My Teacher, My Salvation) I stepped off the ship on a gray March day in 1949, a small boy with a new American visa shoved in his pocket, a boy who had lost his mother and was emigrating to America to live with a father he did not know. I was very suspicious of the heavy, bald man who embraced my sisters and me at the dock. Still, he was the very image of American people in his gleaming black shoes, gray overcoat, and new hat. 
After several years in an elementary school class for those with low IQ — there were no classes for non-English-speaking children — I made it to junior high school. The first week of classes we were told to select a hobby to pursue during "club hour"on Fridays. I decided to follow the prettiest girl in my class, who led me through a door marked Newspaper Club. And there was a sharp-tongued, no-nonsense English teacher named Marilyn Burd. "We're going to put out a newspaper," she yelled, rapping her desk with a ruler, "so if any of you don't want to work, I suggest you go across the hall to the Theater Club rehearsal now, because you're going to work your tails off here!"
I was soon under the spell of this formidable and eloquent woman. She drilled us on grammar and made me fall in love with literature. I was fascinated by the way she could read a story or a piece of verse, then open it up like a fan, displaying its various facets, colors, and meanings. I had considered stories to be simple adventures, but she showed me they could express feelings as well: pain, frustration, anger, and loss. And she taught me that my motherland was the foundation of Western civilization. I began to be proud of my origins. One day she assigned us to compose a concise essay from our own experience. Fixing me with a stern look, she added, "Nick, I want you to write about what happened to your family in your homeland."
That was the last thing I wanted to write about, and so I left the assignment until the last moment. Then, on a warm weekend afternoon, I sat in my room with a pad and pencil and stared out the window. The chorus of bird song, the buzz of insects, and the perfume of freshly cut grass distracted me. Finally I wrote the first sentence: "To many people the coming of spring means the end of winter, the first birds, thoughts of love. Spring to me has a very different meaning because this was when I hugged my mother for the last time." I kept writing, telling how the local guerrillas occupied our village and took our home and food; how my mother planned our escape when she learned all the children were to be sent to schools in another country for the indefinite future; and how she could not come with us because the guerrillas sent her to dig an irrigation ditch in a distant village.
I wrote about how one night we were smuggled down the mountain and into the lines of government soldiers, where a sergeant sent us to a refugee camp. It was there that we learned of our mother's torture and execution. I wrote that I could still hear the cries of my sisters when we were told my mother was taken into a cellar and shot by the guerrillas for what they called disloyalty — the escape of her children. But I did write that I felt very lucky to have started a new life, my mother's dream for us. I ended my narrative by saying that, nevertheless, the coming of spring always reminded me of the green and gold day in 1948 when I last saw my mother.
For the first time I began to understand the power of the written word. Meanwhile, I followed the literary path Miss Burd had set me on. I managed to finance four years of university tuition with scholarships and part-time jobs with newspapers. An article I wrote about a friend who died in the Philippines — one of the first volunteers to lose his life in the Peace Corps — won a national award. The award was given to me in the White House by the President. When the local paper ran a picture of me clasping hands with the President, my father clipped it, had it sealed in plastic and carried it in his breast pocket. I found it there on the day he died 20 years later.
Often her students were from troubled homes, yet she would alternately bully and charm each one until the spark of potential caught fire. She retired in 1981 at the age of 62. Marilyn Burd is still an honored and enthusiastic guest at all our family celebrations. At my 50th-birthday picnic last summer, my sisters and I felt a painful void because my father was not there to lead the line of dancers, the way he did at every celebration during his 92 years. But Miss Burd was there, sipping wine and viewing the scene with quiet satisfaction. Her presence was a comfort.
But she was the one who directed my grief and pain into writing. She was my salvation, the one that sent me into writing and indirectly caused all the good things that came after. A few years ago, I answered the telephone and heard her telling me that I was to deliver the speech at her funeral. I hope, Miss Burd, that you'll accept this tribute instead. (Words:1,008)
