Things passed along

Somewhere today, Vince Lombardi is getting an earful.

Somewhere, in a place where the good people of this earth find their reward, a grinning man in horn-rimmed glasses is plucking at the sleeves of various Green Bay Packers, laughing that laugh none of us will ever forget. He is reminding them of the glory days, when Fuzzy and Bart and Nitschke worked their magic. He is talking about the Ice Bowl. He is wondering if Jimmy Taylor still runs like a red-mad bull, and if the Packer sweep still works up here in the great beyond.

And now I have to stop for a moment.

I have to stop to apologize, because the Blob is going somewhere else today, and you'll all just have to indulge it. Where it's going has nothing to do with sports, Green Bay Packers aside. It does, however, have something to do with competition, and with teaching young people there are things they can find inside themselves they never knew were there.

My high school choir director died the other day, you see.

His name was Chuck Henke, and he loved the Packers, and the choir room at New Haven High School was his sideline. No one ever prowled one with more passion.

In that choir room, on fall days and winter days and spring days, he taught us to sing, and then he taught us to sing our hearts out. There is a difference, and that difference is the difference between what a mere instructor brings to the table, and what a teacher brings. If you're lucky, you get one of the latter. If you're very lucky, as those of us were who spent time in that room in the early 1970s, you get a Chuck Henke.

A million memories burbled to the surface when the word came down the other day that he had passed, at the full-measure age of 91. His unabashed Packers worship, sure. The equally unabashed love for what he did. The way he pushed and cajoled and brought out the best in us for every performance, whether it was a routine swing choir gig or a concert choir state competition.

Our senior year we went up to the latter and nailed a perfect score, and don't even bother trying to tell me we weren't the best high school choir in the state that year. It was the year Mr. Henke decided we were ready for a double motet, which requires eight parts instead of the standard soprano-alto-tenor-bass.

I can't say for sure how unusual this is for a high school choir. Pretty unusual, I'm guessing. I can say for sure that Mr. Henke convinced us we could pull it off -- and then, right before we did pull it off at state, gave us the Lombardi "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" speech.

It might have been the most Mr. Henke moment ever.

Years later, after I'd left Fort Wayne and then come back to work as a sports columnist for The Journal Gazette, my phone would ring occasionally. It was usually, but not always, after I'd written something related to pro football. On the other end of the line was Chuck Henke, wanting to talk sports with one of his former students. It never failed to be the highlight of my day.

Now I've moved on from those days, and Mr. Henke has simply moved on. But teachers, the great ones, never really move on, of course. If we're lucky, a little piece of them stays with us. It's their legacy, and it lives forever.

A few years back, for instance, I had the opportunity to sing the national anthem at a TinCaps game. I have never been more than a serviceable tenor, but I could usually carry a tune without a bucket, and dogs usually didn't howl at the moon when I did. Since high school, though, I'd sung in public only in church -- and never solo, in front of several thousand people.

Yet Mr. Henke's lessons stayed with me. And so, when they came to get me, and I walked up the ramp toward the field, I remembered the most important lesson of all.

And I sang my heart out.