About 1,000 former Bristol students got a walk, of sorts, down memory lane, all paved by a former teacher with a lifelong impact.
“She was a great educator, a great mentor and certainly a great friend. She had a great sense of humor,” Eleanor Wilson said.
That woman was Loretta Teevan, an English and Latin teacher for 43 years at Bristol Public Schools. Eleanor Wilson, her friend of 65 years, said Teevan had always wanted to return former students’ self-reflection papers but never got around to it.
After she passed away in January, Wilson knew she had to fulfill the promise of helping put things in perspective for her former students.
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“I would presume that maybe she thought giving them back several years later, did they fulfill what they had written down?” Wilson said.
“I think she’d love it,” Nancy Roy said.
Roy was one of Teevan's students in her first year of teaching. While she didn’t assign her a paper, she said those who could be reunited with theirs will now have a physical memory of the beloved educator.
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“I think it will help them relive maybe their high school time, go back to those days when they were a little more care-free and they can look back and read what they wrote and say, 'Hey, did I do that or not,'” Roy said.
The papers will be ready for pickup this Saturday at the Bristol Historical Society.
“I think she would enjoy it and she would have a sense of pride that these kids came back, it's a testament to her that she left a legacy that they want to be a part of,” David Mills said.
