He was all the Buzz

Danette Goulet

Students that Buzz Amble taught last year stood next to those he

taught nearly 30 years ago to wish him well in his retirement at a party

Friday afternoon in Costa Mesa.

The College Park Elementary School community -- past and present --

came together to honor a teacher who changed and shaped many a life.

“I just wrote a letter in the last couple months to the district, not

knowing if he was still around, because he was a teacher that stuck out

in my mind, that changed my life,” said Heather Darrow, 38, who was in

Amble’s class 28 years ago. “I was a tomboy before it was acceptable and

. . . a total outcast, and he made it acceptable. That stuck with me

through life.”

Amble, a third-grade teacher, has been in education for 34 years, in

the Newport-Mesa Unified School District for 32 years and at College Park

Elementary School for 30 years.

He has enjoyed his time at College Park to the fullest. He even met

his wife, Bird, now a kindergarten teacher at Whittier Elementary School,

while teaching there 27 years ago.

Amble spent many of those years teaching fifth grade, but the last

several years he taught third grade.

Amble, however, never had an interest in school as a child.

“I had a tough time all the way through” school, he said, adding that

while sports, art and extracurricular activities interested him, school

bored him to tears.

His students say it’s too bad he didn’t have himself as a teacher.

“He was a really fun teacher because he always did really fun stuff,”

said Miranda Partin, 9, who had Amble for reading language arts last

year. “He had a postcard of a monkey that he said was his baby picture.”

The boy who hated school only chose teaching as a major in college to

avoid going to Vietnam, where two of his buddies had already died, he

said.

Out of college, he discovered he liked school after all -- as a

teacher.

“I found out I loved it,” he said. “I loved children. And I just came

out [to California from Minnesota] for a year in 1964.”

Now, after all these years, he is still in Costa Mesa but finally

leaving teaching.

“I want to go out while I’m on top and not feeling old and tired,” he

said.