Cruise to honor teacher
The staff and students at Benzie Central High School lost a wonderful teacher when Katherine Wolterink was killed in an automobile accident this past fall. The Grand Traverse area offered their thoughts and strength to the students and staff.
Last spring Mrs. Wolterink took her Honors Freshman English class on a cruise with the Inland Seas, Tall Ships. This year Tom Kelly of Inland Seas and his crew have extended an invitation to Mindy Clawson (Katherine's replacement) and the World Literature, Senior English students and Mrs. Wolterink's family, for a similar adventure and memorial cruise in her honor on May 6.
I think that Tom Kelly and his crew should be acknowledged for their generous and kind offer. Mrs. Wolterink would be pleased that she and her students would be invited to return to the ship.
Constance Gardner
Interlochen
The writer is a mathematics teacher at Benzie Central High School.
A fond farewell
I am sincerely sorry Kathy Gibbons is leaving the Record-Eagle to start a new career. I'm sure I'll enjoy her depot restaurant, but I'll miss her column.
Over the years Kathy (calling her "Gibbons" would be more conventionally respectful, but we readers feel we know her better than that) wrote columns that frequently resonated in our hearts.
The way Kathy shared with us her family and her daily life was sometimes embarrassingly personal, but more often than not it lifted us up. The car trips with her kids, the conversations with sick friends, the meals well cooked and eaten, the uncertainties of human relationships, the longing of old age, the closeness of illness, the transitory thought while buying groceries -- who would share such private moments in such clear prose with a public readership?
Kathy commented on life with integrity of the sort normally numbed by daily events. She looked in the mirror and saw our lives and told us about ourselves in a way that we'll remember.
To her, thanks. To the Record Eagle, this -- the Gibbons space deserves to be filled with someone just like Kathy Gibbons, or as close as you can get.
Grant W. Parsons
Traverse City
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