Helen Latour, was Carmen's mentor in teaching ...

... as I pointed out in this post in January. Here is a little story about her legacy.

I ride the bus up to Boone once a week, more if I can. One of the people I talk to while we wait for the bus is Mario, a young Hispanic trying to get a pre-med degree at Appstate despite enormous odds.

He told me that when he first came to America and was in elementary school he had already scored very high on the tests for math and science. Yet for some reason his teachers remanded him to summer school. Helen was one of the summer teachers. She gave the class an assignment to do in class which Mario did in about five minutes and than sat quietly. She immediately charged over and asked why he had stopped working (I can just see her - she could be very intimidating).

Mario said he had finished. She said "You've only been working on it for five minutes!" She looked at his paper and said "Young man come out into the hall so I can talk to you." So Mario went. Helen asked why he was even in summer school. Mario more or less shrugged - he was just doing what the school had told him he had to do. Then she informed him of what he really had to do.

For the rest of the summer she had him come over once a day to her house where she drilled him relentlessly in English. That was his real problem. The school had not even tried to help. But for Helen it was her duty to teach him every day if necessary because she recognized how smart he was.

And today his English is as good as a native speaker. It was the start of the road to pre-med.

That was Helen.