Thanks to a Teacher and a Friend

At a time when angry debates over school reorganization, bilingual education and sagging test scores seem to drown out everything else, Sherry Beth Stern’s voice was consistently comforting.

For 32 years she introduced teenagers to the joys of Shakespeare and the artfully written paragraph--and to the extraordinary capacity of their developing young minds.

Along the way, Stern became a second mother to many of the 12,000 teenagers who passed through classroom C-87 at Birmingham High School, where she taught English. So there were tears of disbelief when Stern, 58, of Santa Monica, died unexpectedly in July after elective surgery.

And there were more tears Sunday as Stern’s former students and friends gathered at the Van Nuys campus to celebrate the in-your-face teaching style that helped shape so many lives.

“She was a tornado just blasting across the classroom,” said Dave Domike, a 1975 graduate who now is a Van Nuys Internet consultant. “She was the best thing that ever happened in my life.”

Stern was an old-fashioned, hands-on teacher who wasn’t afraid to rock the boat if a little wave action was needed to get things moving.

She would pick up the telephone and call parents when she sensed youngsters were not working to their potential. She was a grandmaster of praise when a student needed a pat on the back or a word of encouragement whispered in the ear.

She was the kind of teacher who headed off problems. Like the time she went to the home of a boy whose best friend was killed in a motorcycle crash and put her arms around him when he cried.

She had a knack for making every teenager feel important.

“It’s amazing to me that we’re all saying the same thing, that we all thought we were the most important student she ever had,” marveled Derrel Friedman, a Van Nuys resident who was taught 10th-grade English by Stern in 1969.

It was Friedman who was comforted by Stern when his friend was killed. Friedman said he had kept his emotions pent up for a week until Stern pulled up in her car outside his home. She gently asked if he wanted to talk--and then listened to the boy for more than an hour.

Herbert Rosenbloom, a North Hills resident who took Stern’s class 25 years ago, told how the teacher taught him to hold his head high in life. Literally.

“She grabbed me one day and gave me a yank and told me to stop walking around looking at the ground,” Rosenbloom said, drawing laughter from the crowd of 125 in the school auditorium. “She said only dogs and cats walk around like that. That I was a human being who meant something.”

Dora Dunn told the crowd, which included Stern’s husband, Dr. Irwin Sternlicht, how the teacher saved her life.

“I came to school with bruises and Mrs. Stern noticed,” the 20-year-old Dunn said, sobbing. Dunn was a teenage bride and her new husband had begun beating her. Stern took her aside and urged her to end the relationship.

“She told me she didn’t want to have to go to my funeral,” Dunn said.

Current Birmingham High pupils were sprinkled among the crowd of older former students. Sixteen-year-old Chey Ban of Van Nuys, who was one of Stern’s last students, expressed regret at failing to get her to sign his school yearbook in June.

Julie Fisher, also 16, of Encino, explained the sadness of taking 11th-grade English this year in room C-87 without Stern. Eleventh-graders Lisa Goodfried and Jewelle Strum told of how 30 of Stern’s pupils gathered at classmate Julie Labin’s home in Encino to cry and reminisce after her July 12 death.

Former student Brieanna Asher, 20, one of Stern’s students in 1993, traveled from San Diego for the memorial service. Carol Schwartz Kahn, from the class of ‘81, came from Glendale.

“She was there every day for me,” Kahn said. “She changed a C student into an A student.”

Sunday’s service was organized by Birmingham High English teacher Emily Ettinger. She shared letters written by Stern’s students--including one that recounted the time Stern wove a commentary on school politics into a classroom lecture.

As if to add emphasis, Stern reached into her purse for her cellular phone and, without missing a beat, dialed Principal Gerald Kleinman and shared with him what she was telling her kids. Hanging up, she finished her lecture before the bell rang, Ettinger said.

Kleinman said that face-to-face meetings with Stern always ended with a hug from her. He said the school plans to rename the C Building “Stern Hall.”

“It sounds good,” Kleinman said of the new name. “It sounds right.”