Newton has lost, Ty Vignone, who taught in the Newton School System for 51 years. Here’s an article from the Newtonite in 2011. And this is from his obituary:
Ty began teaching at Day Junior High School in Newton in 1965. He moved to Newton North High School in 1983, and taught there until this year. Ty instituted two programs for students that were often life-changing. One was the Close-Up Program, when he and his students would spend the week in Washington, D.C. learning about the government first hand… Another was the Prague Summer Program that Ty established in 1990. For many students, their participation in the program was the most memorable event of their high school lives.
Ty began teaching at Day Junior High School in Newton in 1965. He moved to Newton North High School in 1983, and taught there until this year. Ty instituted two programs for students that were often life-changing. One was the Close-Up Program, when he and his students would spend the week in Washington, D.C. learning about the government first hand… Another was the Prague Summer Program that Ty established in 1990. For many students, their participation in the program was the most memorable event of their high school lives.
My condolences to his family and friends for their loss.
I did not have Mr. Vignone as a teacher but feel compelled to mention that a 51 year career in anything is remarkable and a career that long in such a challenging profession is truly amazing! Quite an achievement to say the very least.
So sorry to hear this. My son went on the Prague Summer trip a few years ago, and Vig’s presence and energy were huge parts of that event.
Two of my sons knew Ty through a history class, Close Up, and the Prague Summer Program – these experiences changed their view of society and government. But I’ll be most grateful to Ty for reaching out to my 14 year old son who had a most difficult adjustment to NNHS and for helping him (and his parents) through a difficult year.
A wonderful man who will be sorely missed. I enjoyed going with Ty and his NNHS students on their annual trip to the State House as part of his government class.
Not Vig. Not today.
This goddamn year.
Longtime teachers can get a bad rap for giving the same lectures on the same notes. Vig was **working** on the material constantly, updating it with new historiography, learning from what worked and didn’t. He reused his crib sheets year to year, and they were bristling with new notes from his 4-color pens. “Do you think that worked,” he’d ask after a lesson, like a comedian might; knowing intuitively that teaching can be the highest form of theater, a performance, a spell cast on the willing and unwilling. Vig entered a classroom like Judy Garland going on stage — all bundled-up energy waiting to be released. Every gesture had meaning. He could silence a room with an eyebrow but often chose not to, knowing that disruptions and tangents bring more joy and meaning than rote facts. Once, he took over my English class for a few weeks while another teacher was out sick, to teach Macbeth: “Shakespeare was one kinky dude. I spent a year on the train between Stratford and London trying to figure this SOB out. And I’m telling you: I couldn’t.”
Then there was the way he stood by and up for queer kids. I’m still unpacking the millions of tiny ways he knew how to be there. He never wanted to talk about it outright, but his quiet courageous presence, his brilliant queeny laugh, his softness with people who needed help even when they were lashing out, his shitkicking toughness in the face of anything that got in the way of his teaching or his students, were an essential model. His office, an anchor of emotional stability, independence, fierce love and respect. No pandering, no platitudes. There wasn’t time for it.
I think I understand more and more the ways in which he wanted us — all of his students, friends, colleagues — to enjoy our degree of access to a world he felt he’d had to fight to enter. As a gay man, a gay teacher, who’d started out in the ‘60s; when, he told us with a bitter laugh, there was still a separate pay scale for women. As a working-class kid teaching the mostly-rich kids of Newton.
He wouldn’t have wanted us to mope around too much. Vig, a bundle of loving energy, the long-lost love child of Truman Capote and Elaine Stritch; wanted for his students boundless, enriching lives. He’s why I’m here in Berlin now, why I’m a historian, in some sense why I’m alive.
What a life. Thanks.
Great post Ben. Thanks for sharing.