Homage to a Dedicated Public Servant

[This eulogy was offered at the memorial service for Edgar Warren Tomberlin, Friday, December 29, 2023, Purcell’s Chapel, Beyer’s Funeral Home, Bushnell, Florida]

Good afternoon. My name is Harry Coverston. I am the oldest child of Samuel and Marjorie Coverston. I grew up here in Bushnell, graduating from South Sumter High School in 1971. Warren Tomberlin was my beloved classmate. And Mr. Tomberlin was my teacher.

Lucy and I have always been dear friends since those days growing up here together. When she asked me if I would speak at this service today, I immediately told her that I would be honored to do so. And it truly is an honor to be here today.

Both of the Tomberlins were colleagues of my Dad during his many years teaching at South Sumter. He always valued their friendship and their counsel. My Mother was friends with Mr. Tomberlin during her days in high school in Lake City. So our families have been connected for a long time. For that I am grateful.

 

Small Town But Never Small Time

Some of you long timers may remember Lee Smail, who taught with my Dad and the Tomberlins at the high school for many years as the music teacher and band director. Mr. Smail had a saying that always prompted me to think. He said, “Just because we are small town does not mean we have to be small time.” 

 I think the whole faculty at South Sumter High School took that wisdom to heart. They knew they were teaching in a rural county with a limited tax base upon which to operate their schools. They knew that education was not the highest priority in a place whose economy was driven by cattle ranching and truck farming.

 

But our teachers were determined that their students would have access to the best quality education in their small town that they could give them. And I can tell you from my personal experience that we were, indeed, given a good beginning. From that starting place, I would begin my own long engagement of higher education that would result in three graduate degrees. It would also play out in long stints in public education that began teaching middle schoolers, like Mr. Tomberlin, and ended teaching undergraduates at two state universities.

But all along the way, I was always aware of and grateful for the basics I learned in the Sumter County public schools. For the time I lived here, we were always small town. But our dedicated teachers never let us get away with being small time.

 

The Consummate Teacher

Mr. Tomberlin was my seventh grade homeroom teacher and he taught our science classes in seventh and eight grade. He was a consummate teacher. And those of us who were fortunate enough to be taught by him know that we are in his debt.

Under his tutelage, I came to be fascinated by the solar system and developed a deep love for our budding space program. I learned how to track hurricanes, a skill that has come in much more handy than I could have ever imagined. And I learned about the dangers of air and water pollution that were just then beginning to be recognized, dangers that now seem obvious in this time of anthropocentric climate change. 

We learned a lot under our science teacher, indeed. 

But what Mr. Tomberlin taught us was much greater than the contents of general science classes. What I remember about him was the lessons he taught about living a good life that would shape the way I have approached the world these five decades later.

 

Lessons in Science, Lessons in Life

The first life lesson that he offered was the value of curiosity. There was so much in our world to learn that we seventh graders in Sumter County had no way of knowing about. Mr. Tomberlin taught us to engage our curiosity, to not fear that which we did not know, to see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. In a time when learning has come to be seen as measurable only by test scores, the notion of learning for its own value seems rather quaint. But it is the mark of a mature, healthy society. And Mr. Tomberlin modeled that value with regularity and encouraged us to do the same.

The second life lesson from which we benefitted was his devotion to public service. In many ways, public service runs against the grain of our individualist culture that assesses one’s value by income, power and status. Teachers have never made a lot of money and those of us who have engaged that noble profession know we did not go into it for money, power or status. What we valued was the ability to touch the future, to help our students become all they were capable of becoming, to serve our communities knowing that an educated public is crucial to the health of a democratic society.

I am struck by the way this dedication has played out in the Tomberlin family. Both Mr. and Mrs. Tomberlin served the children of Sumter County for many years. And both of the Tomberlin’s children have offered their lives of service to the people of Sumter County as teachers. Today, their grandchildren are carrying that torch. 

We do not always value our public servants. But we always rely upon them. For the example offered by the Tomberlins, we should all be grateful.

 

Modeling the Virtue of Patience

The third life lesson I would point to was Mr. Tomberlin’s patience. To illustrate that I would offer three short stories.

