We lost a long-time family friend this week. Mel Falk, who taught math at Franklin while my dad taught English, died on Sunday. Mel and Sue were good friends of my parents. While Lynn and I weren't besties, as they say these days, we were friends, too.
As I said, Mel taught math. It wasn't my favorite subject, but he kept things interesting. He had us memorize the decimal form of fractions and recite them correctly as fast as we could. We did the same thing with squares. No, I don't remember them all, but every once in awhile I'll come across a decimal number like .125 and I'll remember that it equals 1/8. As far as squares up to 15, let's see (and I'm not looking these up) 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100, 121, 144, 169, 196, 225. Mel also taught us how to balance checkbooks and why that's important.
Mel and Dad did a lot of stuff together. Not only did they teach in the same building, they were football referees on the same crew. Sometimes Dad would go over to Falks and work on cars with Mel. Mel had a passion for Hudsons and I'm sure had more than one under reconstruction at any given time. At some point, he and Dad installed the transmission in our old gold Nova - backwards. So if you wanted to go backwards, you had to put the car in gear. And to go forwards, the shifter had to be in reverse. No one stole that car!
Thinking about Mel reminded me of my class at Franklin. We had more teachers' kids per capita than any other class in school, I think. Besides me and Lynn, we had Todd whose dad taught P.E., Ben whose parents were the music teachers and David whose dad was the superintendent. All told, I think about 1/8 of the class (.125, for those keeping score) had a teacher for a parent. Ben should count twice, since both his parents were teachers, and I should get an extra half because Mom was a sub.
Anyway, Mel will be missed. His family and friends know, however, that he's in heaven with his Heavenly Father now, enjoying himself and catching up with friends, like Dad, who have gone before. And those of us who are Christians know we'll see him again. And there's no comfort greater than that.
