By Beth Carroll
When I heard the news of Mary Bentzlin’s death I didn’t really believe it. She was my 6th grade teacher more than half a century ago, and she was not a young woman. But to me she had always seemed immortal.
In the fall of 1969, twenty-something 5th graders came from all over Morris Township to Sussex Avenue School, where we were the new class in the two-year program known as the Academically Able or AA.
We were all hazy on how we had been selected or what that class was FOR, but we all knew pretty quickly that while the 5th grade teachers changed from year to year, the 6th grade teacher – Mrs. Bentzlin – was the heart and soul of the program.
You can read her obituary online. She was unendingly energetic and creative, and she was involved in so many organizations and causes and passions and avocations that you wonder when she had time to sleep or to eat or to breathe, let alone to be the acknowledged matriarch of a large, active family. She was so many things to so many people.
To me, she was my teacher.
Every day in Mrs. Bentzlin’s classroom was an adventure.
We read the New York Times every day and created a class newspaper entirely written, edited, and laid out by the students (although our parents were often commandeered into typing up the mimeographs that we ran off on the machine in the school office).
We had weekly vocabulary words known as “Dictionary Diggings” that required us to know several definitions of each word as well as their etymology. On our tests we had to use a good two-thirds of the words in a piece of writing that spawned such serials as Anthony Boyadjis’ Adventures of Tony Terrific and its companion, Gary Glickman’s Adventures of Gary the Great.
We didn’t write book reports. We wrote book reviews. And our books were chosen from a list of classic literature, unless we got approval from Mrs. Bentzlin to go off list.
We took turns being in charge of Quote of the Day. One lucky student chose a quotation from the Bartlett’s at the front of the classroom, drew the correct number of blank spaces for the quote and the author on the blackboard à la Hangman, researched the author of the quotation in the classroom encyclopedia, and opened the day by fielding questions from the rest of the class until the quote and author were discovered.
Mrs. Bentzlin loved Shakespeare and knew children could be taught to love his works as well. She chose plays for us to read by what productions would be available for us to see.
We read Hamlet, acted out scenes for the other 6th grade classes, and then watched a television production. We read and performed Macbeth (Mary Pihl Beeman remembers Mrs. Bentzlin acting out Lady Macbeth’s mad scene to a mesmerized class) and then went on a field trip to the McCarter Theatre to see it performed live.
We read and performed The Tempest and then – using the money we earned by being the school’s supplier of the daily New York Times – we spent a day at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, CT.
We divided into groups to research and present reports to the rest of the class on ancient Egypt and Greece and the Renaissance and Africa. We pushed our desks out of the way and painted gigantic maps of real as well as fictional lands of our own device.
The two classes together put on elaborate productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. We did HMS Pinafore in 5th grade and The Mikado in 6th grade and performed them for the school, our families, and the residents of Morris View.
There was no gender stereotyping, either. Patti Vogler was Dick Deadeye and Susan Luciano understudied The Mikado. In Mrs. Bentzlin’s class girls and boys alike were told they could be and do anything.
She was exuberant and dramatic. So many times she would exclaim, “C’est magnifique!” and we, who had yet to learn any foreign languages, thought she was giving an order and would all dutifully SAY, “magnifique.” She would often proclaim that we were “la crème de la crème” and made us believe that nothing was beyond our reach.
Our education continued outside the classroom. One evening she took a group of us to hear Joseph Papp speak at Fairleigh Dickinson. We got there early and sat in the front row. Papp was temporarily taken aback by unexpectedly addressing a group of 11- and 12-year-olds in addition to the college crowd, but he recovered quickly and even had Donna Finkel Holcomb read a Hamlet soliloquy aloud.
At the end of the school year she told us all that when we got to middle school (junior high in those days) we should make sure to join everything – band, choir, yearbook, plays, sports. She wanted us to experience and revel in life as much as she did.
Ten years ago a couple of us who had remained local decided to put together a reunion. Out of the 20 living students from our class we were able to track down all but a few.
Most of us had excelled at Morristown High and gone on to elite colleges and grad schools and we were scattered all over the country. Most never attended regular reunions, but we came from everywhere for that one and Mrs. Bentzlin was our guest of honor.
She remembered every single one of us (by where we sat in her classroom, she said) and gave a loving, eloquent, inspiring speech.
Mrs. Bentzlin taught hundreds of students in her long career and I suspect that every single one of them remembers her as the best teacher they ever had. She told our parents that the magic in her classroom came from the students. But I respectfully disagree. She knew how to inspire and motivate and excite. Mary Bentzlin was truly “la crème de la crème.”
Mary Plunkett Bentzlin passed away peacefully at home in Morristown on Jan. 14, 2022. She was 96, and is survived by six children, 13 grandchildren, 8 great-grandchildren, and countless former students from her 30-year career in the Morris School District. Hours of visitation are 4 pm to 7 pm this Friday, Jan. 28, at The Church of Christ the King, Blue Mill Road, New Vernon. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at the church on Saturday, Jan. 29, at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers, kindly donate to “The Mary Bentzlin Scholarship.” Donations (with a notation indicating Mary’s scholarship) can be made online, or mailed by check to the Morris Educational Foundation, P.O.Box 1224, Morristown, NJ 07962.
Beth Carroll is a retired civilian from the Morris County Jail, a lifelong resident of Morris Township, and the mother of two adult daughters – one a teacher and the other a classical actor. (Mrs. Bentzlin’s legacy lives on!)
What a great story about Mary Bentzlin by Beth Carroll! She sounded like an incredible teacher and person, full of imagination and dedication to showing kids exceptional routes to learning. My condolences to Mary Bentzlin’s family for the loss of a remarkable woman.
About a decade later Mrs. Bentzlin helped crystallize a love of words and language in me that I have no doubt led to my own doctorate in literature and career as an educator. I will never forget her or the community of learning she fostered in our class.
Thank you, Beth, for your reminder of the many gifts Mrs. Bentzlin shared with her students. I remember well her Mad Scene, those room-size maps of the continents, her gently admonishing me to do better when I’d select a 3-line filler from the Times for my current events requirement, and so much more. The world became much bigger in place and time that year in her classroom, and her lessons will be with me always.
Mary Bentzlin- a life well lived. I loved Beth Carroll’ inspiring tribute to an exceptional and extraordinary teacher. Mary made her remarkable stamp on the world. Well done now RIP.