We know them as the subject they lecture and the classroom appearance they maintain, but who were our teachers before we met them?
What lore did they accumulate over the years? For many teachers, a lot. And for some, their backstories are nothing short of legendary.
Math teacher Will Bagnall joined the U.S. Marine Corps after he graduated high school hoping to eventually attend a university with the benefit of free tuition. The Vietnam War was over and Bagnall faced slim prospects of being deployed, until a military coup overthrew the government of Grenada.
President Reagan launched the invasion of Grenada (Operation Urgent Fury) on October 25, 1983. Bagnall was deployed early that morning.
“I had to grow up very fast,” Bagnall said. He was barely 19 years old.
Bagnall served as a Marine for eight years.
“It was traumatic for me, but it was something I needed,” Bagnall said. “I was kind of lost honestly and I think going through that experience gave me a really acute direction in life.”
Bagnall found direction in his love for mathematics, a passion that led him to pursue teaching.
Across from the math department, AHS science teachers have adventurous backstories as well.
In 2009, physics and geology teacher Alyssa Kell visited her parents in Hungary. Hungary has a history of corruption and Kell experienced this firsthand.
While exploring on a night out, Kell and a few family members entered an underground train station to see when it closed.
Over the following half hour, the situation went bad fast.
A massive Hungarian man approached Kell, her party, and several others, declaring that the police were on their way, and the group was going to prison.
It seemed there was a misunderstanding. Kell hadn’t broken any laws.
Then the man demanded their money and passports. It became apparent that Kell was not being arrested; she was being held hostage in an attempted robbery.
Kell didn’t know what to do.
Should they run? What if the man was a person of authority? Would he shoot them if they tried to escape?
The Hungarian man tried to take another hostage, a Polish woman, but she ran. And the man didn’t chase her.
Kell and her party made their decision. As a train pulled into the station they ran.
“That was the most scared I’ve ever been,” Kell said.
As the train pulled out of the station, Kell and her party hurriedly swapped clothes (Jason Bourne style) and breathed a sigh of relief: they’d escaped.
Not all adventures involve hostage situations in foreign countries, but everyone has their own unique and interesting story to tell if you take the time to listen.
