School district honors retirees

For 38 years, Lynda Hughes has been compiling a reading list.

The fifth-grade teacher at Mariners Elementary School has a stack of books waiting for her at home when she retires next week: Danielle Steel novels, mysteries and other volumes that she’s amassed since her teaching career began.

At the top of the list, though, is one item without a publisher’s logo.

“I have a file at home which is all wonderful letters and cards that parents and children have sent me over 38 years,” Hughes, 61, said. “I’m going to sit down at home in an easy chair and read every single one.”

For a few more days, Hughes will be employed as a teacher at Mariners, but on Tuesday, she was one of 54 retiring employees honored by the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. At an hour-long ceremony in the district’s open-air courtyard, elementary education director Bonnie Swann presented Newport-Mesa’s retiring personnel with hugs and crystal desktop plaques.

The most famous retiree this year in Newport-Mesa is Supt. Robert Barbot, who plans to depart on June 30 after eight years leading the district. On Tuesday, though, Barbot was one of many district employees recognized for service ? including some teachers whose Newport-Mesa careers began around the time the superintendent graduated from high school.

To start the ceremony, Swann presented a striking statistic: Newport-Mesa’s retiring personnel have, collectively, amassed 1,370 years of service.

“If you feel tired, that’s why,” she told the crowd.

In David Letterman fashion, Swann went on to recite a list of “the top 10 signs you’re ready for retirement.”

Among the memorable items: if you can remember the days when teachers smoked in front of students; if you still have purple under your fingernails from the old ditto machine; and if you recall “when you could kiss away a hurt knee without fear of getting sued.”

Newport-Mesa may have changed in some ways over the past four decades, but some things have stayed the same. Eleanor Dickson, who has taught at Newport Heights Elementary School for 40 years, keeps an autograph book in her room in which she records the “Smiley of the Week” ? her pet label for the best citizen in class.

Former students, she said, often visit her classroom again and locate their names in the book.

“Usually everyone in the room ends up being ‘Smiley’ sometimes,” she said.

Janet Dow, who had taught science at Costa Mesa High School since 1966 and retired earlier this year, started a biology program on the campus for English-learner students and also worked as a physical education teacher. In her final days at Costa Mesa, she reminisced about her first year on the staff.

“At that time, I was there with a typewriter and a black chalkboard and the hand ditto machine,” she said.

“Now, as I’m leaving, they’re delivering SMART Boards and wireless laptops. A lot has changed in those four decades.”

Jim Tomlin, a history teacher for 36 years at Corona del Mar High School, has turned into an expert on his subject matter over time. At the very least, he’s had a lot of practice.

“He’s been teaching the Civil War for 36 years,” Swann told the crowd on Tuesday.

Then, addressing Tomlin, she asked, “Has it finally ended?”