Bothell teacher plants his largest, and last, lollipop tree

By Cara Solomon
Seattle Times Eastside bureau

MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES Teacher Ron Cushman joins his Shelton View Elementary kindergartners in admiring the "lollipop tree" they discovered outside their classroom on a recent morning. The tree was one of the traditions Cushman established in his 29-year teaching career. Cushman is retiring this year.

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Kaylee Roe saw it first, in the school's back yard, on her way back from the main office. She threw open the classroom door and delivered the news.

"There's lollipops everywhere!" she yelled, as the children streamed past her, a blur of color and free-flying hair.

It was the tallest lollipop tree of Ron Cushman's career, a teacher's tribute to his last class of kindergartners. The night before, he had cut down a 20-foot-tall tree in his back yard, brought it to Shelton View Elementary School in Bothell and planted it near the forest border. That morning, he had some lollipops tied to the branches and spread dozens more around the trunk.

"I can't believe it!" said Nathan Barbee, collecting a fistful of lollipops. "They're fresh!"

The lollipop tree is the latest in a series of lasts for Cushman, who is retiring after 29 years in the classroom.

He hosted his Leprechaun Hunt on St. Patrick's Day, spreading green glitter for the children to follow. He celebrated his last birthday at school, going to lunch with all students born on the same day.

Retiring educators Tomorrow and Wednesday, The Times will take a look at the contributions of other retiring educators on the Eastside, from a librarian to a principal, a bus driver to an athletic director. Each has helped students through the decades, working in the classroom and beyond.

And he gave his last Vietnam War speech to high-school students, explaining how combat led him to a kindergarten classroom all those years ago.

Here's the thing, he told the teenagers: So many good things in my life come down to that one day in Vietnam. A wife, two children, a college education. Twenty-nine years of singing, hugging, happy kindergarten classes.

All he did was step on a land mine, and there it was: the beginning of the rest of his life.

There was a strong feeling in the VA hospital that something wasn't right with Ron Cushman. He liked to pull the bedsheets over his head, pretend he was a cadaver, then jump up to scare the nurses. He had his high-school friends decorate the walls of his room with fluorescent crayons so they would light up at night. He made farm-animal noises when the others on the floor were trying to sleep.

The doctors took him upstairs to the psychiatric ward. They ran a battery of tests. They found no signs of mental illness.

"Turns out, I was just incredibly happy to be alive," said Cushman.

	MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES Cushman, who lost his right hand in the Vietnam War, speaks to Bothell High School students each year about his experience there.

Within weeks of coming home, Cushman had cut himself off from the boy he had been in Vietnam. It was not really him, after all. The one who was made to chant "Kill, kill, kill, with a smile, smile, smile" in the mess hall at boot camp. The one who saw a friend lying in a ditch in Vietnam, slashed, puffed up and eyeless from torture. The one who killed boys his own age with nothing but glee.

It wasn't really him.

"I can bring those images up, but I lose them in a few seconds," Cushman said. "I don't want them there."

A hand sawed off in surgery, a leg sewn together on the fly, wheelchairs, leg braces, shrapnel buried in his bones, and what Cushman sees most clearly are the "benefits of being blown up." If he had stepped to the right or to the left of that land mine in the jungle, he might have missed out on so much.

He might never have met his future wife, Sharon. She came on a visit to the VA hospital with her brother, one of Cushman's old friends.

He might never have earned his college degree. As someone who graduated high school with a 1.26 grade-point average, he needed that "disabled veteran" status to qualify for a scholarship.

	COURTESY OF RON CUSHMAN Ron Cushman in Vietnam in 1969. Cushman was hurt when he stepped on a land mine, which he credits with leading to many of the good things that later happened in his life.

He could have missed out on this teaching career altogether. It was a bad economy for educators, he said, with few jobs around.

But as luck would have it, there was a position open at an elementary school, reserved especially for men coming back from the war.

Laughing and learning

For all his clowning around as a kid, Cushman started out with stage fright as a teacher. It made him shrink in those early weeks. The children just sat there, waiting for him to perform.

"It was scary and a little unnerving," he said. "I'd been in Vietnam, but this was a little different."

Slowly, he found little gimmicks to grab their attention. He called them "gotchas." Laughter was the best one. Throw pies in your own face. Rub glue all over your clothes. Writhe around on the floor like the class clown.

Get them laughing, Cushman said, and you've got them learning, right up until you say it's time to stop.

The missing hand is a good mystery too — it gets them every time. They come into that first day of kindergarten, faces puffy from crying, and Cushman takes the prosthetic hand down from the bookshelf. All of a sudden, the children are doing their oohs and aahs. They play with it, take turns wearing it, then finally leave it lying on the floor.

