Mary Kay never referred to him in the present tense.
“Maybe if he had shunned her it was almost easier to say he was dead?” Teri speculated.
And despite the turmoil of her past and the estrangement from her family, Mary Kay found time for generosity. One gift that she gave Teri Simmons will never be forgotten. It was a beautiful writing journal, with a black leather binding accented by red corners, made in France. Mary Kay presented Teri with the journal between classes at the university during one of their carpooling days. It was the perfect gift for the troubled young woman who liked to write and who had a need to pour out the hurt in her heart on pages of paper. Though the gift probably took her last dollar, Mary Kay didn't care.
“She wanted to make sure everyone around her that she cared about had the tools they needed to be free, to be liberated,” Teri said later.
That was Mary Kay Letourneau. Free. Encouraging. A giver.
Chapter 14
CIRCUMSTANCES WOULD LATER change perceptions and alter memories, but no one at Gregory Heights Elementary in Burien, Washington, could deny that the pretty young teacher started her career in public education with the kind of brilliance that ensured a remarkable career. Colleagues could easily tick off a list of attributes: creative, enthusiastic, artistic, thoughtful, patient. She was everything any parent would want for their child in a classroom setting. Mary Kay Letourneau, twenty-six, came to the Highline School District 401 in September 1988—it was the third of her student-teaching internships.
Master teacher Mary Newby saw a great future for Mary Letourneau and would later tell friends that she had benefited from the experience of working with her in her sixth-grade class.
“I loved working with her because I could say something and she'd add a level to it, then I'd add a level to it. It was a great experience. It expanded my teaching and my thinking.”
Part of Mary Kay's gift was her enthusiasm. Though in her mid-twenties and the mother of two, she had not lost the sense of wonder and excitement of the learning process. Somehow she had been able to retain it.
“We'd talk about something we needed to do and she'd have fresh ideas and ways of looking at ways to approach it, versus the same old stuff.”
Mary Kay was always prepared, always went the extra mile. She was at ease with the students and they liked her. Only once did Mary Newby see any cause for concern.
“One time when she was being observed by her college professor. She was very, very nervous, very tired. It was the one time when her lessons didn't seem as thought-out. It was still okay, but not as outstanding as she had done [before].”
“Is there something going on?” she asked her.
Mary admitted she'd been up very late. She said Steve had been working graveyard at Alaska Airlines and he wanted her to keep the kids up as late as possible so that they'd sleep for him in the morning. She couldn't start her schoolwork until after they went to bed.
“It didn't happen again,” Mary Newby said later. “She didn't offer much more. It was a sleep issue. She was very… now I use the word 'driven'; back then, I thought very 'committed' to doing an outstanding job.”
Mary Newby knew that her student teacher was pressed for money. Steve Letourneau didn't have a terrific job. Tossing baggage at SeaTac couldn't have paid that much and Mary Kay indicated that her husband had been pressuring her to do whatever it took to get her teaching certificate so that she could “go out and earn some money.”
No matter what pressures she had from husband Steve, Mary Kay somehow fueled her ambition to do what she wanted, to shift the priorities of the day to suit her sense of importance. Often that meant setting the bills and worry aside for the fun stuff. With Halloween at hand came the quest for the perfect costume for little Steven. Mary Kay had decided her little boy would be the quintessential dragon. She outfitted her son in colored hightops, a little green tail, and a pullover. She even attached felt triangles to the back of the pullover. But something was missing. Something kept the costume from perfection. She recruited Teri Simmons to help in the search for the right fabric to finish it off.
“She wanted his chest area to be covered with green shimmery stuff to look like scales,” Teri recalled many years later. “We must have gone to thirty different stores! But we found it and she did it. At the last minute we had this perfect little dragon.”
When the hunt was on there was no stopping Mary Kay. If it meant driving around all day with a car running on empty, it didn't matter to her. If it required circling the globe in the quest of something she envisioned, she'd do it. Making do with something less than that was never an option.