Monday, August 30, 2021
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Mrs. Bishop, as we called her at St. John’s School, taught us to write, and to diagram sentences. She commanded respect, made us work hard, and frankly, I was a little afraid of her. But I think of her very frequently, all these years later; she was an enormous inspiration, and I am so grateful for her. She brought her delight in Bob Newhart, Bach, and the “spelling demons” vinyl record (the 100 most commonly misspelled English words), and was full of a worldly delight that not all Catholic school children get to witness—she invited us to her dark wood paneled, book-filled home, where we met her enormously overweight cat. She rebuked us as a class when we failed to live up to expectations, and we learned to do better. I’ve never had a better teacher, and she is my model of a mensch, and a person I aspire to be like. I’ve tried to look her up over the years, just to find some way to thank her, but never with any success, and my most recent search yielded this site, and her obituary. Mrs. Bishop (though I know you are Dr. Bishop), thank you for all you gave of yourself, for imparting such passion for language, and for your delightful and incisive wit. I will already remember you, and my children know many stories of you, and I know you must live in the hearts of many students like myself, though they may not find their way to this site. May you rest easy, in a heaven that is a little like a library, knowing that I and many others are looking up to you fondly, and with enormous gratitude.
