Jim Maechling
Jim Maechling was the youngest child in a Catholic family. In grade school, he was the questioning kid with his hand usually stuck in the air. Could these fantastic stories in the Bible be true? After a strong classical education from his Jesuit teachers in high school and college, he wanted to study the real world at close range.
While his friends entered law, medicine, and business, he gathered $75 in cash, his passport, and his seaman’s papers, and took a job as a deck boy on a Norwegian freighter bound for Asia. After an eventful voyage, including a typhoon and a visit to Hiroshima, he landed in Madras, India, where a more realistic education began. At the Jesuit college, he wandered into the office of a French priest, Father Pierre Ceyrac, SJ, a humanitarian legend who had saved over two hundred thousand lives during droughts in India and Thailand. Jim then traveled north on rickety trains to Jamshedpur, where he found a job teaching history at a Jesuit school. On holiday vacations, he visited remote jungle regions, waded across rivers, and interacted with people from an isolated culture. While self-touring Calcutta with an outdated guidebook in his hand, he climbed the steps of what he thought was an ancient temple dedicated to the Hindu goddess Kali. He was surprised to be greeted at the door by a tiny nun wearing a white habit and speaking with a European accent. This was Mother Teresa whom the world did not yet know.
She had transformed the abandoned Hindu temple into a hospice home for the dying, free to the poor and accepting of all religions. Perhaps regarding Jim as a potential volunteer, she gave him a tour. During their discussion, her answer to one of his questions changed the direction of his life. By the end of that school year, Jim had fallen in love with the teaching profession as well as with a teacher at his school. She was a bright and beautiful colleague, an Indian of Persian decent. At the end of the school year, homesickness and illness influenced his decision to return home. In gratitude for his service, the Jesuits paid for his long journey home.
Back in California, Jim’s next two years were about graduate school, teaching credentials, and some interesting odd jobs, including directing a play. Ultimately, he decided to forego the business paths of his father and older brothers for a teaching career of fifty years in the public schools of Palos Verdes, California. A popular teacher whose elective courses were always packed, Jim was a pioneer in introducing Eastern religious concepts and practices, such as mindfulness and meditation, to American high school students.
Jim was the recipient of many awards over his long career. In 2000, his Comparative Religion class was featured on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The following year, after the tragedy of September 11, Jim was distinguished with the “Educator of the Year Award” in Palos Verdes, California.
