Funeral for ‘Amazing and Wonderful’ Teacher, Timed Just Right

They laid Mrs. Lee to rest Thursday. In that grand cosmic way that things sometimes happen, it came the first week in September just as a new school year beckoned.

Some of her former students were there, dressed better than she’d ever seen them, and they once again took their seats in rows facing her, just as they had all those years ago at Tustin and El Modena high schools. For some, it had been 20, 30, even 40 years since they’d been in her presence. But if nothing else came across inside the Waverley Church on the Fairhaven Mortuary grounds, it was that nobody had forgotten Mrs. Lee.

The pupils are all grown-ups now, with lives of their own and other places they could have been this fine Thursday morning. But had you asked, they would have told you they could still see her standing before them--impeccable in dress and speech--and teaching them the art of English literature.

Her name was Catherine Lee. She died 11 days ago in Auburn, Wash., at the age of 88, perhaps a merciful ending after Alzheimer’s disease had invaded her memory and intellect. Perhaps it was a moment in which Mrs. Lee would have appreciated Emily Dickinson more than ever:

Because I could not stop for death/

He kindly stopped for me.

Catherine Lee was mother to five children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. But one of her daughters lovingly noted from the lectern Thursday that to many in the audience, she was “your Mrs. Lee.”

In conversations before the service (I counted 40 people who had signed the guest book and identified themselves as former students of hers), they remembered Mrs. Lee as that rare teacher who sticks in the memory forever.

Mark Hanna is 44 and owns an insurance company in San Francisco. He flew down to Orange County specifically for the service and planned to fly back when it was over. Before Thursday, he hadn’t seen Mrs. Lee since he graduated from El Modena in 1975.

“I came to pay tribute to a person who was amazing and wonderful in my life,” he says, standing outside the church. “She never told you anything. It just came to you in the way she taught. We’d read Shakespeare in class and talk about it. She never said, ‘This is what you have to know to pass a test.’ ”

Other alumni drift in and out of the conversation. Peggy L. Calvert graduated in 1968 and remembers Mrs. Lee’s business suits, her pumps and her no-nonsense, perfect speech. “I loved Shakespeare because of her,” she says. “When I was in England at the Tower of London, I said, ‘Thank you, Mrs. Lee, for all those stories.’ ”

What strikes me in talking to her former pupils is that they could have paid their respects in private. Instead, they made a point to show up in person--for a teacher who retired 18 years ago.

We can only wonder what Mrs. Lee would have said about such allegiance.

I suspect she would alternately chuckle and shed a tear to learn that all the homework assignments, lesson plans and classroom discussions are remembered with such reverence and fondness.

I think she might have done something else. From what I heard of her, I picture her extending a hand to the teachers she leaves behind, many of whom are returning to classrooms this week and wondering if it’s all worth it.

I picture Mrs. Lee’s challenging them to be up to the task of touching young people’s minds and hearts.

If nothing else, the grown-up students inside Waverley Church on this day are living proof that it can be done.

“It’s a true testament to a person who dedicated her life to students that so many would be here,” Calvert says. Another former student, science-fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson, e-mails me from Northern California:

“I wish very much I could be there to honor her memory and tell her family what she has meant to my life.”

Mrs. Lee perhaps would have taken those tributes and said to today’s teachers: “This is what it’s all about. This is why we do it.”

Catherine Lee was born in January 1913 on what was no doubt a cold Massachusetts day. She was buried 88 years later under a grove of trees on a beautiful September morning in Southern California.

If there’s such a thing as eternal rest, could any be more comfortable than that for a teacher whose students over the course of a lifetime insisted on being with her at the end to say thank you?

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.