NORWAY – For many at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School, the beginning of the school year was tinged with sadness. Teachers at the school learned Wednesday, their first day of classes, that retired math teacher Earl Batchelder had suffered a fatal heart attack earlier in the day.
Batchelder joined the school’s faculty in the fall of 1967, the year the high school moved to its current location. John Parsons came to the school the following year. Parsons said that the two were members of a “pretty close-knit group” of teachers. He described his former colleague as a quick-witted man with a dry sense of humor and a laid-back personality.
“Kids learned from him,” Parsons said, adding that in the years he served as vice principal he never had problems with Batchelder’s students. “He connected with so many kids.”
Allen Gerry taught in the math department with Batchelder for more than 30 years. Gerry said his friend “Batch” was a large man with an imposing stature that intimidated some students at first, but that underneath “he’s a teddy bear.”
“He was the type of teacher that kids liked to go and just talk to,” he said, noting that Batchelder was a particular favorite of “the everyday kid that would get overlooked. He had a way of making them feel comfortable.” Batchelder was willing to help students with anything they needed help with, be it math, English or physics. “It didn’t matter. If you brought him a problem he’d try to solve it.”
Batchelder was a mentor to other teachers, as well as students. Gerry said he was always the first teacher to approach a new member of the faculty. “He instantly let you know he’s your friend. There’s not anything he wouldn’t do for someone.”
“We lost a great resource” when Batchelder retired last year, Gerry said.
Retired teacher and former head of the math department Neil Tame agreed with Parsons and Gerry. When Tame developed an algebra class aimed at students who do not excel in math, Gerry recommended that Batchelder teach it. “He was the first guy to volunteer for something in the department,” Tame said.
Over the year that Batchelder and Tame co-taught the newly designed course, Tame said he “came to appreciate him even more. He was so good with the ordinary’ kids.”
“He holds a very special place in my heart,” Tame said. “I’m very, very saddened.”
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