At the risk of boring the world

I have to get something off my chest. I need to thank one of my high school teachers; one I didn't properly appreciate all those years ago.

I have hated studying mathematics since I was in 4th grade. That was when they came out with 'new math' and something about new math and I never ever clicked.

We would get reading assignments in math classes, and no matter how hard I tried I could never make any sense out of the text explanation of the math concepts. Didn't matter, grade school, high school, college...math text books might as well have been written in any number of foreign languages, but not English.

I hated math.

I had a little fun with geometry, shapes were cool. Trig, on the other hand was absolute nonsense.

In college, I passed two pre-calculus classes, another in "intuitive" calculus, and other mathematically oriented courses in statistical analysis (oh, I hated that one) , and chemistry, physics, even ecology classes that required strong mathematical skills.

Most of the credit for my surviving those belongs to a high school teacher of mine, Orville Keith Miller. OK or Keith Miller was someone I knew through the church where I grew up before I had him for class. Keith was not the most adept at social skills (sorry Keith) and that was apparent even to a high school junior.

Yet, he turned my life around, partly because he was direct, honest, caring, and forthright, if not polished and tactful.

When a junior at Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs Iowa in 1970, OK was my algebra teacher. I was bright enough to slide by and was doing just that. One Sunday during coffee hour after church, OK said to my mother (her words to me, I don't know what Keith actually said), "It's a crying shame that Jim isn't as smart as your other boys."

Now, if you wanted to get my Mom riled, the best way was to criticize one of her cubs. But, this momma bear was bright enough to know that going directly into combat with the criticizer was not going to get anywhere. Rather, she sat me down, and said, "Are you going to let him get away with that?"

It's just occurred to me that those two, the teacher and the parent, may have cooked up a plot to get me to actually put forth some effort and learn. (Mom was a pretty good applied psychologist in her day.) One way or the other, whether by accident or whether in collusion with Mom, Keith Miller made me learn math whether I liked it or not.

I never have learned to like mathematical studies. But guess what I make my living doing?...working with numbers.

My job involves analyzing data about inventories, projecting inventory consumption, predicting how historic demand patterns will translate into future demands. My responsibilities dealing with math extend into the millions and billions of dollars.

So Mr. Miller, OK, Keith, I want to publicly thank you for the solid grounding I received. I was much too hard on you in my own mind all those years ago. You contributed dramatically to the success of my career.

I've tried finding Mr. Miller on line. He's long since deservedly retired from my alma mater, ALHS. Anybody who can get this post to him....I'd be grateful.

JRE