The biggest gotcha is Cushman's golden retriever. He brought Rocky in five years ago as a weeks-old puppy. That first kindergarten class recorded his measurements on graph paper every day, weighed him, watched him grow. Now the dog is Cushman's teaching aide, wandering around the classroom as the children work, fetching balls on the playground during recess.

With all these gotchas, and a good deal of talent, Cushman has become something of a celebrity at Shelton View. Children come barreling down the hallway to see him, arms outstretched. They wrap themselves around his legs. They yell across the playground, "I love you, Mr. Cushman!"

In a district with 41 kindergarten teachers, Cushman is one of only four men teaching that grade. Must be something to do with the male ego, he said: You get up into the junior-high grades, and men are there in droves.

Maybe there's something about kindergarten — the songs, the hugs, the "I love yous" that can come with it. Maybe it's just not manly enough for some men.

For Cushman, the hugs are why he works the job. There is no way to score children's happiness, no test you can give to see whether they are ready to learn. But a hug will tell you something strong, he said. It will tell you that a child feels at home in school, and safe.

To the parents who have watched him for years, there is no substitute for what Cushman can do. Barb Thomas has seen all four of her children pass through that classroom.

"What a way to start school," said Thomas. "You've got to think the rest of school is going to be magnificent."

Teaching kids to drive

	MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES Male kindergarten teachers are rare, but Ron Cushman loves the enthusiasm and affection of his students.

It started as a way to make money: a couple of hours a day, a few days a week, teaching teenagers how to drive. It would give Cushman enough extra cash for his annual trip to the casino. Not much, but enough.

Then Cushman started seeing those kindergarten faces all grown up. And that became the reward right there — the chance to see his students move past a different milestone in life, a chance to help them get there.

He helped one student get there early. Michael Linders was the boy's name. It's hard, even now, for Cushman to say it.

The Vietnam War — well, that he can leave behind. But say the names of any of his students who have died, and Cushman stops speaking. He just can't speak.

"He was a happy, goofy kid like me," Cushman finally says.

Michael was 8 years old when Cushman first sat the boy on his lap, strapped a seat belt around them both, and let the boy steer his aging Corvette wherever he wanted to go. They drove for about an hour each week — one hour Michael was focused on nothing but fun.

His mother, Sheryl Linders, was happy to see the boy go. She trusted Cushman. He was a kindergarten teacher, a driver's-ed instructor — and that hour was the best thing in her son's week.

The rest of the time Michael was stuck being sick. His leukemia had relapsed twice — once before kindergarten, again in first grade. Now it was the summer before third grade, and the sickness had settled in again.

Cushman made much of it go away. He played rowdy games of Foosball with Michael in the basement. They yelled, they screamed, they laughed until they fell down on the floor.

"It was like, oh, our old Michael's back again," his mother said.

Cushman went one step further: He called the Department of Licensing and got permission to give the boy a driving test. As a driver's-ed instructor, Cushman had all the forms. He got his brother to pose as a DOL official, and together Cushman and Michael took the test.

The boy got a score of 97 percent. Michael's parents stood by, camera in hand, as he headed to the front of the licensing line. He had his photograph taken. He left that day with a laminated license. And he died a few weeks later.

The license sits in the Linders family photo album, in a pocket all its own. Michael's friends are reaching the age of driving now. One of his brothers has already gotten a license. But this is one milestone Sheryl Linders can pass without pain.

"I smile, because I realize Michael got to do it before his brothers and friends," said Linders. "He got to lead the way."

The lollipop tree

The lollipop tree started two decades ago on the strength of a song.

The children sang it all the time in Cushman's classroom, but Jason Greenman loved it best.

When the boy died in an accident at a gravel pit, Cushman came up with a way to honor him. He used the lollipop-tree song. For the past 20 years, Cushman has led his kindergarten classes each spring through the fable of a lollipop tree coming to bloom. It is always a surprise, he said, to see the older kids keep the secret.

"Not one kid has ever ruined it," said Cushman. "What are the odds?"

This spring passed like any other, with Cushman and his kindergarten class planting lollipop sticks in the soil on the first day of the season. They made regular "reports" on the progress, singing the song inside the classroom, then rushing outside with a yardstick to see what had grown — a twig, a branch, and finally a tree.

On the day the tree bloomed lollipops, the children rushed out of the classroom with Rocky running beside them. They dropped to their knees to scour the ground for candy. They pushed the tree's trunk, trying to shake the lollipops loose. They took a few steps back and tilted their heads up.

Purple, red, orange and brown — all the colors lollipops can be, hanging from the branches of their very own tree.

Cara Solomon: 206-464-2024 or csolomon@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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