Keith Kester

Keith Kester 

I'm pretty sure Keith Kester turned 12 when he started teaching at Central Catholic.

I still remember, in 1981, a skinny boy in a too-big tie proudly carting a brand new briefcase. The shiny briefcase is an emblem of professionalism, and Kester - just a tiny bit intimidated by the hundreds of sweaty, hormonal adolescents pouring into his classroom - holds his students to strict accountability.

"If I hear any of you talking," he announces that first day in a quaking voice, "you will write one hundred sentences after school."

Poor kid, I remember thinking. I am only three years his senior but already feel eons older. I give him a semester. Tops.

Before the end of the year, however, Mr. Kester is noticeably relaxed. He ditches the briefcase along with the tie, and by Christmas he's enthralling kids with stories of the most fascinating hometown in America - Cambridge, Nebraska. Population 1038.

Cambridge, according to Kester, boasts the most talented high school football team ever to dominate the Class D arena. A lake near the Kester farm, where Keith grows up with his brothers, reportedly conceals the body parts of several dozen murdered persons in its murky depths. And unlike every other farm kid in the world, Kester and his brothers raise a house pet - a baby deer who sleeps with them and occasionally shares their bath water.There's no place on earth like the shining mecca of Cambridge, Nebraska.

Mr. Kester, circa 1980's

Nearly 45 years later, Mr. Kester and I are life-long friends. John asks him to be his best man at our wedding 40 years ago. Kester teaches and coaches our own kids and is vitally important to our family. Now, of all those wonderful people we started our Central Catholic careers with, only Keith, Sharon Zavala, and my husband John and I remain. After this year, Mr. Kester is the last of the old regime.

It's crazy that it makes me sadder to think about Keith leaving than any of the rest of us. Upstairs in the classroom he's inhabited for the last four and a half decades, Mr. Kester has always ruled the middle school kingdom. There he stands at the end of the hall during passing periods with loose hands on hips calmly surveying the hundreds of noisy, happy, chattering kids running to their next class as if some huge prize awaits them. It used to drive me absolutely bonkers to witness the madness between bells, but none of it phases Kester. Immune to the shrieks of middle school children and a million  slamming lockers, he fields a dozen questions at a time.

"Mr. Kester, can I go to the bathroom?"

"Can I go get my lunch?"

"Is the test today?"

In his classroom

Kester has no plans to retire - let me emphasize that. There was a time, though, that I never thought any of us would leave. Mr. Schumann would be at GICC forever. Pat and Julie Kayl and Hugh Brandon and Mary Wiles and all the rest of us would spend eternity at Central Catholic. We should know better - should be prepared for the eventuality of it - but it's nevertheless a shock when people retire or die or become old. Whoever would have thought it would happen to all of us? Just a little while ago, weren't we young teachers bowling in our faculty league every Monday night and sharing a much earned beer afterwards? Old age was remote and impossible and never entered our scope. We had all the time in the world and then some.

With the loyal Kester by our side, Coach Zavala and John and I have said goodbye to the friends of our youth - every last one of them. We've wept at their funerals and wished them well at their retirement parties. We've reminisced about the Weenie Wagon and the Handi Van, about the way Sister Mary Leo saved every scrap of paper, about Fred Northup leaving his false tooth in the faculty lounge, about the shock we felt learning our beloved science teacher Dave Rombach had fallen through the ice, and about how Sister Sue played Big Bucks Bingo in the school office. 

Next year, Keith Kester will be the only one in the building who still remembers. That's why he can never leave.

One day he will retire, of course. Somehow, though, it's strangely gratifying to think of our young friends - teachers and administrators who carry on the GICC tradition. They will never have heard about the day the backboard in the old gym was shattered as junior Jerry Dunn tried to put an 8 pound shot put through the hoop. Or that Mr. Schumann, God love him, became apoplectic.

Keith visiting our house to have
special bonding time with
Norman the Cat

A new, young staff, however, reminds me of the old days - young football coaches laughing and bantering in the hallway before school. My husband relentlessly teases Miss Waskowiak, our new math teacher, and band director Toni Birch - who laugh and dish it right back. Dr. Jordan Engle and Mr. Phou Manivong are confident, bright young administrators, and graduate Toad Schroder jumps with unabandoned joy when his wrestlers win a match. These young people are making new memories at GICC which, for our current kids, will be the "good old days" many years from now.

Still, it's nice to see them flock around Mr. Kester - the "Oracle of Wisdom", as my husband teasingly calls him. He's still the guy everybody goes to for advice, comfort and understanding. 

God willing, GICC will have him around many more years.