On Sept. 19, Geane Cleland climbed into a silver Jeep parked in the staging area near where she used to work and waved at the crowd flanking West Avenue as the vehicle carrying the Homecoming parade’s grand marshal made its ambling journey westward to Burlington High School.
The building she had spent so many years teaching in at the corner of West Avenue and White Street was gone, destroyed by fire in 2005, but the memories made there live on.
“That was my favorite place ever to teach,” Cleland said of Horace Mann Middle School, where she taught eighth grade English Language Arts, among other subjects. “It was the best years of my career.”
That’s saying a lot for someone who spent so much time in schools.
“I tell everybody that I went to school for 60 years straight,” Cleland said. “That’s all I ever did. I loved it. I loved it until the day I retired.”
Growing up in Ottumwa, Cleland never pictured herself doing anything else. Even as a young girl, she remembers playing school with her siblings. Every time, she played the teacher.
She taught in Albia, Iowa, and Mississippi schools for a total of 24 years before coming to Burlington in 1995. She spent her first year back in Iowa at Horace Mann, then moved to Sunnyside for a year, then James Madison before returning to Horace Mann.
She remained there until, at the request of then-Superintendent Dr. Michael Book, she took a position as an assistant principal at the high school in 2004.
“(When the fire broke out), my stuff was still in my old room because I had just been called to be a principal of the high school that year at the beginning of August,” Cleland said, explaining she was in the process of getting her administrative degree at the time.
She remembers well seeing the smoke billowing into the sky on May 25, 2005.
“We were at the high school when we saw the smoke, so Mr. Messenger, Mr. Turner and I drove over (from BHS to Horace Mann). We were standing out there just crying with smoke billowing out of that building because we all have such fond memories of that school,” Cleland said. “It was so heart-breaking when that place burned. It was just awful. So that was a bad memory. But the good memories I think are the plays. We just had a ball planning them.”
Each spring while Cleland, also a drama coach, was at Horace Mann, the eighth-graders would put on a three-part comedy that ran for two nights. They would spend the six preceding weeks preparing.
“It was just such a wonderful learning experience, and what was good about it is you don’t have to be a good reader to be in the play because you memorized the comedy,” Cleland said. “We had kids who could barely read, tried out for the play, did marvelous and it’s amazing how it improved their reading scores because, for some, it clicked and they got it.”
After about four years at BHS, Cleland accepted an assistant principal position at Oak Street, which was where she first met Sara Parris, a student at the time who now teaches engineering at the high school and is the Student Council advisor, among other things.
It was the Student Council that selected Cleland as the grand marshal for this year’s Homecoming parade.
“Any time Geane’s name was brought up in conversation, everyone would smile and respond with something kind,” Parris said. “Teachers would all have a story about how great she was at Horace Mann, Oak Street, Aldo Leopold, and BHS. Geane is a wonderful person who is kind and thoughtful.”
From Oak Street, Cleland went on to Aldo Leopold before taking on the principal position at Corse in 2015, from which she retired. She returned in various capacities following her retirement, filling in as a secretary at Corse and supervising student teachers. She also returned to Aldo for a time to fill in as an assistant principal.
She eased her way into retirement slowly and has found contentment as a voracious reader and casual mahjong player. She was surprised when she got the call from Parris about being this year’s grand marshal, an offer she accepted after being assured she wouldn’t have to give a speech. Her days of speaking at the front of the class, she explained, were behind her.
“I was really surprised, because I’ve been away for so long,” Cleland said.
But during her time as principal, she had hired many students with whom years ago she shared a moment of silence backstage before showtime, and just as she holds close fond memories of them, so do they of her.
