level for 32 years and authored textbooks in Spanish and Russian. He now mainly substitutes for Spanish, French and literature classes. At Hoover High, many of those are on the third floor. List refuses an elevator key and walks up, Duncan said.

After his retirement in 1965, List sat home for a few months but became bored. He started substituting around the Los Angeles area to keep occupied, to keep feeling young and to keep his mind off of a series of tragedies. His wife died nine years ago and more recently, he lost three brothers, his daughter-in-law and his son, Eugene List, who was an internationally known pianist.

“I’m always wondering why I’m still living and they’re not,” he said. “Being a substitute doesn’t make me forget about it, but it makes me stop thinking about it for a while. I make $62.50 a day doing this, but I would work for nothing.”

List has a daughter, who is a retired Los Angeles teacher, and three grandchildren and he lives in the same Santa Monica apartment building as does his 84-year-old “baby sister.”

Until a few years ago when his eye troubles began, he drove from Santa Monica to Glendale schools. Now he gets lifts from colleagues and sometimes takes the bus home, transferring bus lines three times. He says the long commute is worthwhile because Glendale students are relatively well-behaved. “Maybe they have respect for old age. Maybe they like the stories I tell,” he said, a clipped Russian accent still noticeable, 77 years after he and his family moved to the United States.

Always a Story

Spend a day with List and you are likely to hear the phrase “Let me tell you a story” several times. He launches into anecdotes with zest, poking a listener’s arm for emphasis. He quotes from Cervantes, Pushkin and Poe, his favorite writer. Without prompting, he begins to recite “The Raven” first in English, then in Russian.

At a recent modern literature course, the regular teacher had left a lesson plan calling for the students to read some of Hemingway’s novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” and then answer essay questions.

“Let me tell you a story,” List said to the students, seniors with graduation on their minds but who seemed generally pleased to have him there. He started a tale about how awkward it was when he used to teach in the same high school where his daughter was a student. He was always afraid, he said, that she would be treated too harshly or too lightly. One day, he asked one of her teachers how she was doing. “She makes an A for herself and a B for her neighbor,” he recalled the other teacher saying.

Some of the students seemed momentarily perplexed by his cautionary and circuitous tale. He then reached the point of his anecdote: “I don’t want you to be making a B for your neighbor.” In other words, no cheating.

Later, when a few students began talking among themselves and standing up, he told them: “You’re making me think you don’t like me. Love me or leave me.” They quieted down.

His Method Successful

Some school officials admit they try not to send List to classes where the regular teacher struggles with severe disciplinary problems and any substitute has to be a lion tamer. However, List’s classroom style usually works, they say.

Explained Arden Daniels, principal of E. J. Toll Junior High in Glendale: “Even some of our really bad kids have some respect for him, for his intelligence and his age.”

According to the birth date on his employment records and driver’s license, List will be 90 in September. He insists he will be 91, and blames the discrepancy on an old clerical error. “I was perfectly willing to lose the year,” he joked. He has no Russian birth certificate.

An informal survey of area school districts, the state Teachers’ Retirement System and the California Retired Teachers’ Assn. turned up no working teacher or substitute older than List. A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School district said that her system employs three teachers in their early 80s, but no one over 84 even though there is no longer a mandatory retirement age.

Whether List is the oldest teacher around or not, people tend to ask him how students have changed since he first took control of a classroom. Today’s liberal clothes styles--”almost nudist,” he says--do bother him.

But otherwise, he explains: “Kids are the same. Oh, sure, they have more freedom to move about and have more money in their pockets. But I don’t begrudge them that. Three thousand years ago, the Greeks were saying that their kids were no good. Every generation says the same thing. It’s ridiculous.”