Below is a compilation of memories of former Upper School Spanish teacher and community service coordinator Angela Van Acker.
A selection of comments submitted via Facebook:
This breaks my heart. I would list her as one of the most influential people in my life. A small body but a huge, generous heart.
- Abby Kracov Sesselberg '82
Heartbreaking indeed. Such a special woman, a treasure to all she met, not just her students. I will forever remember her radiant smile and special laugh and the fact that she was never without both. We love you Dona Angela!
- Roz Koether Stephanak '82
Mrs. Van Acker was one of the first teachers to have high expectations for me as a person as well as a student. I was happy to see her (and Kate's wonderful family) this March when I came back to GFA. Como se dice "feisty" en espanol?
- Othar Hansson '83
What a sweet, kind and loving person. So approachable and engaged with life. She leaves this world a better place than she found it. Peace Mrs. Van Acker.
We were so lucky to have her as such a wonderful teacher. She is the reason I dropped French to take Spanish! Prayers for all of her family.
- Lexy Heatley '85
Angela was one of my favorite people at GFA! So sad to hear of her passing. My thoughts and prayers are with the family. I always remember her senior/faculty teas on Wednesday. Once, she even brought in a memorandum from Jim Coyle to the female faculty from 1973 -- it reminded them that they needed to wear "pantyhose." Needless to say, we had a wonderful laugh!
- Christopher Tompkins (former faculty)
From Doran Morford, former Director of College Guidance:
When I came to GFA in the fall of 1981 I didn’t know that Angela had come to GFA not that long before I arrived. She was already an institution. One of the first things I remember was her doing the NY Times crossword puzzle. Kids would hover over her shoulder or work on their own that she had copied for them, and many faculty also worked the puzzles that she provided. That puzzle-working was only one small example of the liveliness of Angela’s mind. I found her mind to be inquisitive, excited, and interested in so many things. It is her energy—intellectual, physical, emotional, and interpersonal—that made Angela such a force of nature.
Through that energy she was a defining presence at GFA. She taught language and life. I remember when a friend of ours came to visit. He was a college professor who was thinking about where he would like his career to go. So he spent the day at GFA learning about high school teaching and had lunch with a bunch of us at the faculty table. With Angela present the repartee was always lively and that day it was punctuated by Mr. Howland leaving the table and saying something innocuous like—“see you later”—and Angela replying with something like—“I’d rather have a sharp stick in the eye.” At the end of the day our friend asked if we always had that much fun at work, and I said, “Pretty much—at least when Angela is around.” He immediately began wondering if he should go into high school teaching—that’s how magnetic Angela was. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that teaching any place that didn’t have Angela automatically wouldn’t be as much fun. The stories that will be recounted in these days will be myriad; many of them about Angela’s wit and humor and sense of fun. There is another whole range of things that will be noted as well.
When Angela’s dear husband, Van, had his stroke she entered a new, difficult phase of her life. To be sure her children were a great support, but the lion’s share of Van’s care and attention fell to Angela. As with everything she did, she faced her new challenges with grace and strength. She adapted her life, kept teaching, and continued to be the matriarch of the VA’s. Through the years, she didn’t stop doing all the things she’d always done—school, church, community, a vast number of friends—she simply added in the new elements and kept on going. In part it is her perseverance and depth of commitment that made Angela so magnificent as a person. Of course, there are many things that made her magnificent, and that brings me back to the little things.
I rarely saw her at a loss. When I “innocently” squirted whipped cream in her ear as we walked down the hallway, she simply hit me so hard on the arm that I ached for days—she let that be a lesson to me. She, for years, orchestrated the faculty teas, adding a touch of sophistication to our life together, and was just as comfortable, when the Carvel Classic got under way, joining Mr. Coyle as the GFA walking team, the sign for which she held high, fastened to a broom, which Mr. Coyle said she was not allowed to fly. Her knowledge of what’s important, her embracing of the silly, her love of life and her engaging of all the elements of living richly—family, learning, spirituality, friendship, culture, music, art, and gracious experience—all help to define Angela, but none do so conclusively.
All of us who knew and loved her know that she was one in a million—far beyond definition or full explanation. And that is what is so wonderful. We will treasure her as individuals most in our hearts and minds and lives for who she was to each of us singularly. And that is the most wonderful kind of remembering. I wrote in a couple of notes to people that a light has gone out of the world at her passing, and I believe that; yet I also believe that she has sparked a light in many of us that will linger through all our days.