(‘Y2J’ a lesson in love for teachers and students from the Denver Post, 1/2/00)
Since 1962 Dick Jordan has been inviting students to meet him on the first day of the millennium at the west entrance of the Denver Public Library Downtown. 300 students showed up, many lugging yearbooks or dusty photos of the man who taught them how to think.
In spring of ‘62 Jordan was a rookie teacher at George Washington High School. He invited to meet on the library. Former students came because they felt Jordan cared for them, taught them how to think, to question what was in history books, and in at least one cased inspired someone to become a teacher.
The husband of one student came because it was his wife’s dying wish. It was one of the last things she had asked as she was dying of cancer.
It all started as a kind of joke. As a poor college graduate, Jordan had to borrow $300 from a Denver public schools recruiter just to make the trip to Colorado, and then he had to wear the same brown suit to school for three years.
He told his very first class, “I can retire in the year 2000 and we ought to meet somewhere on that millennium. And everybody bring a dollar, because I’m going to need it!”
Over 200 students remembered and brought dollars which were later donated to the Catholic Workers Soup Kitchen.
