Larry Vetter died on Saturday, September 7, 2021 from cancer at age 78. No one outside of my friends and family has had more of an impact on my life than him. I probably have not talked to him in over thirty years, but he is someone who's words and teachings I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
Mr. Vetter taught Ceramics at my high school for forty-five years. When he was hired in 1974, the school was reeling from student race riots, and he said they hired him because school administration figured they could put his martial art skills to use. Like the working-class community where he taught, Larry grew up in working-class Eagle Rock, but had the wherewithal to attend catholic prep school, Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks.
Five days a week, for over forty years, Larry made the 110 mile round trip drive from his home in Dana Point to my high school, to teach us kids that the zip code we lived in did not determine our futures. The ceramics lessons he taught were really just vessels for greater lessons about creativity, culture, humanities, identity, lifelong learning, tenacity, courage, expression, and success. I would not be where I am today if he didn't believe in me, if he had not encouraged me, if he had not shown me a better future than I could have imagined for myself. He did this for thousands of other students that passed through his classroom. He exemplified what a teacher is in all its nobility.
For me, I had no ambition to go to college. My parent's greatest hope for me was to stay out of jail. I thought I would just work in a warehouse or a retail store like the most of my neighbors and peers and live the rest of my life there. It was Mr. Vetter that showed me a different path. He convinced me that I had options, that despite my lackluster academic prowess, I could very well make it into college. And I did. I studied art and education. I graduated with honors. I went on to grad school. And I never told him. I never told him how much of a huge impact he had on my life. I like to think that word got to him that Walter, the punk rock kid from his advance ceramic classes went on to become an artist and a teacher. That I went on to marry one of his star academic decathletes, the one with purple hair, the one he inspired to get an Art History degree, the one he would always tell me, "She's too much woman for you!" whenever I was caught flirting, causing us both to blush. I guess I never reached out and thanked him because I always wanted to impress him, and despite as far as I have come, I wanted things to be perfect, I wanted to be more and more successful, and here we are thirty years down the road and now he is gone.
Larry was an Atheist, the first one I ever had the pleasure of knowing. He believed this life is the only one we get, so make the most of it. It is his memory that lives beyond him, his memory lives in every student he inspired, in every piece of art I make, in every art lesson I teach, he literally changed the world though a million interactions, like stones tossed on the water, his memory ripples though our timeline.
Thank you my old teacher, Ars longa, vita brevis.
