ALUMNI VOICE

The Other Mr. Bruner

By Gene Bruner ’78

It took me until last spring, 29 years to be exact, to reach a longcoveted goal: teaching in Wilton Hall’s top floor classroom. Situated on the far west side, the Middle School room fronting Fergusson Road is known for its Janus-like heating and cooling, insufficient chalkboard space and seven windows to captivate the curiosity of even the most attentive students.

Still, I had a personal affinity for the cracking plaster and the undulating floor. When I brushed my fingers along the wainscoting, especially the thin vertical grooves in the beadboard, the gritty bumps tapped out a cryptic message in code as if from one generation to another. When my dad was a young man and starting out on his own, this was his classroom.

Hired by Dr. Chamberlayne in 1938 to teach English and Latin, John Bruner entered a profession that seemed to suit him. I learned of his teaching years from my classmates’ fathers, many his former students. Whenever my dad came to a sporting event, dressed in coat and tie, these grown men offered soft-spoken respect afforded only favorite faculty.

My father never outgrew the boy in him. With a proclivity to pull for the underdog, he doled out encouragement and unflagging warmth. He possessed a big curiosity and remarkable patience. In pictures from old yearbooks, he appears strict and buttoned-up, but he was not that way to me. I can imagine him proctoring a test, walking between the rows of desks and casually spinning his ODK fob. In conversation, he punctuated interactive moments with frequent smiles. He was still old-fashioned enough to believe that honor, loyalty and fortitude separated the good from the bad, and to be mindful of this was a big step toward receiving his highest praise: To be a “good egg.”

These traits served him well when he transitioned from teacher to the military in World War II, a conflict that garnered many labels, including “Franklin’s War,” the “Meddler’s War” and “The Great Massacre.” Regardless of what people called it, the vast majority were indoctrinated with the idea of military necessity, and most began to consider it “Our War.”

St. Christopher’s community reflected this deep-seated patriotism. One hundred prominent Richmonders, most with close ties to the School, formed the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. Meanwhile, European relief activities also were beginning to show vigor. The Red Cross used the School gymnasium to conduct evening classes in making surgical bandages, and students showed up in droves. St. Catherine’s acted as the hub in the placement of English refugee children, their phone lines swamped with calls from area parents wishing to adopt young Britishers, according to Francis Earle Lutz in his book, “Richmond In World War II.”

Wilton Hall in the 1940s

Students preparing for Mr. John Bruner’s class, 1942.

After Pearl Harbor, the military mandated Selective Service registration. On the morning of Commencement 1942, my father packed his bags and left them on the wooden staircase of what is now Wilton Hall. He sat through graduation, shook hands with graduates and had an extended conversation with Headmaster John Page Williams, who presented him a St. Christopher’s medal. Afterward, my dad and a handful of graduates boarded the Grove Avenue Trolley and rolled downtown to the Armed Services Induction Center.

This mental image still shakes me to the core.

When I think of Commencement, I picture a lovely June morning on The Terraces beneath the swaying pines, traditional hymns, lunchtime celebrations and teens loading up cars with gear in anticipation of a week of fun by the water, a stark contrast to imagined images of graduation 1942 with heartfelt goodbyes, fretful, teary mothers and uncertain futures.

Teachers worry about a lot of things, but nothing more seriously than a child’s ultimate safety. Navigating the magic and drudgery that make up a school day, grading papers and nudging boys to behave are only part and parcel. I wonder if my father worried about the safety of the boys with him on the trolley, fretting that he had not given them the right guidance or purposeful lessons in survival?

The one war story my father told me was about that first night in the Army. Camp Lee (now Fort Lee), still young as a military establishment, was a perfect place to toughen and prepare civilians for military service. That night, his eyes flooded with tears as he peeled and cut a mountain of onions under the mistrustful glare of a none-too-chatty corporal. On an ascending scale of misery from one to 10, my dad gave himself a one or less. The way he saw it, he was unmarried, without children or financial obligations. He was a 30-year-old college graduate, embarking on a grand adventure, and his job waited for him at St. Christopher’s when all was said and done.

What he did not anticipate was that, like most graduates, he would not be the same person he was before Commencement. He and many other 1942 alumni were thrust into a war that dominated their lives for years to follow.

My father did not return to teaching. He married, had children and worked as an administrator with the state for 29 years, always keeping the St. Christopher’s medal tucked in his wallet.

Mr. John Bruner never knew Mr. Gene Bruner as a teacher. When he died in 1990, I was a month away from starting my first teaching gig. Before they closed his casket, I cupped the St. Christopher’s medal that had served him so well in his hand. Fittingly, 80 years after my father left the classroom, I’m doing the same thing. I took up teaching because I wanted to be like my dad. Now, I view my career as if from a seat on a plane, passing over a familiar spot, like a strip of land that takes an afternoon to walk but is seemingly reduced to about six inches as I peer from the window. Usually I see it in parts, in stages, in progressive views of ahead and behind. But from this vantage point, I see it all at once.

Teachers, no matter how long the tenure, are only a piece of thread in a grand tapestry. For me, the richest piece of it all is I share a woven patch near my dad, St. Christopher’s first Mr. Bruner.

Gene Bruner ‘78 retired from St. Christopher’s after nearly 30 years as a Middle School English/creative writing teacher, track/cross country coach and special contributor to StC Magazine.