Aubrey Bruce Wring | May 4, 1943-July 15, 2023
In July 2023, I learned that an old headmaster of mine had passed away. To my surprise, he had been living close enough for me to attend his memorial service in Olive Branch, Mississippi, so my wife and I made the drive. Bruce Wring founded a small American Christian school in Herforst, Germany, just a stone's throw from the gates of Spangdahlem Air Force Base back in the late 1970s. Having been born in 1972, my memories of that time are those of a child, mostly positive and probably a bit distorted. There was no diagnosis for ADHD back then, so the collective assumption was either that I was retarded or obnoxiously evil. I attended Bitburg Elementary School (a Department of Defense school) from 1977-1980 before my father transferred me to Eifel Christian Academy.
Bitburg Elementary School (circa 1977)
Bitburg Elementary School was drab and, at least to my recollection, impersonal. Though painted, from its boxy, Cold War structure to the cobblestoned area on which students would gather to enter the building where it sloped from the perimeter to its middle, creating a massive puddle on rainy days that could easily soak you if you splashed through. The playground was more construction dirt than grass, and the standard playground equipment we Gen-Xers were raised on dotted the torrid landscape: swings that could strangle you if you twisted, merry-go-rounds that gave concussions if you were spun off, and monkey bars on which you could climb punishing to your balls if you slipped. There were also plenty of hiding spots for fistfights and make-out sessions (among the middle schoolers). I used to hang out with kids behind the large dumpster. For what, I can’t rightly remember. I think we were some sort of club.
Initially, as a latchkey kid, I went home for lunch in the afternoons but rarely returned to school on time. I was too busy picking on younger student stragglers or rifling through lunchboxes in the fourth- and fifth-grade student stairwells. I was also naturally disruptive (probably because I was a middle child). The teacher putting me and my desk outside the room didn’t help, because I would wander the halls. Sending me to the principal didn’t work because I enjoyed answering his questions. Sending me to the counselor was great because he’d give me a jawbreaker from the glass jar.
One day, my first-grade teacher brought in a cardboard box the size of a refrigerator. I was intrigued until she put it over me and my desk (the top was open). I think that experiment lasted for two days. But as bored, none of it was curative. I think my parents came to the end of their rope when I would routinely wander the military base after school, would invite myself over to into people’s houses, or joined in the occasional football game, losing track of time, often coming home with holes in my pants and mud on my shirt.
Eifel Christian Academy (circa 1980)
Eifel Christian Academy was quaint and personal. Before we left the house in the morning, we followed a routine of putting on our school uniform, which included a white button-down shirt, belt, tie (my dad taught me to tie a tie), and spit-shined shoes. I learned to comb my hair every day. We even had hair checks (not that I needed them as my hair grew "out" and never "down"). Then we had a packed lunch (mine was in an orange Tupperware container that smelled revolting if I didn’t wash it out every week). Then, instead of walking across base housing to school, we drove a picturesque route from Bitburg through the beautiful German countryside to Herforst.
Once we got to school everything was structured, from playing tag and kickball to lining up to enter the classroom, go to lunch, go to the bathroom, and be dismissed from school. The intellectual challenges were much greater than public school and more fun because it included grown-up level expectations like memorizing long sections of Scripture, learning lyrics to new songs (every verse), and learning quotes related to good character. And all of it was incentivized. There were certificates, plagues, and even trophies for reaching benchmarks in record time. Then there was the praying. There was a lot of praying: before school, at lunch, and at other times the teachers thought appropriate (the prayer I never quite understood was the prayer that came after being paddled for an infraction. chanting in unison, all incentivized with baby blue certificates.
Bruce Wring at a School Awards Ceremony
And Bruce Wring, I learned, was the founder of it all.
I remember his slight snaggle-toothed smile when he would appear in our classroom, hands deep in his pockets, jingling German Pfennigs. Most days, we would start the day with a character lesson from him in which the character trait correlated to the behavior of an animal. I had never heard of analogies like that and took to it eagerly and with intrigue. I once won a challenge Bruce Wring offered (I don’t remember what), and he took me out for ice cream. That was a big deal for me because it meant I did something really right for once. But most of my one-on-one time with Bruce Wring wasn’t for good reasons. From looking up girls' dresses to forging my parents’ signatures on detention slips to racking up an intolerable number of demerits, I often found myself upstairs in his office, over his knee, getting paddled, howling loud enough to frighten the other students.
But children are the best recorders and the worst interpreters.
I remember it all fondly (even the “bad” times) because it lasted such a short period– barely two years. I’ve heard that others who knew Bruce Wring have different memories, likely having stayed beyond the "honeymoon phase" and experiencing the too-close-for-comfort cycles of a driven type-A personality, for being sucked into his vortex, and for being spit out at inopportune times. At his memorial service, it was clear from the tongue-in-cheek stories that Bruce Wring was a hard man to live with for any extended period: that God was less a factor in critical decisions he made, that he viewed humans often as obstacles to be overcome than to serve, and that he left more than a bad taste in people’s mouths at critical times in their lives.
Bruce Wring
But was Bruce’s success (in at least three countries), in which he took personal advantage and wrenched opportunity from persons and situations, because of or despite his hardboard determination? Were all the "blessings" of which many were the recipients and others were not a result of Bruce wringing in the sheaves?
Probably yes. How unsatisfyingly ironic, right? Because for all his controversial efforts, I’m glad I was present for just a sliver of it. Enough to reap benefits but not enough to be cynical of the rewards.
Click the image above for my new book, Amerigrant.
