When I walked into my naval science classroom the first day of freshman year, I had no idea what to expect. The moment the bell rang for the beginning of last period, the door was slammed shut and a booming voice yelled “Attention on deck!” right after. This was the first time I truly got to know Gunnery Sargent Lemke.

I was only able to talk to Gunny maybe twice before school started, so I didn’t really know what he was like. Most people are probably very intimidated when they first meet him considering he used to be a drill instructor in the Marine Corps. It also doesn’t help that his whisper is the tone of a normal person’s voice if they were having a casual conversation. However, I did not let this scare me.

I feel that Gunnery Sargent Lemke deserves to be an Educator of the Year because he is one of my greatest mentors. Being in Gunny’s class has taught me many life lessons, like to never give up. I had already known this before I met Gunny, but he taught me that if you do give up, your life can become worse. I did not have an incident where this happened, but some of the stories he told from being in the Marines proved this to me. Gunny also made certain things in life much clearer to me, and sometimes he did this without even trying. The thing that Gunny always did for me was that he ended my school day right. I had naval science with Gunny the last period of the day, and he always lightened my mood, even if he made the class do tons of push-ups for talking too much. The main reason why I wanted to write this nomination was to thank Gunny for staring my high school experience off right. My 9th grade year for high school is the year Gunny is retiring, and I am grateful that I got to have him as a teacher. One of the things I will remember the most about Gunny, is when he greets people, he always says “What a fine day it is!” in the most enthusiastic way possible. This showed me that no matter how bad your day was, you are still living a great life.