The kid with the curly red hair and contagious smile
Freddy Shults, former student of Bruce Stasiuk, when Freddy was 12. Shults died in 2001 of cancer. Credit: Shults family photo / Handout
In 1973, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was near 900, and gasoline was 55 cents a gallon. The Vietnam War was winding down and the Twin Towers were the world's tallest buildings.
I was starting my seventh year of teaching fifth grade at Norwood Avenue Elementary School in Port Jefferson Station. Each day, 27 well-scrubbed kids entered "The Thinking Laboratory." That was the name students voted for after deciding that "Room 104" was too dull.
One of the 17 boys was Freddy Shults. He had freckles, a tossed-salad head of curly red hair and a wide smile. He was a student I would never forget.
His constant and contagious smile spread across the classroom. Freddy was an average student, but not an average person. He had the rare balance of wonder, fun, work and compassion. He approached each day with focused excitement. I once told him that he blinked faster than most people because he didn't want to miss a bit of life.
The school year was a productive pleasure, much of it because of Freddy. He would laugh the loudest over fun and be the saddest over anyone's misfortune.
Before the school year ended, I wanted to leave these fifth-graders with a special gift, T-shirts. I drew a picture of myself under the slogan "Verbs are your friends." I had recently advised the kids that while verbs may seem dull, most of the fun things they do throughout their lives will be verbs. I had the shirts printed in assorted sizes and passed them out.
Through the years, I'd run into former students who would provide updates on old classmates. I learned that after his graduation from Comsewogue High School in 1981, Freddy had become a communications specialist in the Navy. He served for three years, partly in the Mediteranean.
Freddy was an avid outdoorsman who loved to hunt and fish. He'd travel anyplace that had water. Every October, he and his dad shared a cabin in Maine while they hunted deer and fowl. The two would spend hours in a duck blind waiting for birds.
Freddy worked at a Pathmark in Port Jefferson as a night crew manager. The hours allowed him to play golf or go fishing after work each morning.
It was no surprise that he grew up to be the same caring person I met 40 years before.
In one case, while he worked overnight at the store, he let a homeless man sleep in his truck in the parking lot. Another time, according to his mother, he lent a friend $1,500 to make his mortgage, money the friend eventually repaid.
Just last year, I was teaching a workshop at Stony Brook University when there was a knock at the classroom door. A woman excused the interruption and handed me a bulky manila envelope.
Curiosity forced me to stop teaching and open it up.
Inside was the "Verbs" shirt, old but intact.
A note inside was from Freddy's mother, Kitty Shults. She had found out I was teaching at Stony Brook. In her note, she explained that one morning in 2001, Freddy had passed out and crashed through the shower door. Hospital tests indicated that he developed a rare cancer, neurofibromatosis, which had produced tumors in his body. The doctors could do nothing because the multiple growths developed in places out of the reach of their instruments.
She ended by writing, "Freddy died on Thanksgiving. He would have wanted you to have this. Love, Kitty Shults"
I told the story to the class. As sad as it was, I couldn't help smiling.
Although Freddy was taken from us, we all took something from Freddy.
Reader Bruce Stasiuk lives in Setauket.
