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It wasn’t your typical retirement party. Then again, Linda Mengel and James Harris aren’t your typical teachers. 

Two weeks ago, more than 300 parents, teachers and students packed the Jefferson Elementary School auditorium to honor Mengel, a 63-year-old Hawaiian with an infectious smile and gentle touch with children, and Harris, 61, an understated Southern Californian with a wry sense of humor and surprising ability to inspire.  

“I was overwhelmed,” said Harris, a fifth-grade teacher. “It was really nice.” 

The May 30 retirement party wasn’t the only one in the district. Harris and Mengel are just two of 23 Berkeley teachers who will spend their last day in the classroom Friday when the school year ends. 

“We’re going to miss them dearly,” said Berkeley Federation of Teachers President Barry Fike, of the group of retirees. “They’ve all provided such a wealth of experience and wisdom to the district and their colleagues.” 

Jefferson principal Betty Delaney said Mengel and Harris each brought their own gifts to the classroom. 

“[Mengel’s] sensitivity to children and their needs will be missed,” she said, and Harris “pushes children to recognize that they have a responsibility for their education.” 

Harris, a 36-year veteran of the Berkeley Unified School District, grew up in the Pasadena suburb of Temple City, the son of a nurse and a post office worker. After graduating from Arizona State University, where he spent several summers working with troubled youth, he moved to Berkeley with his wife, Veronica, in 1967 and began work as a substitute teacher at Longfellow Elementary School. Two weeks into the school year, a teacher fled to Canada to avoid the draft and Harris had a full-time job. 

At the time, the Berkeley Unified School District was still a year away from becoming the first district in the nation to voluntarily integrate its largely segregated schools, and Longfellow’s students were all black. As a teacher, Harris said he tried to shield his pupils from the psychological strains of segregation. 

“I didn’t want them to think they couldn’t do what everyone else could do,” said Harris. “I always wanted to keep expectations high.” 

In 1968, Harris moved to Lincoln Elementary School, later Malcolm X, where he would remain for 28 years, with a one-year hiatus in New Hampshire. 

Harris remembers the first year of desegregation in Berkeley as an exciting time. 

“It was a big experiment,” he said. “No one knew what would happen, but there was a lot of togetherness.” 

In 1972, Veronica gave birth to the couple’s only child, Scott, and five years later, the young family moved to New Hampshire for a change of pace. But, after a short time in the Granite State, the Harrises found that their new community hadn’t quite caught up with the liberal social currents that had swept through Berkeley a decade earlier. 

“We ran into a time warp,” Harris said. “They were about 10 years behind.” 

The couple, strapped for cash, bought an old school bus and horse trailer, packed them with furniture, and headed west—but not before some good-natured neighbors scrawled “Dirty Hippies” and “Berkeley or Bust” on the side of the aging bus.  

Harris returned to Malcolm X in time for the 1978-1979 school year. There, he found Lorenzo Franklin, a bright boy with a temper who was being raised by his great-grandmother in South Berkeley. Now 34, Franklin said his teacher disarmed him with jokes about his short fuse, taught him the importance of an education and took extraordinary steps outside the classroom to get him on the right track. 

“The things he did away from the school are what have stuck with me for 25 years,” said Franklin, who still lives in the Bay Area and has kept in touch with Harris. “He would take me to his place. He would take me to A’s games. He would take me to his son’s soccer games. He really made me feel a part of him, a part of his family. 

“I can’t say enough about this man,” Franklin added. “I only hope that I can reach someone the way Mr. Harris reached me.” 

Harris touched the lives of many other students through his annual Shakespeare productions, which he began in 1985 at Malcolm X and continued at Jefferson Elementary. 

“Since it’s basically a foreign language to all the kids, it made the playing field even for all the kids—high achieving and low achieving,” he said. “Kids who were shy became another character and they were fantastic.” 

Last year, Harris’ son Scott joined him at Jefferson as a kindergarten teacher. 

“He actually tried to talk me out of being a teacher, but I think he was a good role model,” said the junior Harris. “I’ll stop by his classroom from time to time. It’s been really fun working with him.”  

Mengel, a third-grade teacher, taught with Harris for a year at Lincoln in 1968-1969 before reuniting with him seven years ago at Jefferson, where the two teach in adjacent classrooms. 

Mengel, the daughter of a policeman and a postmaster, grew up in Hawaii. In 1957, Mengel left the island to attend Pomona College in Claremont and wound up at the nearby Claremont Graduate School of Education. 

“I didn’t want to go into education,” she said. “But I was widowed at the time and I had to find something to do.” 

Mengel lasted two weeks in her first teaching job, after following the advice of a free-wheeling professor who recommended that she allow students to “express themselves.” 

“I let them express themselves and they ran all over,” she said, with a chuckle. “I called in sick and never went back.” 

After a stint working at UC Berkeley’s School of Optometry, Mengel, who has two daughters, fell back into teaching, accepting a job at Berkeley’s now-defunct Franklin Elementary School in 1964. “In the old days, we had a lot of fun,” said Mengel. “It was an honor to teach in Berkeley.” 

After 20 years at Lincoln, Jefferson and Longfellow elementary schools in Berkeley, Mengel moved in 1989 to Jefferson, where she is perhaps best known for her annual Hawaiian cultural celebration. Every spring, she decks out a couple dozen students in grass skirts, colorful headdresses and red ukuleles, teaching them island songs and dances. 

Parents say the Hawaiian event is just one of many ways Mengel connects with her students and makes learning fun. 

“Not only does she teach the three R’s, but she teaches way beyond that—she teaches to the whole child,” said Allison Murray, whose son and daughter have had Mengel as a teacher. 

Both Mengel and Harris plan to remain part of the Jefferson School community in their retirement. Harris plans to volunteer at the school, possibly reviving his Shakespeare program. Mengel hopes to continue working with Jefferson students as an occasional substitute teacher, when she’s not traveling with her two sisters, who live in Hawaii.  

Mengel said she may also return to the school to teach the kids how to strum on the ukulele and sway in a grass skirt.  

“When you’re a teacher, you can see how [students] grow throughout the year and develop a sense of self,” she said. “I’ll miss that.”