Teacher's sol mates
Ex- students gather for eclipse at his NY home
For about 100 former students of retired earth sciences teacher Patrick Moriarty who gathered in the driveway of his upstate Brighton home Monday, it was as if no time had eclipsed from the day decades ago he invited them to watch that day’s rare astronomical event.
When Moriarty first began teaching earth science in 1978, he promised his ninth-grade students they would reunite for the next eclipse that would pass their hometown near Rochester.
The educator kept his word, more than four decades later.
The former students gathered to watch the sky grow darker as the moon journeyed over the sun.
“I mentioned to the students, ‘See that one on April 8, 2024? Circle that one. We’re gonna meet that day,’ ” Moriarty, 68, recalled to The Post on Tuesday.
The then-22-year-old first-year teacher had just given his students a worksheet about eclipses.
From that point on, Moriarty invited all of the earth science classes he taught over the next 16 years, telling students to circle the date and keep their eyes peeled for a message from him, likely in the local Democrat and Chronicle newspaper.
“I did say unless there’s any other way in 2024 you can get ahold of people easier than that,” he noted. He ended up making an event on Facebook in 2022 to begin planning for the celestial phenomenon.
In addition to the former students who showed up — some with partners and children — hundreds of others reached out from places as far as New Zealand to express how they wished they could attend.
He even borrowed his daughter’s karaoke machine so that he could use the microphone to provide educational commentary as the moon closed in on the sun. But for the proud educator, it was about so much more.
“I have had the opportunity to reconnect with so many of my students who have shared such wonderful things about being in my classroom,” he said.
“This was an ‘Oh, my gosh, I had an impact on these kids’ type of moment,” he said.
Moriarty had been able to reconnect with many of his former students on social media, many of whom asked if he still planned to have them for the eclipse.
“The answer was always yes, we are. April 8, 2024. Look for it on Facebook,” he said. “It was so interesting seeing them walking up bald or with gray hair, and looking at me like, ‘You’re still my teacher,’ and I could see in their . . . adult faces now, what they looked like when they were 14.”