The first occurred in the context of our science class in the seventh grade. Two classmates and I were standing at the front of the classroom at the lab table where we were trying to demonstrate the distillation process by which sea water could be desalinated. Our beaker of salt water was being brought to a boil by a Bunsen burner. For some reason we decided we needed to pinch off the hose that was carrying the water from the faucet in the sink to the long tube in which the steam was condensing. And all was well until one of us managed to briefly let go of the end of the hose. At that point a jet of water shot across the lab table and put out the Bunsen burner.

Not surprisingly, bedlam broke out in the classroom. It would take Mr. Tomberlin several minutes to bring us back under control and I was sure he was going to be angry. But he wasn’t. He just said, “OK, I think you’re done now. You can sit down.” He turned off the gas to the Bunsen burner and the water from the sink. And class went on.

The second story I’d relate is hearsay but I am assured that it is true and it is funny. Mr. Tomberlin had left South Sumter to become the principal at Bushnell Elementary where my sister was now attending. She had a classmate who had brought a water pistol to school one day. Not surprisingly, after he’d used it on a couple of classmates, the teacher sent the young man to Mr. Tomberlin’s office. 

When asked if he had a water gun, the young man pulled it out and held it in front of him. Mr. Tomberlin then said, “Now, let me have it.” And at that point the kid said, “OK,” and squeezed the trigger sending a stream of water into Mr. Tomberlin’s face. Again, a situation that I’m sure I could never have handled without choking the little miscreant. But Mr. Tomberlin simply wiped his face and said, “OK, now, give me the water pistol.”

The final story came from the discussion around my family’s Christmas dinner table this past week. My brother, who was just one year behind me in school, was in Mr. Tomberlin’s seventh grade science class. Mr. Tomberlin was making the point that “A pure vacuum does not exist in nature.” When he invited the students to offer an example that would disprove that statement, my Brother immediately pointed to the head of the student sitting directly in front of him.

Again, while that might have prompted an irritated response from many a teacher, Mr. Tomberlin just laughed. When he had regained his composure, he said, “Now, David, surely you don’t mean that.” So there were two winners that day. Mr. Tomberlin had maintained and modeled his patience in a trying situation. And my Brother was pleased as holiday punch that he had made Mr. Tomberlin laugh. 

Patience is one of the seven capital virtues. Not all of us are born with the proclivities to exercise patience. That is why it is important that those who embody that virtue model it for us. Mr. Tomberlin was a very fine model of patience.

Years after I’d left Bushnell, I would periodically run into Mr. Tomberlin on my visits home. For awhile I wrote a weekly column for the Sumter County Times. Mr. Tomberlin was always ready to offer me feedback on those columns. But, more importantly, he always encouraged me to keep writing. And this pattern of encouragement was very consistent with the way he engaged his students across the board throughout his life. In a world where there are more than enough critics and cynics on a given day, we desperately need our encouragers. 

For the gifts of curiosity, public service, patience and encouragement, we are all in Mr. Tomberlin’s debt.

 

The Good and Faithful Servant

One of the hats that I have worn professionally over my lifetime is that of an Episcopal priest. As I thought about what I wanted to say about Mr. Tomberlin, one passage from the Gospel of Matthew kept coming to mind. In what is sometimes called the Parable of the Talents, a master entrusts his property to his servants, each according to their abilities. Then he departs. 

 Two aspects strike me here. One, the master had a sense of his servants, entrusting them with what he had of value to offer them to the limits of their abilities. The second was that he gave them those things of value and then departed, knowing they would have to make decisions on how to use what they had been given.

I see a similarity here to Mr. Tomberlin’s service to our county’s children. He took seriously our potentials and then gave us the things of value he had to offer us – lessons from science, lessons from life. Then he let us go to use them as we saw fit.

 

At the end of this parable, the Master returns to see how his servants had done. To three of them, he recognized that they had done the best they could with the skills they possessed and succeeded beautifully. And so the Master thanks them, telling them, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Today it is our turn to say the same. We have come together to remember the remarkable life of a man who touched all of our lives and made our community a better place in the process. And we are here to recognize the legacy of that life, continuing today in the public service of Mr. Tomberlin’s children and grandchildren and in all of us whom he patiently and devotedly encouraged to serve the world. So for all of these gifts, this day, let us say, thank you. And let us close by saying “Well done, Edgar Warren Tomberlin, good and faithful servant.”  AMEN.

 

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 Harry Scott Coverston

 Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

 hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

   © Harry Coverston, 2023

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