Wesley Burrell

Maker of furniture, molder of young men, women

by Craig McCool - Kalamazoo Gazette (Michigan)

Galesburg - When retired school teacher and administrator Wesley Burrell happens upon one of his former students, they still insist on addressing him as Mr. Burrell. The 85 year-old hasn't been in front of a classroom for 26 years, yet to his students, he will always be Mr. Burrell.
     "He's asked me to call him Wes so many times," said 1973 Galesburg Augusta High School alumna Beth Bresson, who was a student in Burrell's history and geography courses. "I've really tried, but I just can't do it. It just feels like I'm not respecting him."
   "He's the type of person you don't want to lose contact with," said Bresson, now a dental assistant who still remembers how Burrell reached her through his history and geography courses, "the kind of teacher you want your kids to have in school."

A devoted teacher

     "I used to tell the kids that they were intelligent enough to read the lesson," said Burrell, seated in a favorite armchair in his favorite room of his Galesburg home - the library.  "The teachers I enjoyed in school were the ones that filled in the gaps."  Around him, on all four walls, floor-to-ceiling book shelves house a personal library so large - more than 3,000 works - that it long ago spilled over into the adjacent rooms.  
     Burrell's front porch became his reference section.  The living room - biography. The back porch, periodicals, where Burrell keeps every back issue of National Geographic magazine, all the way back to the turn of the century, organized by date.  "I think I'm missing four issues." he said with a frown, slightly troubled at the thought.
     Burrell passed the information he drew from books and personal experience to his students through lesson plans that often included interesting anecdotes and rarities not found in the usual texts, a teaching style Burrell called "fleshing-out" history.
     "I was able to give them all kinds of information," Burrell said. "On everything from the Civil War to social history, details that their books didn't cover.  I tried to humanize Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, to make real living characters out of them. I used to tell my students that everything that happened yesterday is history."
     As Burrell watched me frantically scribble notes, he digressed into a history lesson.  "I can remember when ballpoint pens were invented," he began. "They cost 10 or 12 dollars and people thought they were the greatest thing since white bread." 
     After earning a bachelor's in English from Eastern Michigan University and a master's in English from the University of Michigan where he specialized in 18th-century British literature, Burrell taught briefly at Hasting Public Schools before he was hired at Galesburg High School. That was three years prior to the district merger of Galesburg - Augusta schools in 1961.
     Burrell had been in the school district for only a year when he was offered the job of principal, a role he served from 1949 to '65.  That's longer than any other Galesburg Augusta High School principal has held the position before or since.       
     But after 16 years, Burrell decided it was time to go back to teaching full time. The move not only got him back into the classroom, but gave him more time to devote to his own interests as well, interests that would take him all over the world.

World traveler

     Like many children, Burrell collected stamps in his youth, but unlike many children, he wasn't happy to just collect stamps from around the globe.  "If I had a foreign stamp, I wanted to know where that country was," he remembered.  The curiosity sparked an interest in geography, which in turn ignited a passion for traveling. 
     "I consider myself a traveler, not a tourist," said Burrell.  Before his wife, Ruth, passed away in 1998, the couple had traveled to nearly every corner of the globe, including England, North Africa and the West Indies. "There is a difference.  If you go with a tour group, you had to have your bags packed, gobble your breakfast and be on your way before 7 in the morning. Tour groups go a predetermined route, I like to do it on my own," he said.
     Often traveling without reservations, Wesley and Ruth immersed themselves in local culture by renting cottages instead of hotels and renting cars instead of riding tour bus.  
     "A few times we stayed in a fancy hotel, but that's kind of like Miami Beach," Burrell said, shaking his head.
     As he used the knowledge gained in books to teach his history courses, Burrell used his traveling experiences to supplement his geography lessons.
     "He would bring in pictures and artifacts and tell stories about that area," Beth Bresson recalled of Burrell's 10th-grade geography course. "He and Mrs. Burrell traveled all over the world to places most people had never been.  His classes were not just reading the chapters and taking the test. There was much, much more to it than that."

Craftsman

     Bresson was one of the last students who had the opportunity to study under Burrell. "I had some of my former student's kids in school, but I quit before I got their grandkids," he said with a laugh.  After nearly 30 years at G-A High School, the veteran teacher retired in 1974.
     "A lot of people retire to Florida and sit around talking about arthritis and playing bridge," he said. "But that's not me."
     Always in search of new challenges, Burrell turned to woodworking.  Since teaching himself from books and magazines, (and, presumably, some trial and error) Burrell has finished more than 130 pieces of furniture, from simple, single-drawer end tables, to an elegant canopy bed and an ornate high boy chest, complete with hand-carved drawer pulls and legs.  
     "It took me a week to carve each leg," Burrell said nonchalantly.
     From the small, heated shop in the back of his garage, Burrell builds furniture to give to family members and friends as gifts. On one workbench sat a nearly finished, three drawer table he planned to donate to the Galesburg Historical Museum so it could be raffled as a fund raiser. Several other projects were scattered about the shop, and on the walls were tacked plans for still others.
     "This is the most rewarding hobby I've had," said Burrell, who has had his share of hobbies, from shooting antique firearms to collecting pillboxes.  "I like to work with my hands, and I can share my skills with my friends and family. I've made so many people happy."  
     More people that he realizes, perhaps. Burrell reaches people through his art now the same way he reached students through his classes then. 
     "Mr. Burrell cared so much about every student," said Bresson. "He respected the kids a lot, and he was a natural teacher. You could sit for hours and listen to him." 
     "Before ballpoint pens, all we had were fountain pens, you see, and ballpoints were much easier - but so expensive. Today, you can get a whole package for a few dollars." Burrell continued his history lesson as I filled page after page with notes. Eventually my ink pen ran dry.
     "You need an ink pen?" he asked me. "I've got plenty."
     But the truth was, I just wanted to listen.

* This article was retyped exactly as written by Craig McCool. The top and bottom pictures were scanned from the article.  (Not all the pictures from the article were used as they didn't reproduce well scanning from newspaper. The one of Wesley in front of the bookshelf did not appear in the article.  It was taken by me and insert for the web page.  -Diane