ATLANTIC MINE – Mr. S didn’t need a textbook to tell the story of any land rush or battle in history, or to tell you what date it happened.

“He was there,” his E. B. Holman Elementary School students would explain, just barely joking.

Despite being completely blind, Gerald Stefanich, who died March 9 at age 77, knew exactly where his fifth- and sixth-graders were, too.

Debbie Stefanich, Gerald’s wife, remembers one story of a slightly hyper student with squeaky shoes. After Stefanich had repeatedly told him to stay in his seat, the student decided the shoes were the key to his freedom. He took them off and began to pad silently away.

“Sit down, John,” Stefanich thundered.

It was years before the student learned what gave him away, Debbie said, when Stefanich finally revealed he tracked the rule-breaker’s movements based on the fidgeting noises of his classmates. The student decided to stay on the safe side of the rules after that, and these days John Donnelly upholds the law as chief of the Houghton Police Department.

According to Debbie, friends and family knew Stefanich as an accomplished accordian and organ player, a carpenter and a key volunteer at local food banks.

For nearly three decades of students – usually two grades at a time at rural E. B. Holman – Stefanich was an inspiration who taught as much about perseverance as he did about history and math.

“The main thing is that he was able to live a normal life with such a disability,” said former student Anthony Lampinen. “If something’s the matter, you can keep on going.”

Anthony’s wife, Rebecca, a member of the Stanton Township Schools Parent Teacher Organization, said her husband’s father Anthony “Kim” Lampinen was also a Stefanich student. While she never had Mr. S herself, she can still recite the stories.

“He’s like a legend out there,” Rebecca said.

Stanton students never even knew just how much Stefanich had to overcome, according to Debbie. Students knew he went away as a child to a boarding school for the blind, but many did not know he did so at 5 years old, or that he was punished there for crying.

He refused to give in, though, and made few concessions to blindness. Even as a child, she said, he rode bikes and played baseball and hockey with friends.

“A neighbor hollowed out a puck, and it had a bell in it,” Debbie said.

As a teacher, she said, Stefanich’s only concession to blindness was to hire someone to grade homework, read him textbooks and drive him to school. That worked out well, as his assistant, Claire Schwarzenberg-Loring, became his first wife. The couple was married 36 years until Claire’s death in 2007.

Debbie said Stefanich’s independence eventually led to his retirement. She said changing state regulations and regulators would not accept that a blind person could manage a classroom singlehandedly, and he refused to accept a teacher’s aide.

“He said, ‘If you’ve got to pay two people for one person’s job, I’m not doing my job,'” she remembered.

Greg Ozanich, who taught with Stefanich at E. B. Holman, said Mr. S. remembered names and voices as well as he did dates and history.

“I remember Gerry and I standing outside, in comes a gal in her 40s: ‘Hey Mr. S, remember who I am?’ He pulled the name right out of the hat,” Ozanich said. “When he said her name she was floored.”

“Kids that have had him, even all those years later, would talk about how much we take for granted, that there’s nothing really that should stop you,” Ozanich added. “We’re all very lucky to have known him.”

Dan Roblee was one of Stefanich’s students at E. B. Holman Elementary.