LEGENDS of the During Alumnae Weekend, the GPS community celebrates remarkable educators. Since its inception in 2015, the Faculty Emeriti program has honored retired faculty for their exemplary teaching, professional accomplishments, and long-term service to the school and its students. This April, GPS celebrated Ted Tumelaire, Cathie Ault Kash ’72, and Debbie Glasscock.
HALL Ted Tumelaire History Teacher TED TUMEL AIRE began his GPS career in 1990 and shared his
passion for history over the course of 20 years. His honest, sincere expectations of students compelled them to think, question and wonder. Tumelaire guided students through history, psychology, and perhaps more importantly the lessons of life. Tumelaire’s legacy as a teacher and mentor is legendary. He spent years as a Peace Corps volunteer across South Asia and the Middle East, and he lived his passion and exhibited his love of history and people in the classroom. As longtime friend and colleague Dr. Nick Scharff shares, Tumelaire has a devotion to the truth. His experiences living aboard, including in Nepal, Afghanistan, and Iran, engendered a deep respect for other cultures and enabled Tumelaire to have respect for differences found at home. His experiences in the Peace Corps prepared him to live and thrive in a foreign culture, including, as he jokes, when he moved from Massachusetts to Tennessee to join the faculty at GPS in 1990.
“
Students of Tumelaire saw the same message daily: Studying is hard work. His career was dedicated to helping students discover and master the tools necessary to translate complex concepts and historical events into understandable, meaningful facts. In his classroom, Tumelaire created a space where students were challenged to develop voices based on facts and criticalthinking skills.
There has never been an individual of more consistent or insistent integrity. Devotion to the truth is probably first among Ted’s core values.” —Dr. Nick Scharff, friend and colleague of Ted Tumelaire
As Linda Moss Mines, faculty emerita and retired Chair of the History and Social Sciences Department at GPS, says, Tumelaire reveled in the success of his students. “He graciously shared lessons and techniques with colleagues,” Mines says. “His quietly intense exterior begged students and teachers alike to step into his space where integrity, commitment, empathy, and a quest for excellence dwelled.”
