Hugo “Hugh” Peter Spagnuolo

Hugh Spagnuolo was one of the best teachers to ever grace a classroom. He was brilliant, cultured and talented , yet so humble and kind. I hope that you were blessed in your life Spag, because you were a blessing to so many. Thank you for coming back to the community to teach. We know you could’ve gone so many others places but you were intentional and came back to make a difference… you did. Thank you for seeing us. Rest in power until we meet again.

Spag taught so much more than English. Psychology, history, geography, philosophy, science, art history, film, even some math. I ended up becoming a teacher myself, and this multidisciplinary approach stayed with me my entire career.

Thank you, Spag, for teaching us about making connections. Thank you for teaching us to pay attention to details. Thank you for teaching us look for, memorize, and value meaningful quotations, and to see the humanity behind the written word. But most of all, thank you for believing in us, your students. Thank you for believing in me.

I’m having a hard time even coming up with the words to describe the impact this man made on my life. He showed me that learning is meant to be multi-disciplinary, investigative, messy, and relevatory. I am the teacher, writer, and person I am because of all that he taught me. And as the many comments above me show, I am not the only one.

I know that he may have had grander plans for his life than teaching in an urban public school for over 40 years, but I hope that he knows that what he actually did was so much more than that. Not a drop of his career or life was wasted. Rest easy, Mr. Spag, and know that you will never, ever be forgotten.

So sad to hear about his passing. He is a true legend at Eastern. He will be missed, but his legacy will carry on. Mr. Spag- you’ll always be remembered by many. Thanks for all you’ve done!

As I read through the messages while waiting for Hugh’s obituary, I kept looking for a place to “like” each post as it is clear we all experienced his magnificent gift of teaching and friendship. There are not enough words. His memory IS a blessing. Stephanie

I was watching a movie last night called “Mr Holland’s Opus”. Not sure why I clicked on it, I’ve seen it and enjoyed it many many times. There is a quote near the end that always seems to bring tears to my eyes. “Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched, and each one of us is a better person because of you. We are your symphony, Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and notes of your opus. And we are the music of your life.”

There is one teacher that I think about when I watch this movie. The teacher in 326 that we all know as Mr Spag.

Well, after receiving the news this morning of his passing. I know why I clicked on that movie. To be reminded of what Hugh Spagnuolo meant to me and everyone else that was honored to be a student in his classes.

Thank you for the life lessons that you taught me. I will never forget you and I will also never forget Hamlet’s soliloquy thanks to you. Rest in peace.

Many of us have been influenced by many things, from many directions, but many of us were touched in particular depths by the unassuming man in Room 326. Teacher, mentor, inspiration, friend…he was many things and the way he taught was full of facets. It wasn’t just the range of literature, the universe of feelings and thought that he exposed us to… Raskalnikov and Cyrano, Ishmael and Tess, Milton, Montaigne, Machado, .. . It wasn’t just the mimeographed (!) quotes from Petrarca and Blake, not the descent to the ninth bolgia of the Malebolge nor the ascent up the terraced seating that made you feel you were in the front row even in the back.

For me it was perhaps most that he never knew exactly how his teaching was going to flow. He once said that he never knew, each first day in September when he creased the Folger binding and opened Act 1, Scene 1, whether Hamlet was going to be a hero or a knave, whether Ophelia would be an innocent or a seducer, whether Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern were cunning accomplices or simple-souled stooges. He never knew because at some level he just set the door ajar and each year, each class, came to its own opinions. Each class sought, and sometimes found, motives and meanings, feelings and carings in its own way. Each time he read the play, it was new.

In that Zen-like way, his thousandth play was his first, or, rather, he made the space for it to be ours, not his. His genius was eliciting our own, giving us the experience of our own insights, letting us feel the value of our own revelations, helping us realize, at levels we probably didn’t then understand, that there were ways of digging deeply into words and images, of making connections among ideas…of living more fully into the world.

In many ways, I have carried him within me for decades.

We think of Mr. Spagnuolo as a fine teacher, but so many of us also think of him as a kindred spirit, collectively and individually. Amazing.

He was an extraordinary teacher and I am forever grateful for the privilege of taking his class. I was even lucky enough to serve as his TA once and receive the lessons. He always challenged me and expected so much of all of his students.

“He was not of an age but for all time.”

A Knyght ther was, and that a worthy man, That fro the tyme that he first bigan To riden out, he loved chivalrie, Trouthe and honóur, fredom and curteisie.

The Rest is Silence.

I had Mr. Spag for English Lit, World Lit and Advanced Comp, and enjoyed every single class. He inspired and challenged me more than anyone ever has. He wouldn’t accept mediocrity and I am eternally grateful to him for that. When Eastern had their walk through before closing, Mr. Spag’s room was the only one I cared to go through. I signed the blackboard, thanking him for all he did for me and for every student who was lucky enough to have him as a teacher and friend. God bless, you, Mr. Spag…may you eternally know the joy you gave to others!

Thanks Mr. Spagnuola for introducing me to Ernest Hemingway, Ray Bradbury, John Steinbeck, Edgar Allan Poe and good journalism.

Steve Evans
Class of ’70

Best teacher, ever. Because of Mr. Spag, I graduated MAGA Cum Laude from college. He taught me how to write! This influenced and made successful my entire career. He also taught me the precious gift of believing in one’s self. (He is soul person who caused me to believe in myself.) I will forever be grateful and appreciate this man. Loved you, Mr. Spag. Class of 77.

