By John Shearer ‘72
Many times a teacher does not know how he or she has positively influenced a student. There might be a thank you card or appreciative comments at the end of a term, or sometimes a teacher will receive special thanks from a student years later.
For one Bright School student of yesteryear and his teacher, however, the appreciation shown was actually both instantaneous and long lasting.
During the 1969-70 school year, the late James “Jimmy” Michael ’73 had Mrs. Peggy Wright for third grade at Bright. He apparently enjoyed her so much that he gave her a house-shaped wooden purse perhaps around the time the school year ended.
Painted to look like an old-fashioned schoolhouse, the purse has the word, “Bright’s,” on it, and shows a waving schoolteacher – perhaps intending to be Mrs. Wright -- standing at a door. Written on the inside of the top part of the purse in black lettering are these words: “made ‘specially for Mrs. Wright. Love, Jimmy Michael, 1970.”
Whether a family member or another adult helped is not known, and efforts to locate any Michael family members were unsuccessful. One classmate contacted, however, seemed to remember his interest in art.
But his appreciation for her as a teacher is quite obvious.
Mrs. Wright died in 2016 at age 86 from Parkinson’s disease, and her son, Dr. Jack Wright ’75, thought Bright might like to have it.
“I said, ‘Who needs to own this?’ It says Bright’s on it, so I thought they would want it,” said Dr. Wright, who is now a radiologist and pilot in San Antonio and the owner of the Chateau Wright vineyard in West Texas.
So after doing a little touch up repair on it, he shipped it to the school, where it has been proudly received. He added that his mother appreciated it and cherished it over the years.
A former Central High salutatorian and accomplished violinist, Mrs. Wright had begun teaching at Bright School during the 1968-69 school year after previous teaching jobs. An acquaintance of then-principal Dr. Mary Dalton Davis through the American Association of University Women, she replaced the retiring Betty Lauderdale.
She was also acquainted with Bright faculty members Adele Davis and Martha Becton and had traveled with them on a pioneering automobile trip on the Pan American Express to Mexico City in the 1950s when an earthquake struck, Jack Wright recalled.
He said he struggled with reading in his early grades, so she went back to get a master’s degree in the field of reading education and later worked in a summer program at McCallie and at East Lake Elementary.
She had another son, Stephen, who died only a month after her after a career in economic development. Her husband, John Wright, died in 2017, and Jack came across the wooden pocketbook again while going through his parents’ belongings.
Jimmy Michael, who grew up on Signal Mountain while his father ran Michael Construction Co., died in 2001 at the age of only 40. But reminders of his enjoyment of Mrs. Wright as a teacher, and her appreciation of his thankfulness, are continuing to live on through the folk-style pocketbook made with genuine appreciation.
