Benjamin Hardee, Former Student:

I was Mr. Owens' aide and student last year at Kealing Junior High, and, in the hope of attaining a greater degree of closure on my experiences with him, wish to briefly speak on the matter of his life, deeds, and person as I experienced them. I hope I do not flatter myself in this presentation by unjustly terming my relations and companionship with Mr. Owens, and will do my best to keep a balanced analysis of all circumstances I enumerate and describe, to the greatest ability my emotional human self is able.

I first heard Mr. Owens was comatose Monday, though at the time I had thought it a rumor, and upon an urgent telephone conversation with the Magnet administration at Kealing, was misinformed, and thus comforted in the denial of the rumor. However, I learned the following day that the proposed notion had been indeed true; I visited the ICU that night at Seton, where for the first time since I had left them, I was reunited with several of my old teachers from Kealing, who told me Mr. Owens' condition had taken a turn for the worst with a negative CAT scan that had been run that morning. They told me it was probable he was brain-dead, and that another scan would be run the following day for confirmation, and then the family would give the release orders to remove him from life support. At the time my immediate reaction was a blank stare, and though I accepted what they were telling me, rejected the notion I thought to be completely fallacious and unfeasible.

However, after the visit Tuesday evening, on Wednesday, shortly past noon, I began to compose an e-Mail with the intent of ultimately relaying it not to Mr. Owens, but one of his Road Runner accounts to perhaps in some way clarify my wandering thoughts and, as some feeble sentimental gesture, let him known in a tangible expression what he meant to me and what it was I felt him to be. I didn't know what to say when I first sat down; the events and notions proposed of the prior day had not entirely sunken in. So I began to brainstorm, delving into my history to recount every pertinent detail of my experiences with him. It was then I slowly began to recall why, in our time together, he had meant so much to everyone who had encountered or known him––– especially me. Though the senseless trials and evils of my treacherous high school had blunted my nerves and recent memory of all that had made Kealing good, I remembered Mr. Owens for who he had been, who he was, and who he today is. I never sent that e-Mail, but its composition and subsequent revelations jolted his existence back to my contemporary life. A significant portion of this statement is derived from that initial document.

But in that time, I had begun a campaign at LBJ to collect signatures of Kealing alumni who had been Mr. Owens' students. Thus thirty minutes later, as I presented a large, colorful board of signatures to a freshman English class, I recalled the circumstances I knew Mr. Owens to had then been in. The teacher in the room asked me to explain the board; I obliged. Standing at a central crossroads all the desks faced, I raised the board for the class to see and explained a history teacher at Kealing with the Magnet, Glynn Owens, had been that morning pronounced brain-dead. But I stopped at the cryptic tones of my voice, at my eerily unreal words, explaining all that remained of Mr. Owens in his vessel were but physical organic components. Throughout the preceding twenty-four hours, until the point earlier that day I spoke with Nevie, his sister, (who, unsurprisingly like him, was kind and gracious) to learn it was the end of the line for him, I had kept up hope for the man with all my will and might. But in that moment, the entire reality of this living nightmare careened into my conscious mercilessly. It was in that moment realized it was empirically the physical end of the line for one of the few people about whom I had ever deeply, deeply cared. Right then and there I broke down in front of Mr. Harry's sixth period Magnet English class.

I have grieved every hour since that one. I cannot entirely rest or sleep or concentrate or logically think in the revelation Mr. Owens will not be about to be appreciated–––rather, I realize his perpetual presence was taken for granted by those who procrastinated in returning to visit him or failed to pay him an additional compliment and savor his inspiring presence, words and actions as I. Not taking the time to administer one final visit to my mentor will be a mistake I feel I will regret to the end of my time, though looking back on it, I know I did not wish to return for fear of rediscovering an individual–––and an institution–––which had to my life accorded the adventure, challenge, and general sustenance which made it truly good in days past and which, in remembrance, rendered my present one an entrenched grave of intellectual stagnation.

But after a heavy campaign spanning three days and four grade levels at the AISD High School Magnet at LBJ, my peers and I have compiled, in memory and celebration of the life, deeds, and person of Glynn Allen Owens, the signatures and best wishes of all the Kealing alumni that could be pinpointed who had been students of Mr. Owens, and those who had heard of and been equally devastated by his death who knew him only through their tales.

But before I go on, I must make a note: I writhe in the frustration and vanity of administering this statement. The words I use and the sentences I have hereunto composed do not any justice to who the man countless respect was and is. My words ultimately fail to capture what precisely and entirely I mean to say and explain, but with my skill to order and manipulate basic human communication constructs, I have done my best. I simply ask for those who hear of or read this to keep in mind the portrayal of his person and his effect on and meaning to those who knew him is sadly curbed–––no statement I can issue effectively embodies the full measure of his graciousness and the impeccable content of his character.

Thus it is impossible to adequately explain the extent to which Mr. Owens is needed, revered, missed, appreciated and loved–––in his family and close circle of friends and loved ones, amongst his students past and present, and in the establishment and institution of Kealing–––one he has for half a decade administered design and infrastructure, reputation and challenge. But understand he is.

If there is one thing I can say of Mr. Owens as one of his friends and Comrades in a strictly scholastic light, it is that it is individuals like him who made Kealing what everyone who ever enjoyed a minute of their enlightenment and challenge in it loved about it. It is people of his caliber–––rare though they be–––who made the monotonies of the treacherous, average school day perpetually tolerable, and when sick or forced to miss class or school, as equally desirable and savored. The notion and knowledge that at the end of the day, for a few brief minutes in the year, as not his student or aide, but friend and companion, I would be able to see and speak with Mr. Owens, grade papers with him, advise him on course curricula, receive an intellectual makeover in a discussion with him, or just sit back and enjoy his uplifting presence, for me made the notion of Kealing, in the entirety of its challenge, glory, and integrity what it truly was and is: a stimulating, intellectual sanctuary in the midst of a smoldering, barren crater of academic fallacy in the public education system. Mr. Owens means what he does to me in part as a man and social individual, but first and foremost as a caring mentor and intellectual challenge, companion and friend.

