Mr. Harmon

A George Washington Junior High School Teacher we are still talking about in glowing terms long after he has passed. There are plenty of teachers across the entire history of the Ridgewood Public School System who are worthy or our acolades.

In Mr Harmon's case, everyone who ever met him only hopes to live up to the high standards he set personally in an era when tolerance and compassion were hard to come by. Mr Harmon lived every day with a Shakespearean single mindedness, "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?"
I met Mr Harmon in 1971, when my brothers Peter and Don McCubbin took home the plants in his classroom for the summer. He referred to each of us as "Mr McCubbin" from the moment I met him and for all the time which I was ever within earshot. He always said this with a knowing smile as to not intimidate, because between his perfectly tied bow tie and his noteworhty eloquence, Mr Harmon was an imposing figure to a junior high school students and a perfect gentleman.

There was never a moment in his presence when you did not feel respected. I only wish that our nascient RHS Alumni Association will be emblematic of the rightenous and saintlike patience he lived every day.