My love of literature and learning truly started in Room 326. Many of My most treasured memories of LEHS were in his classroom. It was a privilege to take his classes, to learn from him, and to be inspired by his passion for all he taught us.

I know many of my fellow Class of 78 peers who shared those days with me there remember the time as special and rare.

May he rest in eternal peace.

Kimberlee ( Clark) Manor
Class of 78

At an inner-city school, on the third floor of an historic building sat a man in a leisure suit who changed my world. The power of words and ideas flowed through him to the mixed up lives of high school students insecure to the point of arrogance. The mimeographed vocabulary and quotation pages planted a tree in me that lives beyond that indigo ink.

He made me think. Each time I walked into that room with risers and wooden student desks, I rose. Rose beyond memorizing for a grade, to remembering for a lifetime. Rose beyond reading for escape, to reflecting on the human condition with every book, movie, and poem. Rose beyond the limited inner workings of the teenage social constructs, to a vision of what could be if I listened to the past and the people around me.

He made me care. While other teachers passed out information or instruction like dry dirt on open fields, he planted seeds. He followed it up with water and even fertilizer, pungent but powerful. The next day the water poured again on those seeds become seedlings become sprouts and new growth. He nurtured the facts and feelings with passion. It did not matter that he was not cool. He was instead passionate and teens (and if we will admit it, adults) cling to passion. He taught as if diagramming sentences and taking vocabulary tests and marking up literature meant something for life beyond the classroom–because they did.

Knowledge was the stuff of life and he knew it. He loved the ideas and the people and the connecting of the two to make trees grow. Today I look back and see how I have become both a tree and another planter. I have taught and still I teach not exactly like he taught and yet more exactly than I realized yesterday.

I have given more children, teens, and adults the gift of vocabulary words like illuminate and context and epiphany and, most of all, tenacious. They, in turn, used them for essays, research papers, and poems but more importantly they embodied the vocabulary. They are seedlings and sprouts.

Rumors circled those decades ago about summers Mr. Spagnuolo spent teaching for corporations and all the opportunities he turned down to teach in Room 326 of Lansing Eastern High School. I didn’t think much then about how that might have affected him, but I did know how valuable it made me feel. He chose to stay with those that others overlooked. He had complicated reasons, but as I sit at a crossroads I see him sitting at his paper-strewn desk.

I think of the many years after graduation I returned to say hello to a teacher extraordinaire.
I stumbled for words to express how much his presence still inhabiting Room 326 meant to me. I stumbled several years ago when I brought to him a published book written by my brother. But those precious hours spent in his tiny kitchen sharing about life since Eastern High School were yet another watering. He shared French croissants and orange marmalade and shared of hours spent on the floor in his house waiting and reciting line after line of memorized literature. He listened and encouraged and inspired.

And he, once again, gave me a writing assignment. I finished it but never took the opportunity to share it with him. It doesn’t matter though. Once again he was the teacher pouring life into new growth. Not growth for a grade or for him, but growth for me and for the next seedling.

RIP, Mr. Spag. “The pure of heart” know just how great you were, and the skill with which you managed your classes. I deeply enjoyed my time in your class, and remember room 326 well.

When my brother sent me the news about Mr. Spagnuolo I was sad, and began consciously thinking about everything I had learned or remembered from Mr. Spagnuolo’s lit class my sophomore year at Eastern. Unconsciously the knowledge he had instilled in my brain surfaced many times, often as I answered literature questions on Jeopardy, surprising my husband each time as he said, “How did you know that?” “Mr. Spagnuolo’s class,” I would say with a smile.
“Call me Ishmael”… “Guernica”… “Knock with tremor– These are Caesars– Should they be at home, Flee as if you trod unthinking on the foot of doom”…”Abby, Abby!”
Those of you who had his class will no doubt recognize the above quotes from the study of Moby Dick, the Spanish Civil War, Emily Dickinson and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. So many phrases, words, and recollections filled my head that I could hardly believe all that I learned in a short span of time.
As I kept thinking consciously, I remembered that a few years ago I visited the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, VA. I recalled the Poe short story that Mr. Spagnuolo used to teach us irony. I’ll wager many remember the merry jingle of bells on Fortunato’s cap as he is sealed into the brick wall. The museum had a display representing this scene from “The Cask of Amontillado”. Our enthusiastic tour guide began discussing Poe’s various poems as well, finally coming to Ulalume. I can still see Mr. Spagnuolo reveling in the pronunciation, emphasizing the long “u” sounds, explaining how that vowel sets the lugubrious [no doubt one of his vocabulary words] tone of the poem. All of a sudden, much to the surprise of our guide, I started reciting aloud “ The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere—The leaves they were withering and sere; …”
This was the legacy that Mr. Spagnuolo and his teaching created: literature so graphically presented and taught in such a way that students remembered the material not just until the next test, but 50 + years later! I don’t think Mr. Spagnuolo ever imagined, as he carefully skimmed the stones of his knowledge over the vast ocean of his students’ minds, how far and how long the ripples would continue. Thank you Mr. Spagnuolo for having such an enduring impact on my life.

So much I learned from Mr. Spag. His World Lit class was a highlight at Eastern for me. The class trip to Stratford was an opportunity I wouldn’t have had without him.