Our Friend Diane
By
Joni Gardner
The door opened to my classroom and the scheduled sub walked in. I was on the other side of the room behind bookcases which separated me from the other special education teacher, Marybeth. She was having surgery and would be out for the next six weeks and I only hoped for someone I could work with.
“Good Morning,” I said as I peeked around the bookshelves, “I’m Joni Gardner.”
She stood up straighter and smiled, “I’m Diane Cooper and I guess we’ll be working together.”
Her kind face and soft voice ditched my worries. After two or three days of working together, I knew we would be friends. She had a positive attitude, patience and respect for our students who needed all of that and more. They trusted her in days and gave everything they had to please her. If someone was rude to her or tested her patience, she would not take it personally but sit down quietly with the student and ask how things were going that day and if she could help in some way. That may be a “slight” exaggeration, but only slight. Our friendship grew quickly and by the end of the six weeks, we had golfing plans, dinner plans with our husbands, etc.
When she finished her six week assignment, she would still sub in our building sometimes several days a week. When she subbed for me if I had to be out a day, I would tell my students the day before that Mrs Cooper would be coming in the next day to sub for me, and “IF” their names appeared in her letter to me from that day, I did not wish to hear their side of it. They all knew her by now and there would be absolutely no misbehavior of any kind. They loved her and things usually went well when she subbed.
When I retired, she was still subbing, but we started playing golf on Tuesday mornings if she could. Things would come up and we weren’t playing as often as we wanted to so she found a golf league at Whispering Willows and we joined. We quickly made many long lasting friendships. Everyone who knew Diane, loved her. Her golf improved and she soon left D flight for C, but we still played golf sometimes on Tuesday morning. Sue and Ken came into the picture and we had three couples including my husband David, and would go out to dinner and sometimes dancing. We all ended up in Florida for our winters and would visit each other there occasionally and golf together in Ft. Myers. We had lunches at Schoolcraft College put on by the culinary arts students with our golf friends. When my husband was sick, I had a GI bleed and needed a blood transfusion at night. She came to Botsford Hospital and stayed with me until 1:00 am in a not too safe area. We also went sailing together on our boat on Lake Erie. Years later, when my husband died she was there for me so much. I remember when she hurt her back and had to lay on a beach lounge chair in the kitchen for weeks. The hip replacement did not keep her down for long either. We were both democrats and shared our thoughts in private because so many of our friends were Republicans. The glass was always half full with Diane, never half empty. When I last spoke to her, I was in layered parking at the Tampa Airport calling Larry to see if I could drive up to Leesburg from there and see Diane. He let me talk to her and she told me she was only not nauseous when she was asleep and if I drove up there she might be sleeping the whole time. So we chatted a little, and I told her I loved her since she walked into my classroom that day many years ago. She said, “I don’t think I can turn this thing around.” I said, “Then maybe you can play golf with David.”
