I’ve tracked down around  30 pupils of James Osterberg Senior, who taught at Ypsilanti High School and then Fordson High School in Dearborn, a dozen or so of whom sent me brief accounts of his lessons. He seems to have been a stern teacher. Today, however I got a somewhat warmer anecdote about him from Patricia Carson Celusta, of Livonia, Michigan, who sent a long, detailed account of her time at Fordson via a letter in longhand that arrived today.

 

Mr Osterberg was tough in giving grades, says Patricia, which meant  an A-grade from him was something special, a real motivating force. He taught public speaking (one senses that his son benefited from this, for his school friends all mention his impressive vocabulary and confidence) and Patricia reckons that under his tutelage she was transformed from a shy schoolgirl into a confident one, who was inspired to become an English teacher by his example. His lessons seem to have had a philosophical bent, and one of his favourite chapters from the small, thick textbook they all used was titled “Universal Truths that Still Glitter.”

 

After leaving high school, Patricia went to see him around 1966:

“I went back to visit him to thank him for giving me and others something of himself, some part of him to forever live on in each of us, something we could get nowhere else. This is a true definition of a ‘teacher’.

“He hugged me and wished me well with college. He gave me a tired copy of our old classroom textbook to keep – to this day I still have it and treasure it. He told me to pass on to my children those ‘universal truths that still glitter’. Which I have. (I am 60 years old now - a retired English/Speech teacher.)”