12th grade English teacher.
She had a way of seeing the absolute best of you, and believing in you. She made me believe in myself. I went to college feeling like I really could do literature well, that I could write and think and had stuff to say. That my ideas mattered. That I mattered.
Also, while visiting her house over the summer after graduation, (we all did because we all adored her and she put up with us), I met her kids-- four teenagers.
I subsequently started going out with, and eventually married, the oldest one 
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