A SPECIAL NOTE: BEFORE OPENING THIS LETTER OF REMEMBRANCE AND APPRECIATION, I am compelled to comment very briefly on our recent national tragedy. Much of my life has been spent working in one way or another with children and youth. It is a significant understatement to say that I have found those experiences fulfilling beyond measure. Whatever I am and whoever I am, I have been shaped deeply by that experience — by those children and by those young people. What happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., is beyond my capacity to fully comprehend or emotionally handle. I am left, on this day and at this time, without words. I can only share with each of you the profound sadness this has brought to us all.

In what follows, words I had almost fully shaped before that tragic event and in anticipation of the coming Christmas, I wanted to comment about a set of personal experiences of a dramatically different character, and to express an appreciation. With your understanding of this emotional dilemma, I will open and transcribe from my notes what I had planned.

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THESE WORDS WILL BE PUBLISHED JUST TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS. It is not a time for politics or debate, for recriminations or differences. What does appear appropriate to me is for me to express an appreciation.

It has just occurred to my wife, Barbara Bosworth, and me that with this year and time, this holiday season begins our 15th year as Benicians. While Barbara taught in Benicia for 27 years, I was teaching in Sacramento and we lived in Vallejo for a good part of that time. This has thus become the longest either of us has ever lived in one spot. And it has assuredly been the right spot!

Benicia is a fascinating and engaged community, sometimes fractious — as are all productively engaged gatherings of humans — but clearly alive and working at perfecting itself.

To all of you engaged in this endless task of “perfecting” Benicia, sometimes with vigorous debate and difference, sometimes in community comity, we express our appreciation for what has been and is being achieved. This is a lovely community, both in the beauty of its setting and in the quality of life created by the engagement of its citizens — assuredly including some with whom I have myself, on occasion, had differences!

As to the already lovely character of Benicia’s setting, one can look ahead with great anticipation to the completion of the waterfront project; surely lower First Street will become a beautiful mecca.

I thought to note several experiences that are reflective, I believe, of the kind of parenting and values of this community. Because Barbara and I are both teachers, our experiences do tend to involve schools, children and students!

Among those Benicia experiences that I found deeply rewarding was my opportunity to visit Barbara’s classes, especially at the time she taught kindergarten and first grade. It was during the period when I was commuting to Sacramento State to teach courses in school leadership and human relations. My students were graduate students, evening students, some with long commutes to class after a teaching day. The contrast in energy was evident and significant! But one is forced to note that the quality of instruction could very possibly have entered into that equation!

A few of you will remember Barbara from Mary Farmar Elementary. Those who do will not think it a stretch to observe that she was an extraordinary teacher. To walk into that exciting classroom, relax and have the opportunity I had to engage with those kids was a remarkable experience for me. Their vitality, curiosity and excitement constituted for me a vital injection of energy and excitement about this teaching enterprise. One vivid memory was of sitting on the floor talking with Marta about dinosaurs — well, not talking, but listening, with rapt attention and interest in no way feigned, as that bright and exciting little girl introduced me to the world of Tyrannosaurus Rex, of the Triceratops and Velociraptor.

That was quite a seminar! While my questions did not achieve the level of sophistication of Marta’s responses, she was at least assured that she had a wide-eyed and attentive audience. And that was just one of a number of such experiences in that classroom of Barbara’s with those eager young children of Benicia, products of homes where that vitality and curiosity were nourished.

Among the very rewarding experiences I have had here has been my opportunity to meet with high school students to discuss World War II. After a great many years — more than sixty — when I did not talk of my war experiences with anyone, I decided one day, upon a teacher’s invitation, to make myself available to students interested in that increasingly distant time of great crisis. Whatever their experience of those engagements, they have for me been richly rewarding. The quality of our interaction, the intensity of their interest and curiosity, and the always supportive environment created by those students have made it a deeply satisfying experience and a vital part of my life in Benicia — a closing, in a way, of a circle.

I think, by the way, that one of the significant problems of modern existence is an increasing lack of positive cross-generational contact, which saddens me. This is heightened, I fear, by the explosion of dependence by the young upon the instruments of the electronic revolution, which can only increase the divide in future. There is always a divide in human society created by age difference, of course, but formerly there was also a counterbalance created by elders as bearers of knowledge and teachers of technique. The electronic world, so rapidly changing, tends to become the territory of young, rapidly expanding minds!

But that may simply be a quibble from the far-out territory of 91 years — which could, of course, create a reach for anyone below 60, much less 16!

Barbara and I want to say to all of you: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and may your lives continue to find the rich and fulfilling opportunities for contribution that have done so much to build this very, very special community we share.

In appreciation, in thanks and with the very best wishes for each of you and for your children, the future can be as bright and shining as you wish and deserve.

Jerome Page is a Benicia resident.