A number of years ago, I found a letter in my campus mailbox postmarked October 19, 2012. It originated from Raleigh, North Carolina, where I had gone to high school. The return address was from Stephen G. Takacs. The name sounded so familiar but I couldn’t place it at first.

And then I remembered.

Mr. Takacs had been one of my teachers at Sanderson High, back in 1974. He was assigned to one of the narrow trailers out in the parking lot. As cramped as his classroom might have been, his classes were anything but! He taught Urban Studies—a new subject at the time—and challenged his students to think beyond weekend dates, football games, and small-town dreams. His lectures were electrifying.

So was Mr. Takacs. The girls thought he was very handsome, with hair that curled over his collar and a full moustache. The boys thought he was cool.

He wasn’t just cool and handsome, he was also a remarkably good teacher.

I had forgotten all about the assignment he had given us.

We were each to write a letter to ourselves, imagining what we would be doing five years hence, and then Mr. Takacs would mail the letters to us.

We had provided a self-addressed stamped envelope.

As Mr. Takacs noted in the letter he sent me in 2012—along with the yellowed envelope bearing my distinctive handwriting and three 8-cent stamps—he had mailed the letter to me, as promised in 1979, but it had been returned to him.

Apparently, he held on to it, along with a few others that had been returned, where they languished in his attic for over three decades. He came across the cache of letters when he began clearing out his boxes in preparation for retirement.

“So . . . I decided to attempt to find you,” he wrote.

“It appears you have done very well. Congratulations.”

He provided his email address, so I promptly sent him a follow-up thank-you note. He had asked if I knew the whereabouts of any of the other letter writers. I wanted to help but had long lost touch with most of my high school classmates.

“I believe I started the letter tradition with your class,” Mr. Takacs explained when he replied to my email. “[I] actually carried it on to 2005, when I taught a class as principal of Wakefield. I still have several letters in the attic that were returned by the USPS, so I began trying to track people down…bit easier with the internet. Hard to believe they were pre-computer times…”

Hard to believe, indeed.

And it’s hard for me to believe I was ever so naïve.

“I wonder now what I am like,” I started the letter to myself.

Did you go to S.A.? [St. Andrews?] Did you major in English? Perhaps you’ve gained worldly fame. Well, that’s your fault. I hope you are not married yet. But that is okay if you are, if you’re happy. Are you?

“Worldly fame?” What was I thinking? And what kid would become famous a year out of college and majoring in English?

I ask myself about my boyfriend Ronnie (wisely uncertain if he is still in the picture) and my good friends Molly and Carey. I ask if my brother and I are still close.

“Good ole Stuke and Beck driving the bus 77-C, 75-C man were those the days.”

I list the movies I had seen: Last Tango in Paris, Midnight Cowboy, The Sting, The Last Picture Show, Night of the Living Dead, Papillon, Scarecrow, Women in Love, Two English Girls, Straw Dogs, The Graduate, In Cries and Whispers, Blume in Love, and more.

Half of these I saw at the small indie theater across from NC State. Most of them I’m sure I saw without telling my mother.

I note my favorite musical groups and musicians, too: Steve Miller, Yes, The Allman Brothers, Kris Kristoferson, Rod Stewart, The Stones, The Doors, Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, John Mayall, Frank Zappa, Leon Russell, The Beatles, Ry Cooder.

“You listened to them all the time,” my seventeen-year-old self tells me.

I turn maudlin for a moment, displaying my teenage angst.

I’m depending very much on my future. I hope I haven’t let myself down. Can you remember all the pains? Or were they only imagined or exaggerated. Are they really as bad as they seem? Please don’t let this be a representation of your adolescence. See, I can’t really write down the way I feel. That’s why I am going on to college. I want to be a teacher or a writer or something oriented around English.

Now I don’t remember being so certain that I wanted to be “a teacher or a writer or something oriented around English.” I’m surprised how true to my earliest aspirations my life turned.

We’re in daylight savings time in Jan. and gas is short. There is much more to say but I don’t have time. I just hope I am happy.

i love you so much

Becky

My seventeen-year-old self would be pleased to know that I am happy.

When I received the letter from Mr. Takacs in 2012, I hastily read it, had a chuckle, wrote the follow-up email, and then stashed the letter in a file, where it remained until just the other day.

Preparing for retirement, I unearthed the file and “re-discovered” the letter. It occurred to me that I was now where Mr. Takacs had been in 2012, preparing for retirement and going through storage.

I wondered what had become of Mr. Takacs. When I googled his name, I was sad to learn that he had passed away.

I also discovered he had been a truly remarkable man. Born in New Jersey in 1948, he served with the 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, 9th Division in the Vietnam War from 1968-1971.

He moved to North Carolina to attend Duke University, and I guess he never left the state after that. He taught at Broughton, Sanderson, and Millbrook High Schools, eventually obtaining his Masters of School Administration at North Carolina Central University.

He served for a time as the principal of Ligon Middle school before concluding his career as the inaugural principal of Wakefield High School.

As his obituary reads: Steve was a staunch proponent of public schools and is remembered as a highly regarded leader, dedicated educator, and mentor by many former students and colleagues.

Thank you, Mr. Takacs, for re-introducing me to my seventeen-year-old self.

She was an adventuresome girl who loved horses, boys, eating pizza with her girlfriends, and listening to rock-n-roll. But, she turned out okay.