Special Recognition – Mindy Garner, Matthew C. Perry MCAS Iwakuni Japan

Note: The following teacher was based out of the US Military Base in Japan and has since passed away… however we wanted to share a letter we received from one of her previous students. Thank you for sharing this letter with us Hunter Byers.

My teacher feature is Mindy Garner. Mrs. Garner was one of my good friend’s moms. She was my teacher for 3 years. She taught for me at Matthew C. Perry Elementary which is based out of the US Military Base, MCAS Iwakuni in Iwakuni, Japan. Mrs. Garner was honestly a very beautiful person. Everyone loved her. She was nice to everyone. She helped others out all the time. Also she had a good sense of humor and made school fun. She taught gifted education classes. In the gifted education I would go and see her all day every Tuesday. In this class were the kids who excelled in reading, writing, math and science. I remember looking forward to every Tuesday because my peers and I had the privilege of going to Mrs. Garner for the day. In her class we learned some advanced math and did mostly a lot of big projects. One of the projects we did was to create our very own Rube Goldberg. A Rube Goldberg is when you have all these different contraptions and stuff that work together to complete a very simple task such as opening a door or getting a drink of water. Anyway in her class we did a lot of projects like this and more. When I was in 5th grade Mrs. Garner was diagnosed with cancer. She fought cancer for 3 years before she lost her battle earlier this year. Mrs. Garner never once showed signs that cancer would stop her from accomplishing things or would ever end her life. Every day she had a smile on her face. The bottom line is that Mrs. Garner deserves the teacher feature because she was one of the greatest influences on many students’ lives. She never once failed at being a great teacher or person or friend or whatever other title you would like to give to her. She has truly been an inspiration to many.

–Hunter Byers