2006.12.12: December 12, 2006: Headlines: COS - Tunisia: Secondary Education: Disabilities: Courier Post Online: Tunisia RPCV Phyliss Crudo Badame wants to reconnect with former students
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2006.12.12: December 12, 2006: Headlines: COS - Tunisia: Secondary Education: Disabilities: Courier Post Online: Tunisia RPCV Phyliss Crudo Badame wants to reconnect with former students
Tunisia RPCV Phyliss Crudo Badame wants to reconnect with former students
Joseph Badame insists there are several stories worth telling about life with Phyliss Crudo Badame, his wife of 38 years. You could start with her long years as an English and Spanish teacher in area schools, or her principal role in the success of a Camden evening school. There are the two years the couple spent with the Peace Corps in Tunisia. Or you could reference the decades she spent voluntarily mentoring immigrant nuns. The 63-year-old architect knows it kills his wife to be disabled by a stroke, housebound and dependent on his care, devoted as it is. She wants to have a piece of her purposeful life back by reconnecting with some of the thousands of students she taught at Cramer Junior High School and Woodrow Wilson Adult Evening School in Camden, St. Stephen's in Pennsauken and the former St. Joseph's in Medford (now St. Mary of the Lakes).
Tunisia RPCV Phyliss Crudo Badame wants to reconnect with former students
Teacher wants to reconnect with former students
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Joseph Badame insists there are several stories worth telling about life with Phyliss Crudo Badame, his wife of 38 years.
You could start with her long years as an English and Spanish teacher in area schools, or her principal role in the success of a Camden evening school.
There are the two years the couple spent with the Peace Corps in Tunisia. Or you could reference the decades she spent voluntarily mentoring immigrant nuns.
But Joe and Phyliss' tale is more than anything a love story.
The 63-year-old architect knows it kills his wife to be disabled by a stroke, housebound and dependent on his care, devoted as it is. She wants to have a piece of her purposeful life back by reconnecting with some of the thousands of students she taught at Cramer Junior High School and Woodrow Wilson Adult Evening School in Camden, St. Stephen's in Pennsauken and the former St. Joseph's in Medford (now St. Mary of the Lakes).
And Joe was determined to put out the word by getting in touch with this newspaper.
"This stroke is slowly killing us," he says. "To know somebody for 50 years who always put herself secondary to everyone else . . . and now to see her like this. She's hungering for things to do.
"It completely changes your life," the Medford resident adds of his wife's disability and his own diabetes. "It can be mind boggling."
It is with a great deal of love that Joe often finishes his wife's sentences, keen thoughts and memories hampered by a speech impediment.
"At this point in her life, why not have the opportunity to connect with people she taught?" Joe asks.
Those "people" were students, he adds, who sought out his wife's classes even though Phyliss had a reputation for toughness. One of her favorite punishments for wayward students was making them recite from memory the 19th-century poem If, by Rudyard Kipling:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!
"She was a giant," Joe says of his wife. "She was the strictest, most demanding teacher, yet kids flocked to her. It wasn't fun and games . . . but they sensed she had their best interests at heart."
One of the kids who flocked to Ms. Crudo was Badame himself; she was his homeroom teacher at Cramer. Like him, she was the product of an Italian-Catholic family in Camden, he an only child, she from a family of 11.
Phyliss mentored the self-proclaimed "C" student through the years and repeatedly spurned Joe's later advances because of the 16-year-difference in their ages.
"She kept telling me, "I'll be an old lady by the time we can get married,' " he recalls.
When they did finally marry in 1968, Joe was 26, Phyliss nearly 40. It was merely a formality when everyone said it wouldn't work.
"We've known each other for 50 years . . .," Joe says, proudly beaming at his wife. "And we've been married for 39. We proved them all wrong."
So even if you were one of those kids who had to memorize Kipling, Phyliss would love to hear from you. Write to her at 9 Pinecrest Drive, Medford 08055 or e-mail jbadame2@comcast. net.
And help a treasured teacher "fill the unforgiving minute, with sixty seconds' worth of distance run."
Ties That Bind appears Tuesday. Contact Christina Mitchell at (856) 317-7905 or cmitchell@courierpostonline.com.
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Headlines: December, 2006; Peace Corps Tunisia; Directory of Tunisia RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Tunisia RPCVs; Secondary Education; Disabilities
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Story Source: Courier Post Online
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Tunisia; Secondary Education; Disabilities
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