“His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy.’” (CSB – Read the chapter)

This won’t be the next expected entry in our Advent journey. Some recent news has prompted a temporary change in direction.

All kinds of people come and go in your life. Most of them don’t make any kind of an impact on you, nor you on them. Some last a little longer. But there are a few who last. Even when you don’t see them often, they’re still there. The impact they have on you resonates all the way down to your soul. I’ve had a few of these folks over the course of my life. I recently learned that I have one fewer. The world is poorer for it. Let me tell you a bit about Don Ross.

A school principal is an impactful position. And the longer you are with a particular principal, the more impactful he or she is. This means that an elementary school principal is the most impactful of all. You spend more time with that principal than any of the others. Well, I say that, but don’t mean it quite like it sounds. I mean, some kids spend a lot of time with their principal because they are constantly making or getting in trouble. I wasn’t that kid. But nonetheless, when you see someone five days a week, nine months out of the year, for seven full years, they tend to make an impact on your life.

Don Ross made an impact on my life. He made an impact on a lot of people’s lives. As a young child at the school where he finished out his long and fruitful full-time educational career, I interacted with him a lot. He was like the perfect principal. He knew everybody’s name. He respected the teachers, but more importantly commanded their respect. The buck stopped at his desk and he knew that. He embraced it with clarity and humility.

He was an authority, but he was never authoritarian. He could get tough when it came time to dish out discipline. At least I assume that. He regularly assured me that my parents had given him permission to paddle me if I ever got out of line, but I wasn’t the kind of kid to get out of line. But you could see it in him that he could be tough when he needed to be. Thankfully, he ran the kind of ship that didn’t require him to be most of the time. Instead, he was able to be pretty liberal (although he was decidedly not a liberal!) with his big smile and loud, distinctive laugh – more of a guffaw, really. He joked quickly, but could turn serious and compassionate on a dime when the mood called for it.

He was deeply concerned with developing the character of his students, and not just their minds. At awards ceremonies he always opened with the instructions that we should sit quietly (and Indian style which is what it was called before being politically correct mattered) while other students were receiving their awards. We could cheer quietly if we wanted, but it was never okay to boo another person. Still to this day I struggle with booing at a sporting event. When we received our award we were to look the person handing us the award in the eye, thank them sincerely, and receive the award with our left hand on top while delivering a firm handshake underneath with our right hand. I still cringe today when I see school administrators casually handing awards to students who receive them just as casually.

Don helped keep me on track with both fashion and sports. I remember wearing a combination of purple shorts and a purple shirt to school. I did not get made fun of for it, thankfully, but Don, who knew my dad was a KU fan, wryly observed at recess that I was wearing the colors of our arch-rivals, K-State. I’m pretty sure I didn’t wear that particular outfit ever again.

Speaking of my dad, Don knew my dad, something he reminded me of regularly. He had known my family for years, having lived over in the neighborhood where my dad’s family had lived while he and my uncles were growing up. He had traded at my grandfather’s service station. He knew my grandmother, Chub (Mimi to me), well. That always made me feel a little extra special that I had a connection with the principal nobody else in the school shared. I suspect Don made many other students feel the same way. That’s just the kind of person he was.

In most cases, when you leave elementary school, you leave your relationship with your principal mostly behind. You may pop back in to visit every now and then, but principals don’t stay forever, so even if you do, you aren’t likely to see them. Don retired before my sixth grade year, so that was definitely the case for me. There was one thing, though, that kept that from happening: Don.

I’m still not sure why beyond the long-time family connection, but once I had graduated and was into high school, Don started reaching out to stay in touch. I wasn’t the only student he did that with, but I was in small company. I think it started when he took me and two other kids from my elementary school to a KU basketball game. After that, we started meeting occasionally for breakfast. We always met at the Big Biscuit which was not particularly convenient for either of us, but he liked the food there, so that’s where we met.

We would sit and talk for two hours about all kinds of things. He would pepper me with questions about whatever happened to be on his mind – sports, politics, culture, theology, you name it. And then he would listen. That’s not quite right. He would listen with keen interest. He was fully engaged in whatever I had to say. In the waning years of my being a teenager and in my early 20s, I doubt very seriously I had anything particularly novel or savvy, much less substantive to say about any of those things, but Don listened like I was one of the brightest minds in the world all the same. He had a knack for making you feel special. He loved people. And after he reached out a few times about our meeting like that, I started to make sure to let him know myself when I was going to be home from school for an extended break.

Don became during these conversations far more than a principal. He became a mentor and a friend. When I met my bride, before she became my bride, I made sure to introduce her to him as soon as I could. He gave her a glowing stamp of approval and assured me that I was way out of my league (he was right). Our occasional meetings after that were trios. And when our oldest came along a few years later, we asked Don if he would be the god-grandfather to our kids. He never married and didn’t have any children of his own, and I didn’t have a grandfather still living. It was a pretty natural fit. And Don was to them just exactly what I hoped he would be. He showed them the same love and interest he showed me, calling the best out of them and praising them abundantly for the remarkable young men that they are.

Lying at the heart of all of these interactions was Don’s faith. He was a fervently committed follower of Jesus. He was active in church all of his life. He was generous and faithful. In fact, he lived a remarkably simple life so that he could be more generous. He was supportive of his pastor wherever he was a member. And he was quick to share his faith with anyone who would listen. And Don could talk. He was the kind of extrovert who never met a stranger in his life. He had a knack for making you feel special. It takes a deep-seated, Christ-centered kind of humility to be able to do that, and that was Don.

He was committed to the good of his community. He did much good in Independence during his life. He raised incredible amounts of money to help support students going to college. The scholarship fund he created when he left my elementary school has been going on for more than 30 years by now, I think, and will last pretty much indefinitely thanks to the work he did, supporting hundreds of students (including me) as they pursue further education. He was a light in the Mount Washington neighborhood. He was born there and lived in the same house for just nearly all of his 89 years. He watched the neighborhood decline markedly, He watched it go from a thriving community hub to a fairly unsafe ghetto. But he never stopped caring for it; never stopped meeting his neighbors and loving them. That neighborhood will sorely miss his presence.

The world will sorely miss his presence. I am who I am today in significant part because of his impact. I don’t think I could hope to recount all that his praying for me accomplished. That’s something he assured me of every time we parted ways. “I pray for you every day,” he would tell me. Whenever he sent a card, which he did on occasion, he wrote it there too. And I believe that he did. He was a man of his word.

As a matter of fact, I should probably make that a bit of life advice. If you are young, find somebody who is not and who is a committed follower of Jesus, and seek out a relationship with them. You’ll thank me later. If you are not young, find somebody who is, and intentionally seek out a relationship with them, praying for them every day. You’ll change their life and grow God’s kingdom. Just like Don did.

Don closed his eyes on this life a little over a week ago. I had no idea. In typical Don fashion, he made sure none of the attention was on him. He was home, and then he was at a retirement home, and then he was gone. As near as I can tell, nobody knew about it until after the fact. The last time I got to see him was the last time I was in Kansas City. I wish there had been one more chance, but there will yet be another. He’s with Jesus now, and the reunion we will one day enjoy together will be sweet indeed. Until then, the world will miss a saint.