Memories in Ashes : For Escondido Teacher, Arson’s Scars Cut Deep

Teacher Darwin Bree wore a “Don’t Worry, Be Happy!” T-shirt on the first day back to school after an arson fire destroyed his Orange Glen High classroom and 22 years’ worth of notes, texts and memories.

“He was so up and positive--I don’t know if I could have handled it like he did,” said colleague Chris Turrentine, who scoured her library at home to help Bree replace his collection of psychology and sociology textbooks lost in the March 18 fire.

But the degree of the loss caught up this week with Bree, one of the Escondido school’s most popular teachers, who is best known for his well-respected peer counseling program. The program teaches students communication and interpersonal skills to counsel people both in school and in the community who are dealing with stress, personal or academic problems.

On Wednesday, while Turrentine and other teachers were marveling at Bree’s equanimity and ability to rebound, Bree showed up at the nurse’s office to have his blood pressure taken.

Later in the day, he arranged a medical appointment for a week’s leave or so, acknowledging that coping with the personal loss from the fire--plus dealing with student concerns over two suicides and a murder-for-hire incident linked to a campus teacher’s aide earlier this year----had pushed him to the breaking point.

“I’m so stressed out my chest is tight, I can feel my throat closing, I’ve lost my appetite, I realize the

loss finally, and it really hurts,” Bree said.

“I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night,thinking about the suicides, about other student issues, worrying about things I didn’t do and things I now don’t have.”

Bree apparently has reached a normal psychological stage after a tragedy; when he has seen it in students and others over the years, he has encouraged them to seek help. Now Bree has become his own student, validating his own advice of more than two decades on when to reach out for assistance.

“I think people will understand. I need to get away for five days or so, go up to Idyllwild, change the scene, sit under an oak and read a book,” Bree said, adding--to show that his sense of humor is still intact--that he had just started reading “Necessary Losses” by Judith Viorst a day before the fire.

Outpouring of Support

“It comes down to having to deal with the aftermath myself and make the necessary adjustments,” he said, emphasizing that the outpouring of student, teacher and community support for him in the week after the fire has nevertheless made his adjustment less painful.

“I have had so much help from so many people,” Bree acknowledged, “but, after a while, I look fine on the surface and they have to go back to their own work and deal with their own issues.”

Although Bree’s old classroom, Room 33, is now a charred shell, Bree can recall the locations of mementos, books, files and other documentation of a long and successful career.

“I lost everything but my roll book,” he said.

Among other things, the fire destroyed a special college-level history book Bree used for his U. S. history courses that contained notations and careful outlines.

His psychology students, who are trained as peer counselors, lost all their records of students they have helped, as well as all correspondence, research papers and books.

Can Never Be Replaced

“It takes so much time to re-create, to rewrite just little bits and pieces of things essential to get back to basic teaching,” he said. “But, beyond that, so many things were personal items that can never be replaced,” including pictures of peer-counseling events such as weeklong wilderness camping and fund-raising car washes.

In particular, Bree recalled a carved wooden sign over his classroom door with the saying: “More people in this world are starved for love than for bread.”

“One of my students gave me that several years ago shortly before he died,” said Bree, his eyes watering at the memory of what the sign symbolized for his teaching philosophy. His roll book even now is attached to a key chain that says, “I to be hugged.”

But Bree said he has no self-pity and does not want people feeling sorry for him.

“I just want them to realize what you will go through if your workplace for more than 20 years suddenly disappears,” he said. “Psychologically, it’s like losing your home, the center of your existence.”

Bree said he has no anger toward the four teen-agers arrested in the arsons at Orange Glen and two other Escondido schools on the same night. The arsonists had no idea whose classroom they were torching when they jimmied a window in Bree’s room and set fire to his desk as part of a night of destruction growing out of what police call apparent boredom.

“I’m not angry. I haven’t been angry and I say that honestly,” Bree said. “But it would be very, very hard to face them, at least at this time, given all of their emotions and my emotions.”

Bree added, however, that “I think if I did meet them, I’d just want to hug the kids, and hold them, if they would allow it.”

“After all, their lives have been wrecked . . . mine has just been derailed a little.”