A Teacher Not Easily Forgotten
Source: Hartford Courant ()
EXTRAORDINARY LIFE
Philip E. Stearns, 62, of West Hartford, died Sept. 2.
He was the high school teacher we all wished for someone inspiring, challenging and caring. To thousands of former students at Manchester High School, Phil Stearns was such a teacher, one never to be forgotten.
“Even when the question may have been dumb, he had a way of taking that stupid question and, very subtly, he would rework it or restate it and add something to it in the answer,” said Carl Fenton, a former student. “He would do it so effortlessly, he never made a student feel less intelligent or valued.”
Stearns grew up in Canandaigua, N.Y., a small town 30 miles from Rochester, the only child of Clarence and Eleanor Stearns. His father was a Methodist minister but left the ministry to work at a Veterans Administration Hospital. His grandmother and great-grandmother cared for him during his early years when his mother was ill.
At Canandaigua Academy, a public school, Stearns developed his love of literature and theater under the guidance of Jim Lynch, a popular teacher who served as a model for Stearns’ own teaching style.
Lynch ran an honors seminar for gifted students that met after-hours at students’ houses. He would take them to plays, colleges or to see art movies. With Lynch’s guidance, Stearns developed a lifelong love of the theater and Broadway musicals and collected records of their songs. He took school seriously and wrote for the local paper.
The Academy was beginning to welcome foreign students, and a summer he spent in Crete with a Greek family through the American Field Service (AFS) opened his eyes to a new culture and to travel. “He was bitten early by the foreign bug,” said a classmate, Doug McNeal.
Stearns went to Colby College in Maine, where he majored in English, and spent several years studying England. On his return, he obtained a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin. When he …