Vince Staten

Don't Know Much About History...

Unless You Had Mr. Fanslow

When word reached Kingsport that legendary D-B history teacher Bob Fanslow had died – this was in 2008 - I happened to be having breakfast with Hagan Bright (D-B ’42).

Hagan said he regretted that he never cared anything about history growing up. “But I didn’t have a good history teacher. A good teacher makes all the difference.”

Bob Fanslow was the embodiment of a good teacher (he would resist the term “great teacher.”)

Mr. Fanslow – he will forever be “Mr. Fanslow” now – came to D-B in September 1950. But before he could establish himself, he was drafted into the Korean War – and thus became a part of what he would teach. He returned two years later and for the next four decades, until he retired in 1991, he was an institution.

Even in retirement he couldn’t give up his passion. He was coaxed back into teaching senior citizens as part of the Kingsport Institute for Continued Learning

When I checked in on his seniors’ class in 2004, he was discussing the Teapot Dome Scandal. He had begun his seniors’ history class a decade earlier with the voyage of Columbus. It had taken him ten years to get from Columbus to Coolidge. He told me he didn’t think he’d live long enough to get the class up to the current period.

He was – sadly – correct. Not long after that class, he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, which eventually took his life.

Over those forty years in the classroom he taught history to some 6,000 students. You probably learned history from Mr. Fanslow.

I wrote three columns about Mr. Fanslow during my 16 years as a Kingsport Times News columnist.

In one I followed Jane Compton, D-B ’56, as she prepared to reveal a half century secret to her old history teacher. It seemed that as a seventeen-year-old graduating senior she was too shy to tell Mr. Fanslow what an impact his teaching had had on her. So she left him an anonymous note.

Compton, who became an educator and author of two books about words, was back in Kingsport for her 50th high school reunion intent on telling him it was she who authored that anonymous fan letter back in the spring of 1956 but also worried that he might not even remember her, much less the letter.

He didn’t remember the note – it had after all been fifty years.

But he gave Jane Compton a better response than she could have ever hoped for. “Well I remember you, Jane. And if you wrote it, I know it was brilliant.”

When I wrote my original Mr. Fanslow column in 2004, Paula Bennett-Paddick, D-B ‘65 and a retired teacher in Birmingham, Alabama, put it best: “Mr. Fanslow was my Mr. Chips.”

Mr. Fanslow from D-B '60's 50th reunion

A few years ago Mr. Fanslow’s daughter Mary was going through his papers when she came across one of his exams. She sent it to me, thinking it might make a good column. It would have, if I had ever gotten around to it.

Now in retirement, I’m getting around to it.

If you want to recall your time with Mr. Fanslow, or just see what you missed, try taking this test.

I’ve also attached the answer key.