A Teacher Dreads This Badge of Courage

To the second-graders who love their teacher, Mr. Gustafson probably seems quite brave. After all, the Laguna Beach landslide left him homeless, yet here he was back in class just six days later.

And, funny how these things work out. His 21 students at Westwood Basics Plus Elementary School in Irvine had already begun a lesson during his absence on courage in dealing with challenges in life. In his absence, they’d read “Molly the Brave and Me” by Jane O’Connor.

As the youngsters will learn someday, life is more nuanced than portrayed in storybooks. At 7 and 8 years old, they don’t need to know right now that courage doesn’t have a lot to do with what John Gustafson is going through, and how, while putting up a brave front for his students, he’s off his pins. They don’t need to know that, like the other slide victims from Bluebird Canyon, he lies awake nights wondering how the pieces of his fractured life will be reassembled.

“When I came back [Tuesday],” he says, “the students basically were saying, ‘Oh, Mr. Gustafson, you’ve been so brave to cope with a broken-down house.’ You don’t want exactly to tell them just how awful it was, but a lot of them saw TV and things that happened, and I think one of the good things about me coming back is that I was really here. When they’re kids, they don’t know. The reality of it [for them] is, ‘Is the teacher coming back?’ ”

The teacher is back, but at 54, his life has a new starting point. The house he and his partner, James Moore, bought 21 years ago is irreparable, Gustafson says.

“A lot of work went into it,” Gustafson says. “That house isn’t just a house. It’s been a lifetime of work for me. When we bought the house, it was a real fixer-upper. Through the years, we got to the point where we could take out some money and remodel.”

The result was a dream house, of sorts. And now, nothing.

I ask Gustafson how he’s holding up. “I still find it very difficult,” he says. “My whole teaching career took me that long to get to where I’m at financially.” He isn’t counting on any significant insurance money.

Last Friday, two days after the slide, he went back to the house to say goodbye.

“I had these dried flowers inside the garage,” he says. “I had a funeral for the house.”

It helped, of course, to return to school. Parents and colleagues are trying to help however they can.

“I’ve always enjoyed teaching, and I don’t want to say it’s therapeutic, but it takes my mind off of trying to think of what I’m going to do next,” Gustafson says. “Because I really don’t know what I’m going to do. This will come together very slowly.”

His students were curious, but Gustafson didn’t use the disaster to deliver the big speech to them. Even though the youngsters had courage on their minds, you can’t blame Gustafson for not forcing the issue.

“They asked if I was nervous, and I said yes but that I felt better now. I said I was safe and had a place to stay. Someone asked if all my toys had been ruined. That’s where their thinking is. They definitely saw my sadness, and when I opened the door and saw all those little faces looking at me, and the moms were hugging me.... The school is like a big family.”

I wouldn’t believe Gustafson even if he swore that his mind was 100% focused on teaching. But when I ask if it is, he says softly, “I should lie to you, huh?”

Then, he adds, “It’s good to be back and have a routine. Right now, I can’t go into the house. It’s very scary when you’re in there. The roof is open to the sky, the walls are pushed out and the floor is pushed up.”

That’s a memory that will be hard to shake. No matter what his students may wish for him, courage may have nothing to do with it.

“As soon as you reach Bluebird Canyon, there’s a tranquillity there,” he says. “It isn’t something you feel everywhere. You can feel the peacefulness. That’s what’s so ironic. This peacefulness and such destruction.”

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Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana. parsons@latimes.com.