The Late Thomas G. Gruber aka Tad aka The Badger
He was well loved, will be well missed and remembered
Thom G Gruber Obituary
THOMAS G. GRUBER, 1935-2023
“THERE WILL BE NO FRITZING!”
The crowd of teenage boys was restive and rambunctious, as is the way of teenage boys. It was January, 1973 at St. John’s Cathedral Boys’ School in Selkirk, Manitoba and the school of 120 boys was assembled to participate in what seemed an oddity, “Poetry Night in Canada.”
At a boarding school better known for its rigorous program of chores, month-long canoe trips and snowshoeing expeditions, it was uncertain whether poetry could rise to the level of its heavy competitor, Hockey Night in Canada, in holding the boys’ attention.
But one upstart teacher, Thomas Gruber, believed it could.
He’d worked with each boy to find the piece of poetry that inspired him, and one by one, they began reading. The room fell silent as reader after reader presented, from big, burly grade 12s to Gruber’s own class of Grade 8 boys who’d written personal poems describing the Red River flowing past their window:
“The sun burns our backs as we paddle its smooth waters: a river of tender gladness,” read Michael Hart.
“When the winter comes, a strange and remarkable metamorphosis takes place,” read Martin Denny, “Manitou’s breath blows cold and harsh and blows his coat into languid and crisp white.”
“But the spring, oh, the spring!” read Konrad Mastine. “The cracking and smashing of ice and snow melting.”
Anyone who has ever spent any time in a classroom trying to coax any kind of feeling out of teenage boys could appreciate what happened that night.
It was Thom’s second year of teaching at St. John’s School, and he would continue “Poetry Night in Canada” and his inspiring brand of teaching through the next 16 years at St. John’s, and its brother school in Ontario.
“I have had a very interesting life,” he wrote years later in his contribution to a family history book. “More than anything, I am most proud of being a teacher at St. John’s School of Ontario.” The pride, he said, came from sending home in June a happy bunch of kids who had come to the school unhappy, sometimes mean and a bit lost.
Thom had a gift for taking the lost and unhappy –often those he identified as “fritzes”– and prodding them to achieve more than they thought possible, sometimes against considerable resistance. One time, in Ontario, Kyle LeBlanc had dodged an assignment and gone home for the weekend. Thom drove from the rural school to LeBlanc’s home, found out from his parents Kyle’s favourite video game parlour, where Thom in short order appeared, taking him back to the school for the weekend to finish his assignment.
“There will be no fritzing!” was often Thom’s thunderous pronouncement – but it was really all show. Truth is: he loved the students who fritzed more than anyone else.
Tom earned the nickname “Badger” partly from his inspired teaching of “Wind in the Willows” but partly for his cultivated air of curmudgeonry. Often stubborn, opinionated and stuffy –he was a Badger in his stolid respectability, but loved the fritzes of the world and their antics.
Thom came to St. John’s late in life, in his late 30s.
He was born April 4th, 1935 in Columbus, Ohio, where he remembers a childhood of horseback riding and straying all over the Ohio Valley. “If I spent three hours a day indoors in those years of wonderful summers, I would be most surprised,” he wrote in the family history.
A lifelong interest in international experience began in 1950, when he and another 15-year-old friend worked to finance a trip to Mexico City. The next year he hitch-hiked to visit again. Spanish was becoming as familiar to him as the German in his family and the English in school. His international interest led him to three years in the U.S. Air Force in Korea and Japan where he first expressed another lifelong interest: his contempt for bureaucracies and hierarchies – “the most useless bunch of nothing I ever did.”
He returned to Ohio in 1957. For the next five years he worked and attended university, specializing in Spanish and French. His first teaching job was in Marion, Ohio in 1963, and he taught in various schools –plus two years in the Peace Corps in Colombia– until arriving at St. John’s in 1970.
Jason Lister (now named Rometheis Wize) was a student at St. John’s in its final year (the schools closed in 1990). After St. John’s closed, he remembers Thom discussing with his parents the value of international experience for the 16-year old, and then travelling with him to Honduras for a month, where they worked and taught at an orphanage and technical institute.
Shortly after St. John’s closed, Thom travelled to Olomouc in the Czech Republic where he taught English for seven years. Radovan Jurka remembered Thom’s English classes “where he showed us how a school subject can be taught in an amusing way.” But, just as much, he remembers Thom as a friend, coaching softball, and going to hockey nights in Olomouc. Undoubtedly, there were also poetry nights in Olomouc, in two languages.
On his return from the Czech Republic, Thom worked at various jobs in rural Ontario, including warehouse and factory jobs. By the early 2000’s, after turning 65 and becoming a naturalized Canadian, he began to enjoy semi-retirement.
He loved nothing better than spending time with old friends, like Bill and Nancy Arthur, former St. John’s teachers. He loved living in Port Dover with friends Paul and Lynn Kennedy, where he developed his gardening skills, growing his beloved lovage and evening primroses.
Five years ago, his former student, Rometheis, suggested Thom share his home in Ancaster, Ontario. “As a former student, and friend, it was a pleasure to look out for him the last number of years,” explained Rometheis. Thom told friends those five years were the best years of his life: watching lacrosse at the neighbouring First Nation, exploring new digital worlds, the fritziness of Rometheis’s dog Atka, feeding foxes who came to eat out of his hand.
His greatest joy came summer evenings on the porch in Ancaster,, the nightly show of the evening primroses he’d planted –how the evening light coaxed each flower, bursting out into one night of glorious life and then dying the following day to make way for the next blossom.
Thom died of a sudden heart attack on August 23. He died at home, just after doing the laundry, after a normal day with Rometheis and their friend Lee Ann. The evening primroses unfurled that night without him.
He will be remembered by surviving family in Ohio – Judy Donavan and Larry Gruber, by friends like Bill and Nancy and Paul and Lynn, and by all the fritzes, like Rometheis and Radovan and Kyle, whom the Badger coaxed and prodded and inspired into finding the poetry of their lives.
*edited by Rometheis*
Mike Maunder, a long-time friend of Thom’s and whom were roommates back in the 1971 time frame, wrote this lovely obituary. Mr. Maunder as many of us know him, did not want to insert himself “into the writing” however I know Mike loved Thom and Thom, Mike. Mike came out to visit, from Winnipeg, Manitoba, multiple years during his annual vacation and brought an infectious energy and excitement about life and history and we would go out on outings or they would hit the road together. During Mikes’ visit this year it was so wonderful to see Thom and Mike sitting on the couch watching Jeopardy and shouting out the answers before the contestants, competing in a way. Mike took Thom to Huntsville, one last time as it turned out, because Thom wanted to visit the Hutts and while it was a challenge considering Thom’s health issues, they got in the car and away they went; Mike knew this was important to Thom and re-arrange his schedule to make this happen. While Thom travelled the world teaching and touching people’s hearts and lives, Thom actually only had a few people who were consistently in his life over the years and Mike was one of those special people … and I didn’t want it to go unknown how special Mike was to Thom – even though they would bicker on the occasion.
24 hours, almost to the minute, of Thoms passing, a lightning storm and rain came down for 30 minutes in such dramatic fashion and in a way, I have never seen in the 5 years Thom and I lived at the house in Ancaster. Neighbours also accounted they had not seen such a display… so a send-off for Thom from the celestial, Home-ward and may his travels be full of beauty, love and grace.