The Name Tag at Our Class Reunion

The welcome

I had written the speech on two index cards. I didn’t use them.

“Good evening,” I said. “My name is Tammy Heller. Most of you knew me as Tammy Roth. I’m the clerk of courts for this county, and I am very glad to be home.”

I looked out at them. A hundred and some faces, gray and bald and reading glasses and grandbaby pictures on cell phones.

“As some of you can see,” I said, and I put my fingers on the name tag and held it out a little so the back tables could see it, “I did not graduate with you.”

“That’s true. I left in March of our junior year because I was going to have a baby. Her name is Brooke. She’s thirty now, and she teaches fourth grade over in Bryan, and she is the best thing I ever did.”

It was very quiet. You could hear the ceiling fans.

“I’m wearing this tonight on purpose. Because it’s true, and because I’m not ashamed of it anymore, and because I want to thank some people who are in this room.”

I found Mrs. Moss at table two. She had her hands folded on top of her cane.

“Mrs. Ellen Moss,” I said. “For one full year after I left this school, she mailed me every English assignment the junior class got. Every two weeks, in a manila envelope. She graded them in red ink. She gave me a C once and told me I could do better. She was right.”

People started to clap. Mrs. Moss shook her head at them like she was annoyed. She was not annoyed.

“That year didn’t count for any credit,” I said. “It counted for everything else.

“When I took my GED at nineteen, I passed it because of her. When I took night classes for six years, I did it because she’d already taught me how to sit at a kitchen table and finish something. I don’t know how to thank a person for that. So I’m just going to say it in front of everybody. Thank you, Mrs. Moss.”

The applause went on a while. Mrs. Moss took off her glasses and wiped them on her cardigan.

“And Kim Schaefer and Denise Fry,” I said. “In the spring of 1995, my mother’s car died. Kim had a brown Ford Escort with no heater and a door you had to kick shut.

“Every two weeks, she and Denise skipped sixth period and drove me twenty miles to the doctor in Napoleon. Denise brought a blanket from her mom’s couch so I wouldn’t freeze. They never told anyone. They never asked me for a dime of gas money. They were seventeen.”

Kim had her napkin over her face. Denise, across the room at table six, stood up halfway and then sat back down and put her hand over her mouth.

“I’ve been the clerk of courts for almost six years,” I said. “I took that oath twice. Both times, the people who carried me there were sitting in this gym. So when the letter came asking the county to welcome you home, I didn’t think the county should do it. I thought one of you should. I’m just lucky it was me.”

I looked down at the name tag one more time.

“This says I didn’t graduate,” I said. “But I did learn a thing or two in this building. One of them is that it’s never too late to finish. So if anybody here has something left undone, a class, an apology, a phone call to somebody, take it from a girl who did not graduate. Go finish it. Welcome home, class of ’96.”

I stepped back from the microphone.