It seems most appropriate that my spirit guide Holly and I tell this story as we approach Thanksgiving. Junior high school can be a tough time for many kids. For me it was particularly difficult because for the first time in my short life, I was told that I was physically outside the norm, and I would be transferred from the traditional PE class into “corrective” PE. I am quite thin, and I have always been thin. But that seemed to be a problem at my middle school. We were all lined up on the blacktop, standing up as straight as possible, and the teachers were checking us out, front and back. A small group of us were asked to leave the line, and we were led into a very small gym. As I looked around the group, I was trying to see any similarities we might have had. Several girls were what must have been deemed overweight, a couple had casts on an arm or leg, one girl had a limp, and a couple of girls had scoliosis. I still couldn’t figure out why I was there. The part that is the most laughable to this day is that those of us who weren’t restricted from physical activity all participated in the same circuit training. And at the end of that year, I was still quite thin, as I am to this day. So much for corrective PE!
But there was a saving grace to junior high school, and that was the choir director, Mr. Reginald Fitch. He had a radiant smile that made me feel that even corrective PE couldn’t dampen my spirit or define who I was. When I was in Mr. Fitch’s class, I felt as though someone really saw me for who I was beyond this human form. And when I became a teacher, I thought about him on a regular basis, and I used him as a model for the kind of teacher I hoped to be. There is no doubt in my mind that Reginald Fitch was a significant angel encounter along my journey.
A beautiful synchronicity would reunite me with Mr. Fitch more than 45 years after being in junior high choir. By the late 1990’s, I had already been a teacher for more than 20 years, and one of my 5th grade students was in the Oregon Children’s Choir. She invited me to one of her concerts, and as I read the concert program, I noticed that her choir director’s last name was Fitch. As I looked more closely at his face, I noticed so many similarities to my Mr. Fitch that he had to be this choir director’s father. The next Monday, I asked my student to find out if, in deed, Reginald Fitch was the father of this young choir director.
A week later, I found the answer I had been looking for along with Reginald Fitch’s home phone number. He was now living in a town south of Eugene, and his son said he would be so happy to hear from me. I called Mr. Fitch and told him the significant impact he had had on my personal and professional life. He was 69 and had retired to live near his son who was both the Oregon Children’s Choir director and a middle school music teacher, like his father had been. My heart felt so full from our telephone reunion. Several weeks later, I was reading our local paper and was shocked to read that my angel, Reginald Fitch, had been killed in an auto accident on the way to substitute teach for his son’s middle school music classes. The article included comments from his son’s students about how much they had enjoyed the times this amazing man was their substitute teacher. It was certainly a bitter-sweet moment. I cried with joy to realize just how many children had had the opportunity to spend time with Mr. Fitch, and I felt compassion for his family and for the students who would never know the beauty of this man.
Our reunion and his death were just over 20 years ago. About 15 years ago, I was lying down on a table while a healer worked on me, and she told me that there were three spirit guides in the room with us. I asked her if one was Holly. She laughed and said the one at my head was the Holy One, but she didn’t mind me calling her Holly. She then told me that there were two more at my feet. One was Marté, and the other was Reginald. It is with a deep sense of gratitude that I acknowledge Mr. Fitch’s name on a regular basis.
We will encourage each of you to take the time to recall and reach out to the angels along your journey. We will also encourage you to be a Reginald Fitch for someone along their own journey. Soul Bridge Coaching and Holly, November 16, 2021
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