Fred Spracklin; teacher took students 'under his wing'

The Boston Latin School and, later, Brighton High School teacher often would joke about the time it took him to straighten his hair, and at the end of the year, as a parting gift, one classroom chipped in and got him a large comb that he kept for years in his dresser. Another class got him a wig made out of a mop and “every once in a while, he’d take it out and have a laugh,’’ his wife said. At the time, he tried it on and then put it away for the memories it brought back.

The rapport between Mr. Spracklin and his students spilled over into the summer months and earned him many wedding invitations from former students, many of whom exchanged holiday cards with him decades after they last stepped into his classroom.

When one of his top students told him of not being able to they could not afford to go to college just a week before graduation, he worked the phones until he got the student a full scholarship to an area college.

“He took such care for us kids in many ways; we all loved him,’’ said former student Mary Djaferis of Amherst.

Mr. Spracklin, who taught in Boston schools for 35 years, died May 17 at Massachusetts General Hospital of complications of kidney failure. He was 86.

Walking amid the desks and pacing the front of the classroom, Mr. Spracklin let his excitement about the works of Shakespeare and other literary greats be known. He called on students to read the parts of the characters, and, at times, took them on long bus rides to watch productions of the plays they were reading.

He showed slides of trips he took and taught the rules of grammar.

“It wasn’t just busy work,’’ Djaferis said. “It made us think and made us process what we were learning.’’

She added: “He wanted us to be able to express ourselves when we spoke. When we weren’t getting it, he did his best for us to understand and to do it right.’’

The former World War II first lieutenant was serious about teaching grammar, but he also was quick to make a pun or spin out longer tales to get a laugh from his students and his family.

“It was long stories and one-liners - amazing, intricate stories, humorous stories with fantastic punch lines at the end - I don’t know how he remembered it all,’’ said his niece, Linda Loudenslagel of Columbus, Ohio.

Still, “he was very traditional, always with a shirt and tie,’’ his wife Louise (Kozel) said, adding, “He was in the Mr. Chips style of things,’’ referring to “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,’’ the 1939 movie starring Robert Donat, about a very caring teacher at an all-boys school in England.

He liked to tell the story of the time he was sent to greet long-time Boston Pops Orchestra conductor Arthur Fiedler, who was visiting students.

“ ‘I put my arm around Arthur Fiedler,’ ’’ his wife recalled him saying. “He thought, ‘That was kind of forward of me,’ but he just felt comfortable at the time.’’

And he was just as chummy with his students, often writing personalized well-wishes in yearbooks, ending his note to Djaferis with “I will miss you,’’ she said.

While Mr. Spracklin spent many a weekend writing college recommendations for his students, he almost did not attend college.

Born in Boston, he grew up in Chelsea, graduating from Chelsea High School in 1941. He had to support his family, so he went to work at a local factory, making baby products.

“They thought that would be his future,’’ his wife said. But after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the US Army. He did a tour of duty with the 13th Airborne Division, followed by an overseas tour in New Guinea and the Philippines. He stayed active with the Army Reserves, retiring in 1972 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Not long after returning from the war, Mr. Spracklin turned to academia, earning a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1950.

About a year later, he became a substitute teacher in the Boston public schools, initially assigned to the James P. Timilty Middle School in Roxbury. He worked there for six years, before becoming a teacher at Boston Latin School in 1957.

All the while, he was taking afternoon and evening courses to earn his master’s degree in education from Suffolk University, which he completed in 1954. He earned a Certificate of Advanced Educational Studies from Boston College in 1958.

He became head of the English department shortly thereafter. In 1967, he took a job with Brighton High School and was an assistant headmaster there for a time.

He was teaching there when the Boston schools were desegregated in the 1970s and did what he could to make sure it had as little impact on his students as possible, family said.

He missed teaching and returned to the classroom, this time at Umana Middle School Academy in East Boston in 1979. His final post was at Boston Latin Academy, from which he retired in 1985.

He and his wife moved from their Reading home to Rye, N.H., that year, before taking time to travel.

In the mid-1980s, he visited the former Soviet Union with a delegation of teachers, as Soviet teachers “picked our brains,’’ about teaching and education systems, his wife said.

“That was before [the collapse of the Soviet Union] everything opened up, so it was a totally different time,’’ she said. “It was a very interesting experience.’’

In their Rye home, they often hosted his now-married-with-children students for dinner, keeping tabs on which students ended up where.

“He was very fatherly, and he took us under his wing,’’ Djaferis said.

In addition to his wife of 52 years and niece, Mr. Spracklin leaves a sister, Lillian Huntley of Lincoln, and many other nieces and nephews.

Services have been held.