Hearing one of dozens of students proclaim Mr. Owens was the best teacher they ever had is not noting a rote cliché but a personalized, individual statement of heavily considered fact. In teaching for a lifetime, an accomplished teacher may have several students to call them the best they ever had because of a rare specific interest one entity took in the other that was ultimately mutually fulfilled. But I say without exaggeration or hyperbole Mr. Owens had in his lifetime and will have until the last of them join him in ultimate slumber, dozens to have recognized his impeccability who do and will justly reserve that revered title for him.

I say without exaggeration or hyperbole you could not find one student he had dealt with on any occasion or taught who did not not like him.

I say without exaggeration or hyperbole that he held no grudges.

I say without exaggeration or hyperbole that he was ultimately, fully and extraordinarily inspiring.

I say without exaggeration or hyperbole that he was unconditionally kind and tolerant.

I say without exaggeration or hyperbole that a former student claims to have once caught him standing on his desk dancing and singing along to a recording of "The Dancing Queen."

I can also say without exaggeration or hyperbole that he has always denied that.

But I say without exaggeration or hyperbole he wanted the best for each of his students, and did his best to secure his noble goal and warm hope for each he ever taught.

I say without exaggeration or hyperbole he in himself was more so a sought-after end, instead of an employed mean, in learning history and acquiring knowledge of the humanities and life.

And I say without exaggeration or hyperbole he was one of the few and most important people who ever made a real difference in my life and my personal and intellectual fruition as a human being.

And I say without exaggeration or hyperbole I am not alone in my sentiments–––the students, past and present, of a junior high school teacher with less than five years of teaching do not just turn up by the hundreds on a spring Saturday in a distant, baking chapel for no good reason, man, or cause on the day of his funeral. And amongst and besides such, graduated and current, you will find a large contingency of those who accompanied their friends here because of the sheer love they feel coursing through their peer's veins for a man they never knew. But they are here, for they sense the kind of human being Mr. Owens is was not one to leave without due recognition and grief in his absence or sleep eternally without reciprocal, just remembrance or remorse. The lives of people he never met or knew he has managed to ultimately inspire and touch. And those who did know him or spent half an hour in his presence, company, discussion, or thoughts realize their unique and extraordinary privilege in having done so.

Glynn Allen Owens will never be forgotten. And to no conveyable degree, he will be missed and celebrated for the kind of incredible man he was.

But more than anything else Mr. Owens' family can be is proud–––of their son and grandson, brother, boyfriend, nephew, cousin, and generically, loved one–––for that which he has had the sheer skill, will, personality, and divine sanction to accomplish in five years what most teachers fail to in thirty.

I am not one or the kind to regularly evoke a higher power, but I pray for Mr. Owens. I pray for his deliverance to a happier world, for his sister, his parents, his girlfriend, his uncles and aunts, cousins and grandparents, friends and acquaintances. But with mutual might, I pray for the institution from which he was forced to prematurely and forever part, its students and the loss from which they will never recover in the void of that massive man with his dirty-blonde hair, in his classy, casual clothes, face framed in his thick, black-rimmed Buddy Holly glasses, lightly and confidently pacing its tiled floors, filling its chambers with discussions thousands of years aged, its students with inspiration, challenge, and sustenance, and its name with unbending formidability, integrity, and honor.

There was a time in which I undeservedly privileged myself with the title those as my mentor rightfully hold–––that of an historian, a philosopher, a patriot of learning and cogitation. But as I have aged, I have come to no longer grace my reputation with one only applicable justly to individuals as Mr. Owens who hold and wield vast stores of knowledge and intellectual might and caliber to back their name and personal tenants. He was and is truly a historian, but all his students, in varying degrees, have become ones under his guidance, though not in the sense one unfamiliar with his cause or work may imagine.

I knew Mr. Owens wanted to read, write, learn, and convey history, but as for whether or not he ever wanted to make it is an uncertain prospect. But in his new life I feel he will take due pride in the absolute fact he did; in the lives of hundreds of students it was engraved with day after day after day of his unwavering presence and determination to allow and entice them to aspire to their greatest attainable heights. They are his surviving legacy, and they will enter unto the larger world and make their mark; on the same, Mr. Owens will thus make his in and through theirs.

I wish to tell Glynn Owens' family that without exaggeration, emotional hyperbole, or light-headed contemplation, it is my belief could we, a significant many of his students and closer loved ones would gladly trade our lives with his, to grant him another fifty years in this world, so that he could do for those who trod in our wake and down the path we chose to take in his life and classroom that he did for us. If in all my jumbled thoughts and words there is one concept–––nay, objective reality–––I have tried to convey or wish to still, it is those who preserve and protect the ideals of knowledge, learning, philosophy and personal integrity–––those by which he lived and those he revered–––will not let his life to have been lived in vain. Never in the people he knew or the lives he touched will Glynn Allen Owens ever be forgotten.

And when the day of my eternal retirement comes for me as his day came for him, there is not a doubt in my mind it will still nonetheless have been one of the greatest privileges and honors of my life to have been his student and aide, and to have called Glynn Owens my mentor, fellow scholar, teacher, Comrade, intellectual companion, acquaintance, and friend.

Benjamin D. Hardee
Aide and Student
Class of 2002