Honoring My High School English Lit Teacher

The Man Who Saved my Life

Growing up in Ojai, California, the sleepy, small, bucolic mountain town 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles, should have been spectacular. In some ways it was. I was born in Ventura in 1982 and, when I was eight, in 1991, we moved to Ojai. (More specifically, nearby Mira Monte.)

I won’t bore you with the mundane details most of you already more than know—the good, the bad and the ugly of growing up in my family, as well as the high upper middleclass privilege—but suffice to say that, by the time I reached high school, I was angry and was edging closer and closer to rebellion.

I did not trust adults, starting, most crucially, with my own parents.

I wanted to go to Nordhoff, Ojai’s sole public school. Or else Ventura High, 20 minutes west along the coast, where my older half-sister had gone and where my Oak View friends all went. But my folks—an atheist computer engineer father and a religiously suspicious mother—ironically wanted me to go to private Catholic college-prep school, for the educational quality. And so, I did.

I started in 1999, as a thin, wiry, golden-haired innocent kid who loved surfing, skateboarding, listening to punk rock. I looked like a classic, cliché Southern California surfer kid: Tan, wavy dark blond hair, green eyes, a wide smile—though around adults I most often frowned—board shorts, Billabong T-shirts, Vans shoes. The typical SoCal getup.

But underneath the external façade I felt angry, pissed-off, resentful. I felt emotionally abandoned; my childhood had felt badly mismanaged. Dad was a good man but emotionally detached; Mom was sometimes controlling, self-absorbed and dismissive, not to mention strict. I couldn’t relate to either of them. Dad was 37 years my senior. They were bourgeois Boomers; I was an Elder Millennial. Different generations. Different values. Different upbringings.

I hated freshman year at Villanova Prep. It felt stifling, the religion, the dictatorial rules, the uniforms, etc. Our religion teacher walked slowly down the aisles between desks and kicked anything which stuck out from under each seat. He sometimes slammed his ruler down on the desk, red with passionate religious fervor. He was tall, thin, pale, and dressed like a Jehovah’s Witness with black slacks, a white collared shirt and a black string tie. We feared him. He told us gay people went to Hell. We believed him.

Sophomore year—2000—everything changed. (As my novel, The Crew, vividly covers in detail.) I met two bright, working-class full scholarship kids who changed my life; they brought me into the wild, energetic world of punk rock. Not just the music but the lifestyle. I started dressing punk. Styling my hair into chaos spikes. Wearing tight black ripped jeans and an old thrift-store-bought motorcycle jacket. We went to punk shows constantly, in Ojai, Ventura, Oxnard, later LA. We read books like 1984 and Brave New World and Catcher in The Rye. (Which we were forced to stop reading mid-year due to some complaining parents!)

And of course I discovered alcohol. Beer. Forties. Mickeys. Steel Reserve. Old English. You name it, we drank it.

Life became wild, anarchic, freewheeling, out of control. Skipped classes, drunken blackouts, fist fights, tattoos procured after stealing crisp twenties from my father’s fat black leather wallet over the course of many months, arrests.

This madness lasted from sophomore year until I was expelled three weeks prior to senior graduation, in summer of 2002. (My mom and Mr. Bunce went to bat for me and the school finally gave me my diploma, quietly and secretly, after a three-month rehab program at the end of the summer. I did not attend graduation, nor did I ever take senior finals.)

And in the middle of it all was one adult whom I trusted and learned to love: Tim Bunce, aka Mr. Bunce. My senior English Lit teacher.

Bunce was a strange, angelic man, overweight, white-haired, with thick glasses and a demeanor that spoke of deep, wild caring for each and every one of his cherished students. His manner of speaking was unique; he sounded like some kind of Star Wars nerd and yet there was an edge of intensity in that voice, too, which brought to mind youth, vigor and even a hint of anarchy. Turned out he’d been involved in the first-wave of punk rock in the 1970s. Years later, on Facebook he’d post a photo of himself back in the day with a fat blue mohawk.

No wonder we trusted him.

He seemed ancient to us back then; he was in his early 40s. (I’m 41 now myself.) We could tell him anything, and when he spoke, we listened. He was the first adult I ever truly trusted. He truly was a Mr. Holland’s Opus person; a Dead Poet’s Society teacher. “Oh captain, my captain.” That was Bunce. And it wasn’t just his personality. It was his class, too. He made me love writing and literature and for the first time fostered the idea within myself that maybe I could actually someday be a writer. Why not? We read everything from The Canterbury Tales to Joyce in his class, and I absorbed it all like mana from heaven.

He even came to our punk parties sometimes. He came to my 21^st birthday, I remember that. It was at a friend’s house in Ojai. I got drunk before anyone even showed up, taking pulls of various bottles of liquor. Blackout came quickly. But I vividly recall coming to, around midnight or 1am perhaps, and I was being carried by two people: A friend carried my feet, and Mr. Bunce cradled my shoulders. Unable to open the bedroom door to deposit me safely, Bunce gently used my head as a small battering ram to get the door open.

Punk. Fucking. Rock.

They placed me in bed, covered me, and left. A few hours later I ran out of the room in a second wind and said hi to everyone before once more passing out.

*

So of course I attended Bunce’s retirement party at Villanova. Forty years: 1984 to 2024. I was about a year old when he started teaching there. Over 500 people were expected to come.

Over the past 22 years since graduation from high school, I’d driven through campus maybe twice. Never had I been to a class reunion; I didn’t really care what the adult versions of the kids we’d been were doing. Maybe it was just insecurity because I hadn’t gone to Harvard or Stanford or Cornell; instead I’d drifted and worked and chipped away at community colleges while drinking and hitchhiking around the country, getting into trouble and finding myself as a man and a writer. I’d always chased experience, not fancy degrees. (I was an outlier in my family, filled to the brim with master’s degrees.)

