Homeroom teacher, high school student reunite after 54 years apart

Michael J. Roessler, 70, of Dimondale drove to Van Buren Township on Sunday with his wife Mary to be reunited with his high school teacher.
This was almost 54 years after they last saw each other in an Indiana home room.
Barbara Rogalle Miller, his teacher and now an attorney in Belleville, recently was sorting through some boxes of books in her home to find some to send with her son Philip, who was heading to Alaska for a two-year employment contract as assistant city manager in Valdez.
Philip found a book with a written inscription and a three-page letter folded up and tucked inside.
The letter was to “Miss Rogalle” from one of her former high school students, Mike Roessler, John Adams High School Class of 1965 in South Bend, Indiana.
Miller was delighted and got on the internet to Google Roessler. She found him in Michigan and invited him to brunch with a few of her friends. He came on Sunday with his wife on one arm and three yearbooks under his other arm.
Roessler, who was president of the student council his senior year, said he had asked another English teacher for a suggestion on what book to buy Miss Rogalle as a going-away present, since she was moving back to Michigan to help take care of her ailing father.
The book was “One Day in the Afternoon of the World,” a novel by William Saroyan. Roessler said he ordered the book at the bookstore in town and thought it would get to him in time to give it to Miss Rogalle before she left. But it was delayed all summer and he finally sent it to her in September 1964.
Inside the cover, he wrote: “To Miss Rogalle in appreciation for a boost in the right direction applyed (sic) to the swelled and ignorant head of one very grateful member of homeroom 106. I’ll never forget you.”
Roessler said one day his best friend Billy Schohl had asked him for a ring in home room and, when he didn’t have one to loan him, Billy improvised when he asked Miss Rogalle to marry him.
Miller said she didn’t remember getting engaged, so she assumes she said no.
Schohl is now an advertising copywriter in Los Angeles and he and Roessler keep in touch on the internet and talk on the phone all the time.
After graduating from high school in 1965, Roessler went on to graduate from the University of Michigan in 1969. He taught secondary education for 39 years and then became a professor of education at Albion College for four years. He now is retired.
He and Mary have a daughter Kate who is a teacher in Dexter.
Roessler presently spends time on his website “Humpty Trumpty’s Great Fall,” which he said is an attempt to ameliorate the damage done by the president. He said his friend Billy writes amusing comments regularly on the site.
Roessler’s 1964 letter mentioned that he was grateful that Miss Rogalle taught him the importance of giving back to the community. And she taught him tact, which has come in handy.
“I’m still working on tact,” Roessler said on Sunday.
Former VBT Trustee Jeff Jahr, who was a guest at Sunday’s brunch, said it was amusing to him to see that Miller’s former student is retired and Miller is still practicing law.