At Kyle and Lauren’s wedding, my brother Tom quoted Ella Genzmer in his toast to the bride and groom.  He interrupted the toast to ask how many people in the room were acquainted with Ella Genzmer.  My brother Steve and I raised our hands.  With Tom, that made a total of three of us who knew her.

I grew up in Hingham, WI, a town of about 200 people, and Mrs. Genzmer was a long-time teacher in the Hingham Grade School.  The school building was two stories tall and had two classrooms, two teachers and usually somewhere around 50-60 students.  (It also had an awesome fire escape from the second floor, but that’s a different story.)  At some point, the upper floor was remodeled to form a third room, and a third teacher was added.  I don’t remember which grade I was in when that happened, but there are 63 students and three teachers in my seventh grade school picture.  (Yes, we are all in one picture.)

Mrs. Genzmer was my teacher for five of the eight years I was in grade school.  There was an interruption in my time with her when Mr. Prinsen, the principal, left and Mrs. Genzmer became the principal.  The principal always taught grades 5-8 (on the second floor), and I was still in a lower grade (on the first floor) when Mrs. Genzmer moved upstairs.  When I reached fifth grade, I had Mrs. Genzmer again until I graduated in one of the largest Hingham Grade School classes ever–seven of us!

Mrs. Genzmer was a grammarian.  I learned everything I know about diagramming sentences from her, and I took honors English in high school and college because of her.  In talking about her at Kyle and Lauren’s wedding, my brothers and I agreed that we received an excellent education in our little country school.

So what did Tom quote from Mrs. Genzmer?  In praising love and marriage, Tom reminded us that Mrs. Genzmer taught us “When using a dictionary, the first definition of a word is the most common use of the word.”  Tom also quoted Nietzsche in his toast.  I’ll bet Mrs. Genzmer would be surprised to be joined by Nietzsche!