But this was the first time since 2002 that I’d come to campus with a purpose, for an event. Not a reunion, exactly, but a sacred celebration. Forty years.

I pulled into the old driveway—from a new side of the school than when I attended—and parked in the lower lot above the track. Every single thing I saw brought back myriad memories, including the track. I parked and snagged my old blue-and-gray messenger bag stuffed with a dozen copies of my novel, The Crew, because, self-promo author that I was, why not try to give away some books? It was the perfect setting. The book was all about Villanova, and Mr. Bunce was a main character.

It was hot, probably in the mid-80s. Late June in Ojai. I wore jeans, a black City Lights shirt, my big wide gray sunhat, and a light almost transparent collared shirt, unbuttoned, over the black tee.

I followed the crowd across the lot and up the steep sets of stairs to the main part of campus, already feeling the weight of my pack full of books and feeling the warm sweat against my head and neck.

*

There were people everywhere, like an animated human explosion. I registered and hung my nametag—Michael Mohr, Class of 2002—around my neck. Then I wandered. Soon I spotted Bunce, his signature white hair and beard wearing beige Dockers and a tucked-in blue collared shirt. I walked over, tapping him on the shoulder. He turned. Smiling, he said, Mikey, as he wrapped me in a bear hug. Such was Bunce’s way.

“Feeling overwhelmed yet?” I asked.

He shook his head, that charming look in his eyes. “Not in the slightest.”

Soon others approached and he was distracted, engaged in conversation. He had a cult following. Always had. It felt like walking up to your favorite rock star, asking for an autograph. He’d changed my life but, I knew, he’d changed all of our lives. We were here not out of any sense of duty, but completely out of a sense of deep love. It’s rare that you meet someone composed of total humility, honesty and kindness. Someone who cares sincerely for every one of his students. Many teachers are just going through the rote motions, bored, waiting to retire. Not Bunce. He never was married and he never had kids of his own. He had students. We were his kids, thousands and thousands of us, over the course of four stellar decades.

I walked away and meandered. We were all on the bright green field, where, as a student back in the day, we sat on the blue picnic tables at lunch. The blue tables were still there. They had food and desert tables, and tents with old yearbooks. The grotto was all set up with huge tents and a speaker’s podium, for the festivities. I was shocked to discover not one single person from my 2002 class. Not one. I bumped into a few teachers I recognized. One, a man I never did like or understand, told me he’d heard about my novel and said, “You didn’t bash Villanova too badly, I heard.” I supposed that was true. Did he want a copy? No, he said, he didn’t read; never had. He said he’d been let go in 2012. When I asked him what he’d been up to since then, he silently pointed to the glass of beer in his hand.

I smiled.

A woman I knew from the class of 2024 arrived. My best friend in high school had dated her back then. We caught eyes and she walked over. We ended up chatting for probably half an hour, forty-five minutes. She’d lived all over the world but was now back in Ojai. She’d just survived Breast Cancer. She told me about the experience, the double-mastectomy, the chemo. I told her about my father’s death of cancer last June, 2023. It was a nice conversation. I felt less alone, somehow more tied to this event, she being the closest tie I had.

*

By noon I was sitting in the shade at one of the long tables under the giant tents facing the grotto/podium. Speakers would begin at 1pm. I sat alone, chewing on tri-tip steak and tasty sweet rolls. I scanned around the tables and beyond, people-watching. Everyone was smiling, laughing and talking loudly in clusters of two, five, eight, happy and alive. I felt alone, like an outsider, just like I’d felt here in high school, just like I’d felt all my life. Even now, still. I’d never fit in. Too cool for the nerds, too weird for the cool kids. Not popular but with a loud reputation. Different. Strange. Individualistic to the core. Angry. Bright but intense. On my own. I guess that’s more or less a requirement for a serious writer, or any serious artist.

At about 1:15 the speakers began. First a kid from the class of 2024, who just graduated. Then some speakers from the 1980s. Then one guy from the 90s who was like some sort of motivational speaker. Another guy who was very thoughtful but went on far too long. Several people quoted from The Canterbury Tales, a classic of his class. Slowly, early-twenties kids from the class of 2020 filled the empty seats around me. I briefly chatted with a few of them. About ten, half boys, half girls. Laughing. Funny. Friendly.

And finally Mr. Bunce himself got up behind the podium, the anarchist-madman-genius who’d charmed and saved so many of us over the decades. People for the first time since the speakers had begun actually hushed and got quiet. It was a bittersweet moment. Bunce smiled at us and began what became the most beautiful, heartfelt speech I’ve ever heard. It lasted about seven minutes. (See video at top of post.) He got emotional. He talked about how proud he was of us all, how he’d seen what we’d all become during our young formative years, way before we saw it within ourselves. He told the hardest part of his job was saying goodbye. He talked about the May sunlight gleaming off graduating students each year, how that was his favorite moment. He talked about love.

I felt emotional myself. Many people seemed to feel that. Some cried. All 500-plus of us sat there and cheered and watched the man who we understood as our hero as he said goodbye. It was beyond touching; it had the ring of eternity to it, something beyond even death, something permanent. He will leave a long, deep shadow. We’ll all carry a piece of Bunce with us throughout our lives.

I am honored to have had him as a teacher. At a time in my life when I felt vulnerable, angry, confused and oh-so-alive, he was there for me when no one else was, at least that’s how it felt to me back then. He was a savior of sorts, an adult who didn’t judge, who didn’t dictate, who didn’t control. He was simply there, open, available, and true.

He made me feel free. And for that I am ever grateful.

Happy Retirement, Mr. B.