At a recent school board meeting, the point was made that collaboration time between teachers helped in their teaching of phonics.

That reminded me that a couple of years ago there were folks in the community who had mentioned an old, energetically vocal, now long-deceased member of our community named Lloyd Gardner. I never met the man, but he apparently was a very strong and persistent advocate for teaching reading and writing through phonics.

If you ever got a thank you card from kids communicating through phonics it might read, “Thanck yu for thu Ninju Trtul dals.” By associating letters with sounds, kids can start to communicate much faster than having to learn “whole” words. If they never see the words Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo or Raphael they wouldn’t be able to write to you how much they like them unless they sounded the names out and applied their phonics lessons. Proper spelling then comes with time to remember double letters, silent letters, “PH” being like “F” and “I before E except after C.”

With interest piqued, I asked around here and there about Mr. Gardner. He apparently was also a strong supporter of the Camp Fire Girls and allowed them to use his property for camping functions. In the end, I did find that he was actually human and held some opinions that other people didn’t like. I did an archive search on the Federal Way Mirror’s website and, based on past letters and such, I can infer that Mr. Gardner and I would not see eye to eye on some things, but he was certainly passionate about our children’s education and was definitely right about getting phonics into our schools. Unlike the climate of today where there is only one way to think and for people to be on one side or another, in his day, whether people agreed with Mr. Gardner on everything or not, when they did agree, they did something about it.

It would be nice to know whether or not Mr. Gardner was ever recognized before or after his death for his ardent advocacy for change. Community members like him should be treasured and recognized in our community. Without people like him, nothing ever changes for the better – it’s called entropy. The wise tell us that it is the good things we do for others that can never be undone or destroyed. His treasure was in the good things he did for others in our community.

Mr. Gardner, hats off to you for your great work.

Hiroshi Eto, Federal Way