Un Dia Sin Sol

Tuesday I learned about the passing of a great teacher, John R. Ruppel. Mr. Ruppel was my 11th grade AP English teacher. I remember spending what seemed like every waking moment reading that year. We read Moby Dick, How to Read a Book, and The Sound and The Fury. We also were assigned practically 100 pages a night to read. Each class there was a four question quiz. I remember his disdain for the word "like." I also remember him throwing white board erasers at Lauren Selevan for saying like. He was a great teacher and a nice man. I am including the obituary from today's Miami Herald so everyone can see what kind of man it was that created a love in me for Faulker and The Sound and The Fury. John Ruppel Retired MAST Academy teacher BY ELINOR J. BRECHER ebrecher@MiamiHerald.com Within moments after his former students learned that MAST Academy teacher John Ruppel died unexpectedly on Tuesday, they launched a Facebook page called ``Mr. Ruppel Touched My Life.'' A typical sentiment: ``Mr. Ruppel was . . . one of the greatest teachers I have ever had the pleasure of knowing and learning from. And even though he was a tough teacher, everyone loved and respected him for it.'' Ruppel, 61, succumbed to a rare, fast-moving adrenal cancer diagnosed two weeks before his death. The father of two had taught honors English at the magnet school since the summer after its 1992 opening. He retired last year after 35 years with Miami-Dade County schools. He and his wife, Annie, sold the family home in Pinecrest and moved to St. Augustine. They were shopping for their new home -- a 40-foot sailing catamaran -- when Ruppel fell ill. ''They were planning on Maine in the summer and the islands in the winter,'' said daughter Taylor, a Florida State University student. Her older brother, Christopher, lives in Miami. In his Hawaiian shirt/jeans/Teva sandals uniform, Ruppel taught English composition and literature of the sea, assigning books like C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series, The Odyssey, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, and his favorite, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. He took students on floating field trips up the Miami River, and taught them about life. ''How many MAST kids know how to tie a TIE because of Mr. Ruppel?'' one Facebook entry asked. ``I know one knot -- the one he showed me.'' MAST grads recalled his high expectations and rigorous standards, his obsession with Oreo cookies, his love of sailing, snorkeling and swimming, his quirky ways of keeping kids in line -- like sitting on them. They paid homage to his favorite saying -- Un dia sin quiz es un dia sin sol (a day without a quiz is like a day without sunshine) -- with a slight modification: Un dia sin Ruppel es un dia sin sol. ''There has been no one at MAST who contributed more to the lives of generations of young people'' than Ruppel, said Margaret E. Haun, Lead Teacher. ``To say that he will be greatly missed by all who knew and loved him is to understate the impact of this loss on all of us.'' She called Ruppel a ``hard-working, big-shouldered guy . . . He swam in the morning and ate carrots for lunch. This is an object lesson about life.'' He was ``brilliant, funny, as kind-hearted as he was bright.'' John Robert Ruppel Jr. grew up in Pittsburgh, the oldest of three brothers and two sisters. He was named for his father, a purchasing manager who died earlier this year. His mother, Ruth, was a teacher. Brother Luke, of Pittsburgh, said it was the kind of family that ''didn't sit around waiting for things to happen,'' but made its own excitement. His brother ``set the bar for the rest of us in terms of achievement -- the importance of academics, integrity, commitment, compassion.'' Most of all, John was ''the most intellectually curious human being I've ever encountered,'' Luke said, ``a reader and thinker.'' John, who was his high school class valedictorian, was ''very academically driven,'' Luke said. John went on to study at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., then earned a master's degree from the University of Miami. His brother had ''a gift of explaining the most complex things in simple terms,'' Luke said. ``He was constantly trying to learn.'' In an autobiographical essay written for a Teacher of the Year application, John Ruppel wrote that he had considered an acting career, but ``courtesy of serendipitous waffling between seeking the meaning in life and seeking the fun in life, I opted for both: I became a teacher.'' From the religious-order educators of his youth, he said he learned that ``life must serve some larger purpose than the accumulation of things.'' Then he explained his teaching philosophy with stories about helping his daughter ride a two-wheeled bike (trust) -- and cooking a pot roast (sizzle). Taylor Ruppel took 11th-grade classes from her father. She said classmates would tell her about how tough he was but how much they learned. Fellow MAST grads at FSU have told her how helpful it was to learn the Modern Language Association format that he insisted on for research papers. He was never idle, Taylor said. In good weather, he was outside biking, hiking or sailing. In bad weather, he went to museums and certain movies. Watching the seafaring saga Master and Commander, ''the whole time, he was correcting the history and the costumes,'' his daughter said. John Ruppel was teaching at South Miami Senior High School when he met his future wife in 1975. They took up Hobie Cat racing and ''won a few,'' said Annie, an architectural designer. They married in 1978. ''He was one of these guys who would make you laugh your socks off,'' Annie said. Living on a boat was her husband's idea. 'I told him, `If that's your dream, I'll do that. It may not be forever.' But as it got closer, I realized you can't put a time limit on such a thing. It might have been forever.'' A stickler for proper planning -- ''It took him a month to buy a car,'' his wife said -- John insisted on testing out a boat they wanted. It failed, and so they were back in the market when John began to feel sick. About June 1, doctors in St. Augustine discovered a baseball-size abdominal tumor. Monday, he came by air ambulance to University of Miami Hospital, where doctors found more tumors. . He died at 6:13 a.m. Tuesday. In addition to his wife, children and brother Luke, John Ruppel is survived by brother Mark, of Philadelphia, and sisters Rosemary Hess of Charlotte, N.C., and Patricia Ann O'Connor of Atlanta. A celebration of life is planned for at 2 p.m. Friday in the MAST auditorium, 3979 Rickenbacker Cswy. For information, call Barbara Jordan at 305-365-6278 or e-mail bjordan@dadeschools.net.