Fearless, forthright and unforgettable
Students’ memories from ’60s, ’70s and ’80s shows powerful influence of one teacher
In these days of the internet, you never know where a Journal story might end up or what memories and emotions it might stir up. Nearly a year ago, I wrote a Journal UpFront column about Rosalyn Zimmerman, a sharp-witted, strongwilled resident of an Albuquerque assisted living facility. I was taken off guard by the reaction to that piece, reaction that was not only heartfelt and zealous but came from well beyond the Journal’s usual circulation area.
It started last year when Rosalyn, who was about to turn 99 at the time, called to say I should write a story about her. I wasn’t convinced. But she kept calling, so I went to her apartment at the Atria Vista Del Rio assisted living center to see what she was all about.
I found Rosalyn to be an intelligent woman engaged with the world around her. She told me she had been born in the Bronx, had earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in history and taught for 26 years at Cresskill High in Cresskill, N.J., eventually becoming head of the history department there.
Due to circumstances related to her husband’s illness, Rosalyn moved to Albuquerque in 1996, only to find herself many miles from home and at a loss when her husband died just weeks after they got here. Turning to what she knew best, Rosalyn, then 79, went back to teaching. She taught art history in the University of New Mexico’s continuing education program, served as a docent at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History and tutored fourth grade at Apache Elementary School.
I wrote a column about Rosalyn’s indomitable spirit, the fact that she had never stopped learning, never stopped teaching. It ran in the August 16, 2016, Journal, and I congratulated myself on doing a pretty good job of telling Rosalyn Zimmerman’s story. Turns out I didn’t know the half of it.
About two weeks after the column appeared, the emails started coming in.
The real story
Someone emailed the column to a Cresskill High alum and BOOM. It moved from one Cresskill graduate to another and ended up on a Facebook page called “You Know You Grew Up in Cresskill When.”
I don’t know how many emails I received. I got a dozen after I wised up and started saving them. They came from people who had been Rosalyn’s students at Cresskill High in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s — people who had not known she was still alive, much less where she had gone. Many of them reached out to Rosalyn, too.
All the emails applauded Rosalyn as fearless, forthright, unforgettable, an amazing teacher and a great inspiration. Here are some excerpts —
I was her student in 1971/1972 and can attest that this woman is one of the greatest people I and others ever met.
She was loved greatly and feared more than a little by her students, a noble combination not often found much in education these days.
I will never forget her laugh, that pointed burst of high-pitched HAH! never offered sarcastically ... if you made Roz laugh, you knew you had accomplished something.
Mrs. Zimmerman was a “feminist” before it was fashionable. No girl/woman ever left her class without thinking she was just as good as a man and could take on the world.
In his email, Mark Scherzer, Cresskill High class of 1969, painted a vivid word picture of Rosalyn in a Cresskill High classroom in the late 1960s.
“The jutting jaw was always her most remarkable feature. She had incredibly erect posture, and I would say it echoed her character, as she was always a woman of remarkable adherence to standards and principles. In my mind’s eye, I see her standing, tapping one foot at a slight angle to the other, wielding a pointer in front of the blackboard, laying out the logic behind the world’s major political philosophies and demanding that her students debate them with a seriousness of purpose.”
At the end of his email, Scherzer wrote, “I think the real story here, should you care to uncover more of it, is her life as a gifted and principled teacher.”
Uncovering more
This week I talked on the phone with Scherzer and three more of Rosalyn’s former students — Harlan Ettinger, Cresskill 1970; Elizabeth “Beth” Garrelts Greco, 1979; and Irene Cioffi Whitfield, 1969.
Whitfield, a Jungian psychologist and also an art historian specializing in 18th-century Italian painting, called me from a village near Orvieto, Italy.
She said Cresskill is a small town (population 8,298 in 1970; 8,777 in 2016) and that Rosalyn put her students in contact with a bigger world.
“She taught me many things, among them tolerance for the ‘other’ and critical thinking,” Whitfield said. “Vietnam was going on. She believed all views should be put forward and discussed. She had her opinions and was not afraid to say what she thought. She was an important role model for everybody, especially the young women of my generation.”
Ettinger is a retired attorney and prosecutor who lives in High Bridge, N.J. Rosalyn taught him history in eighth grade in Cresskill. He is one of several former students who revealed that Rosalyn was known as Roz but never referred to as that within her hearing.
He said Rosalyn also taught lower grades in Cresskill, and he credits her with turning around the life of his childhood buddy, a kid with learning disabilities, in the fourth grade.
“Quite frankly, she rescued him,” Ettinger said. “She may have recognized his challenges and come up with strategies to deal with them. Or maybe she just gave him the confidence that he could do it. But she saved a very talented individual who ended up working for Outward Bound and focusing his attention on troubled teenagers.”
Greco, a wife and mother who lives in Westlake, Ohio, said that she herself was dealing with some personal problems when she was a senior at Cresskill High.
“I think she noticed. I think she felt we should talk,” Greco said of Rosalyn. “She took it upon herself to counsel me. I carry that with me. Especially now that I will start teaching (at a Rocky River, Ohio, high school) this year at age 56. I will take my inspiration from teachers like Mrs. Zimmerman.”
Scherzer, now an attorney in New York City, said Rosalyn exhibited exceptional courage in her personal life. At a time when such things were not discussed as freely as they are today, he said Rosalyn talked to her students with unembarrassed bluntness about her battle with breast cancer and the mastectomy that resulted.
“We all thought she was going to die,” he said. “She came back to school healthy and talked about it, handling it with grace and forthrightness. That makes it all the more amazing to me that she’s still alive.”
And counting
Last week, I went to Rosalyn’s 100th birthday celebration at Atria Vista. Her sons George, 74, a retired businessman, and Mark, 68, a retired physician, were there. So were three of her grandchildren and her great-grandson, Raviv Zimmerman, 4. Rosalyn blew out the three candles on her cake with a single, robust puff of breath.
As I watched, I couldn’t help thinking that I still didn’t have all of Rosalyn’s story. There’s more to come.