- May 3, 2024
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George Herrera is remembered by his students for wild adventures. Canoeing the Suwanee River, Sea Camp at Big Pine Key and camping in the Okefenokee Swamp are just a few of the memories his former students shared at the Saturday morning dedication of a memorial rock placed in his honor at the University of Florida’s Whitney Labs at Marineland.
Herrera taught at what was then Belle Terre Middle School (now Buddy Taylor Middle School) from 1981 to 1993, and he made such an impact on his students that they gathered together to raise funds for the memorial rock 20 years after leaving his classroom.
The memorial was a three-year process, which started with a group of students wanting to find their former teacher and thank him for the risks he took in teaching outdoors — by doing, seeing, smelling, touching and sometimes getting stung by nature and its inhabitants.
“Mr. H shaped all of our lives in one way or another,” Shelley King said of her middle school science teacher. “He opened our eyes to the wonders of nature. His passion for understanding, appreciating and conserving the environment was second to none. I think it’s safe to say we all discovered a deep love for marine life and ecology and nature in general as a result of Mr. H’s teachings.”
Another former student, Ted Upson, shared on the Facebook memorial page for Herrera that he thinks a lot about Herrera when he's with his children.
He wrote: “Last summer, we were walking along a stream and stopped to play in the water. I remember my daughter digging a hole and getting her hands completely covered in mud. I almost stopped her.
"There was a fair chance that she would ruin her clothes, and my wife would be irate. She also might fall in the cold water. But I just let her go. Play in the mud! Turn over some rocks! Figure out that the flat rock skips better than the round one. This is a Mr. H day!”
These are the types of memories that compelled Herrera’s students to find him and thank him after all these years.
“I just regret that we never got to thank him in person,” King said. “Hopefully he is looking down on us today and can see how much he meant to all of us. He will live forever in our hearts.”
