He didn't seem to notice winding movie film from one reel through the projector to the other reel. "What we're watching today," he explains, "some of you may find upsetting but, well, it's how it happens."
In horror we watch raw footage recently declassified by the military of the Allied liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Bulldozers shoving mountains of naked bodies into mass graves!
Darlene Mixon almost throws up!
I'm mesmerized.
After class I asked if there were more films like this?
It takes him a few minutes to remember who I was but, after checking to see if my name was actually on the roll, he says, "Yes."
"I'd like to see them."
Heretofore I'd never exercised the slightest interest in educational instruction so he was taken aback.
"Okay," he smiles. "I can get them but you'll have to watch them after school. We've already covered this material in class."
A few weeks later, Mr. Seay meets me after school, personally teaching what happens when discrimination becomes hate and goes unchecked.
A quarter century later on a cold February day, I stand on the frozen grounds of Auschwitz, hands stuffed in pockets trying to keep warm, holding a broken pair of children's scissors I'd found on the ground and think, for a second or two, of Mr. Seay.
Years later I put the whole scene in a book as my way of saying, "Thank you Mr. Seay."
I don't know if he ever read it.
It doesn't matter because my loving appreciation of that defining moment in my life remains.
Today is Mr. Seay's funeral and I'm of the age now when I'd go if I could but, alas, I have issues that prevent me from attending.
But if anyone understands if I skip, it's Mr. Seay.
