| Mike Cerutti was a principal in St. Louis, Mo. [Family photo] |
| I spend a lot of time writing about the lives of other people’s loved ones. In November, I sat down to write about one of my own. My Uncle Mike died at the end of October from pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed just before the coronavirus pandemic, and getting to see him for the first time last summer was a gift I wasn’t sure we’d get. I was determined not to waste it, so when I visited him and my aunt, I came with a set of questions. I spend a lot of time writing about the lives of other people’s loved ones, but I never get to talk to those subjects. With my uncle, I had the chance to ask questions I wish I could ask everyone. I used this oral history guide from the Smithsonian and sat for hours listening to his stories. Before Christmas, I went home to St. Louis, Mo., for his celebration of life. I read what I wrote as his eulogy. I’m sharing some of it below, and I’m telling you this story as a reminder to ask those questions while you can. I’ve known my Uncle Mike since I was 5 or 6 years old, but listening to stories about his childhood, parenting and how he became a principal helped me see so many more sides of him. It also crystalized the lessons he’d spent his life teaching his family. I hope your new year is off to a great start. To help, here’s your homework: Call the person you need to capture stories, memories and histories from and set up a time to talk. If you do, reply to this email and let me know. I’d love to hear about it. |
| Mike Cerutti was also a saxophonist, a fisherman and a woodworker. [Family photo] |
| Most mornings, the students of Shenandoah Elementary School lined up at 8 a.m. before heading to their classrooms. Michael Cerutti, a young teacher, could hear the daily shuffle from his top-floor classroom. One morning, he heard more than shuffling. “Where have you been, young man?” a teacher shouted. “It’s 8:01. You should be here.” The yelling continued on each floor until the seventh grader made his way into Mike’s classroom. He saw Kenny, a tough kid who was a few years older than his classmates and had earned a reputation for being trouble. Kenny thrived in Mike’s class. Mike told me: “I put my arm around him and said to him, ‘Kenny, I’m so glad you’re here today.’” Mike Cerutti didn’t intend to be a principal. “I thought I could run a school that liked kids, that treated kids with respect. And so I decided to be a principal. It was that simple,” he told me this summer when we sat down for a series of oral history interviews. He said: “I didn’t really have a big desire to be in charge of everybody, but I knew I could do better than what I was seeing and run a kinder and gentler school. And I did.” Michael taught at Shenandoah Elementary School in the St. Louis School District and Robin Hill elementary schools in the Parkway School District. He served as the principal at River Bend, McKelvey and Wren Hollow. He stayed true to that spark that was lit that day with Kenny and built kinder schools for students and teachers with a simple philosophy: “Minimize the criticize and raise the praise.” Mike used that motto in his life and his work. He told me: “My mantra was: Stay out of their way. Let them do their thing, and tell them how good they’re doing. Tell them they are what you want them to be.” Some teachers might have liked him to be tougher on kids, but Mike didn’t believe that made them better. He said: “I thought that making them think that you believe they could be better, that they could do the right thing, that they could have fun in school — that was more important.” |
| Here are some obituaries from the past week that I found in the obits section of the Tampa Bay Times, in the news and from local funeral homes. If you see any with great details, please share them.
• Barbara Jennings Murphy, 80, of Tampa “rededicated her life to the Lord in the 1970s after having grown up in the Baptist church. She had an encounter with the Lord in the kitchen of her home one morning and in it she experienced the love of the Lord. So much so, she would spend the rest of her life sharing it. ... Maybe you remember a conversation she had with you over the years. If she began with, ‘You see, when God made man...’, us kids learned the poor soul she was talking to was locked in for the next hour or so while she told of God’s great love for His mankind.”
• Aleida Camero, 100, of Tampa was “known for her award-winning bread pudding.”
• Barbara Parker, 89, of Tampa “had a tradition of eating strawberries and whipped cream, while drinking a glass of champagne as she cheered on the players at Wimbledon every year.”
• Michael Dorius, 76, was a “soulful, well-educated, hard-working, outspoken, friendly, guitar-playing, charming, compassionate, affectionate, rock-blues-jazz-admiring, dog-whispering, irreverent, Florida Keys-loving, adored and beloved brother and uncle.”
• To end this first edition of the new year, here’s some of the collected wisdom of the fantastic Betty White.
Thanks for reading, hug your people,
Kristen
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