“He was more of a father figure than anything,” said 79-year-old former Metzger School student Ray Burman, who helped plan a surprise reunion with his sixth-grade teacher at Beaverton Lodge Retirement.
102-year-old Lou Crucchiola taught sixth grade and was principal at Metzger Elementary School for 30 years. He now resides with his wife, Arlene Crucchiola, at Beaverton Lodge Retirement and was recently rediscovered by some of his students while they were visiting.
“He didn’t know this was happening until we showed up; it was really a shock to him, actually,” Burman said. “My wife Judy, her sister was in the facility, and one day we were just walking by looking at pictures, and there was Lou!”
Burman and two of his friends, Randy Volk and Terry Pederson, were all in Lou Crucchiola’s sixth-grade class in 1958 and surprised Lou and Arlene Crucchiola at dinner on June 7.
Lou Crucchiola said he was “flabbergasted” by the drop-in.
“I was so flabbergasted,” Lou Crucchiola told Tigard Life. “It was amazing that these kids- well, they’re not kids now; these fellas- were involved in wanting to come by and see me and talk to me, and I couldn’t believe it because these kids are not kids now; they’re grandparents.”
Burman, Volk and Pederson were all taught by Lou Crucchiola and remained friends long after their sixth-grade year. They still meet monthly at the Sherwood American Legion.
“We all went off in the service back in those days, we all got drafted,” Burman said. “We went and did our thing and got back together again.”
Arlene Crucchiola said that she and some of the other wives attending the dinner gave the group some space to recount old memories from the school house.
“We gals who were there kind of stayed down at one end and let these guys do their catching up,” Arlene Crucchiola said.
Lou Crucchiola, who also served as principal of the Metzger Elementary School, said that the evening was a nice surprise and was happy to hear that the boys considered him “their favorite teacher.”
“It was just a lot of fun,” Burman said. “We had a lot of respect for him.”
Lou Crucchiola said that he had a lot of fond memories of working at Metzger and remembered that he was put in the principal position because of his ability to work with students.
“I did a lot of things besides teach in the classroom,” Lou Crucchiola said. “When they put me in charge, I said, ‘Why me?’ and he (Lou Crucchiola’s boss at the time) said, ‘I know you can handle these kids.’”
Volk, who was also at the dinner, said that Lou Crucchiola was one of the two teachers that he still remembered from all of his schooling and that he “loved him.”
“Ray Burman was my neighbor and Terry Pederson; his parents and my parents were best friends, so I always hung out with those guys, but I never went to school with them until the sixth grade,” Volk said. “You go through your school, twelve years. I only have two teachers that I really remember. Lou was one.”
Volk emphasized that Lou Crucchiola taught the three boys about respect, recalling a story of when he caught Burman using a rubber band to kill flies in class.
“He was doing that in class, and Lou was up there, and he was talking and writing on the whiteboard, and about the third time Ray snapped the fly, Lou turned around and walked down the aisle to Ray, and he took the rubber band away from him and said, ‘Obviously you’re bored with my teaching,’” Volk recounted. “‘I’ll give you something to do while I teach the rest of the class. Here, chew on this for a while.’ So Ray had to chew on that rubber band that he’d been snapping flies with for about ten minutes…boy, nobody ever brought out a rubber band again.”
Volk and Burman said that looking back, they greatly admired the perhaps more unorthodox moments in Lou Crucchiola’s class and said reuniting with their old teacher was a wonderful surprise.
“I was just thrilled,” Volk said about the evening. “When you got to his class, you learned how to be polite, and you learned how to be respectful. That’s a big thing.”
Lou Crucchiola emphasized that he missed teaching and that working at the Metzger Elementary School was one of his favorite chapters of his life.
“I do miss teaching; it’s a long-gone thing,” Lou Crucchiola said. “I’m an old man now, but it was a good part of my life that I miss, and I still remember all the good things and here’s a good example.”
