An appreciation as solid as wood
Former student gives his beloved shop teacher trip of a lifetime
The way H.B. Taylor describes it, longtime teachers have mostly wonderful retirements. They think back on the kids they helped, the projects they completed, the long hours they worked, and they feel proud.
But once in a while, Taylor says, they wonder: “Did the kids hear a word I said?” Or, “Did they learn to be competent and caring human beings?”
Late last year, Taylor, 70, realized he could stop worrying; he had his answer. It came in the form of a phone call from a former student.
Taylor, an industrial arts teacher for 41 years, hadn’t heard from Gil Baumgarten for 20 years or more, but he remembered him as a tall, slender, serious boy who loved working with wood and solving problems in his Lanier Middle School shop class.
Baumgarten, who viewed Taylor as a father figure after his parents’ divorce, wanted to say thanks. He also wanted to tell Taylor he was still heavily involved in
woodworking as a hobby and that people always asked him where he’d learned the art and craft. Baumgarten had a short answer: H.B. Taylor.
The shop teacher was thrilled to hear all that, but Baumgarten wasn’t finished.
“I want to do something for you,” he said. “I want to send you on a trip or whatever you like.”
And Baumgarten made it clear. He’d done well for himself. He wasn’t talking about a bus trip to Austin.
Taylor flashed back to 2001.
He and his wife, Eddie Taylor, had been planning to take a trip to Egypt, but the adventure was canceled and their deposits lost when terrorists attacked New York’s twin towers.
After that, Egypt seemed dangerous, but Greece, with the ancient ruins and countless history lessons, sounded perfect. On a fixed retirement income, however, they weren’t able to put away money for the trip. “Greece,” Taylor said. “Done,” Baumgarten said.
“It put tears in my eyes,” Taylor said. “It was just overwhelming.”
High expectations
Taylor grew up in southeast Houston and found his calling in high school. He was in an industrial arts class, trying to show a friend how to finish an upholstery project, when the teacher scolded him for helping.
“That’s when I realized,” Taylor said. “I felt so comfortable, I wanted to share those skills with everybody.”
He graduated from Texas Southern University in 1969 and started teaching at Lanier.
Right away, he set the tone for his classes:
His students were going to use the latest tools, even if he had to buy them with his own money.
He welcomed at-risk students into his classes, but he told them they could either get with the program or find some other class in which to make trouble or sleep.
Also, after a lifetime of attending segregated schools, he wanted an atmosphere that was welcoming to all. “I wanted to bring the races together,” Taylor said. “I wanted to prove kids are kids, and they can love one another.”
By his second year of teaching, his students were winning at state competitions, and they were beating high school students.
By Taylor’s third year, he wasn’t just the popular shop teacher but the eighth-grade basketball coach as well. He already had a Chevrolet van, which he used to take students home after long hours spent on woodworking and upholstery projects. At that point, when rules were more lax about liability, Taylor was also driving the basketball players to games, then dropping them off at their front doors afterward.
“My heart was with the students,” Taylor said. “I would have 17 kids on a team when I was supposed to have 12. I would start to cut, but then I thought, ‘Oh, forget it.’ I just couldn’t leave them behind.”
Baumgarten had Taylor for shop in 1973 and 1974, and he played on the basketball team, too. In both arenas he learned about competition and hard work.
“Mr. Taylor taught me to do things well — the best I could do,” Baumgarten said.
Like many kids, Baumgarten would visit his former teacher after he graduated, but the visits became less frequent and finally tapered off.
Taylor taught at Lanier from 1969 to 1979, then transferred to Lamar High School, just up the street. Taylor and his students continued their winning ways at state competitions, though he expected even more of the older students. “I wanted them to learn to take pride in whatever they were doing, whether it was law or medicine or yard work.”
He also taught them to love challenges that were both mental and physical.
“Those gifts are not really taught,” Taylor said. “They’re something that comes out of you, and they have to be watered.” Greek travelogue
Baumgarten, 55, graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches then went to work as a stockbroker for a handful of different brokerage firms. The problem, he said, was that all those employers expected him to sell products that didn’t necessarily meet his clients’ needs. In 2010, he switched gears and became an investment adviser. Today, he is the president of Segment Wealth Management, and he and his staff manage client portfolios worth roughly $600 million.
So yes, he could afford to send the Taylors to Greece. He asked of his former teacher just one thing, and that was to come to his office after the trip. Baumgarten wanted to see the vacation pictures and also show Taylor some of his exquisite, hand-made furniture.
The couple spent two weeks in Greece at the end of March. Then Taylor went to visit Baumgarten, photos in hand, in early April. In person, Taylor positively glowed.
“It’s truly a blessing that an ex-student has done this for me,” he said. “It’s like all those 41 years were not done in vain.”