Time to step up for beloved former educator
Honoring a man should not be reserved for when he is no longer with us. Now is better than later, and such is the case with John Hefner, a man of many fine qualities.
Beyond extolling his virtues, it is now the time to rally and show him support. Now is the time to close ranks, join arms and try to do what can be done.
John is at home with lymphoma and, if that weren’t challenge enough, has contracted COVID-19. Friends have started a GoFundMe campaign to help with the home care expenses that might go on for a while.
If you don’t know John, you may know somebody like him. Usually these people are teachers, principals, school nurses, school psychologists, but whoever they are, they do their work in a quiet heroic fashion. John wasn’t quiet but rather resembled a honey badger or a whirling dervish. He talked fast and moved faster.
As a principal, he was like a band of light, a planet revolving, humming in the educational universe with its own gravitational pull. His energy had a caffeine-fueled-like force but you sensed that this was who he was and he would be like that at 3 in the morning, 3 in the afternoon or three years from now.
People like John aren’t doing their jobs for the money. It’s a service thing. A helping thing. A teaching thing.
They are first in the door, last to leave and, in John’s case, they attend every single pep rally, debate competition and volleyball championship (eventually the district named the gym after him). You name it, they’re there and by the time you add it all up, they’re working for about $2 an hour.
John was the principal at Fruitvale Junior High School for three decades. The man who, if he did not invent History Day, the competition whereby students prepare a research paper, project or performance around a historical subject, certainly popularized it in our town and made it a must-do school activity for the academically adventuresome.
“John took this obscure academic competition and made Bakersfield into a national powerhouse,” said Fruitvale parent Bart Hill. “He got them interested in how lively and wonderful history could be and when kids qualified for the nationals in Washington, he gave the best nighttime monument tour.”
For John, it wasn’t just the academically driven kids whose talent he helped foster. He encouraged good kids, some who may not have had a lot going at home, to come to school and he greeted them every day by name.
John Hefner seemed to have an almost photographic recall of the kids who attended Fruitvale.
“How is so and so?” he would ask, calling the name on the button.
Even if “so and so” wasn’t God’s gift to junior high academics, John would smile, retrieve a memory that would cast the former student in a favorable light and then make it seem as if it was no surprise that he or she was doing well.
John loved to travel (and duck hunt too with his buddy Hill), and after leaving Fruitvale, he led Bakersfield’s Sister City project, his special favorite being Wakayama, Japan, to which he had traveled as a high school student.
When you’d run into him, back from a trip or going, rather than leading off with details about his adventures, he’d ask, “How are the kids?” Your kids, but they were his kids too.
Recently a friend told me John was sick, although it’s hard to imagine him in any other state than bouncing off walls.
There is not a good time to get so sick, but this may be even worse because he then came down with COVID-19, which has relegated him to house arrest and made him unable to resume his chemo treatments.
Thus the GoFundMe campaign started by Cathy Abernathy, whose daughters attended Fruitvale. There are GoFundMe campaigns that may have potential donors shaking their heads, but not this one. Not this guy. Not for all the help, love and support he has given thousands of students and parents over the years.
Cards and letters may be sent to John Hefner, 5620 Rexroth Ave., Bakersfield, 93306.
Visit gofundme.com/f/ our-friend-john-hefner-needs-our-help to contribute.