R.W. Remmes did whatever it took to get high schoolers’ attention, forcing them to think, question and challenge whatever they thought they knew.
Sometimes it meant walking on desks, or taking students to low-income neighborhoods to mentor gradeschoolers or to the San Luis Valley to work with low-income kids.
Remmes, who taught at Cherry Creek High School for 30 years, died of congestive heart failure Feb. 13 at age 79. He was the teacher hundreds of students will never forget.
“He was a force,” said Tristan Davies of Baltimore, who graduated in 1981. “You had to be clinically comatose” not to respond to his theatrical performances.
The theatrics “wasn’t just goofing off” but a way to get the students to think and realize “there is a world out there beyond you and another and another,” Davies said.
When one boy didn’t know where Iran was, Remmes assigned him to learn the names of the continents, their locations and the location of Iran. Singling out a student “was a little ruthless,” Davies said, but when the student came back with the information, students clapped and Rem mes gave him a huge atlas.
Remmes always pushed students to “challenge the perceived wisdom” of national and world situations, said Robert Schenck, who was a student of Remmes’ in Shenandoah, Iowa.
“He had a curious, brilliant, restless mind, but he was also arrogant and egotistical,” Schenck said.
“He was a character, but I never had a better professor in all my life,” Denver lawyer Dan Smith said.
Remmes told different stories about his personal history, “often embellishing his own life,” said Smith, who became a good friend.
The mysteries remain after Remmes’ death.
“There was no photo album in his house and no proverbial shoe box full of letters on a shelf in the closet,” said Sam Butler, a former colleague and Remmes’ friend for 45 years.
“I don’t believe he had any relatives.”
Remmes often railed against the military and the Catholic Church but in the past six years “went back to the church 100 percent,” had a Catholic funeral and wanted to be buried with veterans at Mount Olivet Cemetery, Butler said. His small estate went to Catholic Charities.
Ralph W. Remmes was born in Omaha on Nov. 24, 1928, and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Creighton University in Omaha.
Based on comments he made, friends believe he was reared in a Catholic orphanage.
He served in the Korean War and taught in Red Oak and Shenandoah, Iowa, before coming to Cherry Creek in 1962.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
