The SCV lost a truly great man this weekend. He’s not someone you would have read about regularly, or seen in the paper or on Facebook. Rather, he was a man of quiet but profound influence, a man who lived up to every ideal we as a society attach to the word “teacher.” I’m talking about Peter Pew, (or Mr. Pew as we students knew him), Hart High’s History, Civics and AP Government teacher since 1977 and a well-known architect for AP Government programs.
Already word of his death is spreading among Hart alumni all over the world and the web. A Facebook rememberance page is set up here if you want to add your memories. Next Saturday a memorial will be held at OLPH on Lyons Avenue.
I had the great fortune to have Mr. Pew as a junior and senior at Hart in 1994 and 1995. I’ve always enjoyed history, politics and government classes, but the mark of a great teacher isn’t just in pushing students like me forward. No, the mark of a great teacher is to engage with all his students, even the ones who are resistant or hate the subject. Mr. Pew excelled at that. Look at some of the comments students left throughout the years on one of those Rate my Professor sites:
He is by far the best teacher I have ever had. As a student you gain so much respect for him that you study in order to not disappoint him.
Legit. I love Pew for AP Gov. Don’t slack. He cares.
And from a blog post written last year when a former student learned he was sick: ‘
You are the archetype teacher, and since taking your class I have judged all of my instructors based on the standard that you established. I make decisions that I think will make my three parents, little sister, and other loved ones happy. For that brief period from 2007-08, you were the outside party that fit into that category. Now I’m older and more reasonable (up for debate), and I understand that my desire to positively promote you as a figure in my life should exist long beyond my days as your student. Maybe I’ll never stop being your student. If such is true, I am comforted by this thought.
Mr. Pew was all those things and more, but I have two distinct memories of him that I’ll always cherish.
Spring, 1995, a year after the earthquake and right around the time of the OKC bombing. Bill Clinton was in the White House, Newt Gingrich was about to shut down the government, and Rush Limbaugh had a radio and TV show. My classmates and I are in Mr. Pew’s 5th period US History class, covering post-Reconstruction America. Specifically we’re studying the unit on McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s.
Mr. Pew, tall, handsome, and somewhat lanky, but with a presence that left no doubt who was in command, suddenly hands out tiny slips of paper to everyone in the class. He tells us not to look at the paper until everyone has received one. Then he explains what this is all about.
“McCarthyism was a scary time for America,” he says. “There was a real threat from the Soviet Union as the cold war was heating up, and many Americans were concerned about the influence of communism.”
He then tells us to look at the words on our paper, but not tell our neighbors what it says. Mine says “Communist.” He asks us to hide our slips of paper, then orders us into large groups. We are to determine who among us is the communist, and who is the patriotic American.
Go, he says.
Immediately this got my juices flowing and I took to prosecuting my fellow students with vigor. I sought allies among the group, then accused other students of being communists. They, of course, denied it. Factions were formed among the class, with just about everyone accusing everyone else of being communist, but, as the minutes ticked by, you could see that the more charismatic/popular students in class had larger factions on their side than the loner students like me.
After ten minutes, Mr. Pew ended the exercise and all was revealed. The five or so students who had received communist cards were booed (I think Mr. Pew gave communist cards to the more popular students deliberately), while the vast majority of students who had the patriotic American cards let loose with vollies of “I told you so!”
And then we all sat down, engaged and ready to study McCarthyism. The McCarthyism exercise was the talk of campus among budding political geeks like me.
So, naturally, we students wanted to know what he believed. But he wouldn’t tell us, insisting that we figure it out what we believe before we wonder about his views. When we pressed, as I remember doing several times, he told us that he would tell us whether he was a Democrat or Republican on the day we graduated high school.
And here’s the really crazy and infuriating thing. On that day in June 1995, several students and I cornered him on the COC football field after our graduation ceremony was over. We literally surrounded him and he kept his promise. He revealed to us his real political beliefs, but I can’t, for the life of me, remember what he said! I’ve been racking my brain since I learned of his death, and I just can’t remember what he said to me!
That’s just as well I suppose, because what I do remember is that Mr. Pew was a powerful and wise teacher, a man who influenced me far beyond my years at Hart, a man who inspired me to get my own B.A. in History. I wish I had kept in touch with him over the years to tell him the effect his classes had on me, to tell him that he was my favorite teacher of any subject, and to tell him thank you.
Alas all I can do now is write this imperfect remembrance and ask other students to do the same. Thank you and rest in peace Mr. Pew.
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