'One of the best'

Friends and colleagues of retired Culpeper County High School chemistry teacher Thomas T. Earles, III uniformly remember the late instructor as, “one of the best people you would ever want to know.”

That’s how former CCHS Principal William Pearson described him Wednesday evening while recalling his co-worker of more than 25 years.

Earles, 68, passed away Sunday at his home on Rolling Hills Drive. A remembrance and celebration of Earles’ life will be held June 5 from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Earles family residence. 

 Earles retired from CCHS in 1997 following a 32-year career teaching chemistry. Pearson said Earles was there when he came to CCHS as athletic director in 1973.

“You don’t find anybody better than Mr. Earles,” Pearson said. “He was an outstanding teacher and an outstanding person. He just did so many things for so many people. The community has lost a real asset.”

Pearson said Earles would do whatever he could to help students succeed, not only in his chemistry classes, but also as head of the high school’s National Honor Society.

“He realized that, for a lot of the kids in the community, they really didn’t have the opportunity to get involved with community service and other things NHS looked at because of their responsibilities at home,” Pearson said. “If a kid was worthy, he would find a way to work them in.”

During his years as a teacher, Earles impacted the lives of an inestimable number of high school students.

Former student Cheryl Walker said, “Mr. Earles was one of my favorite high school teachers.  He made a difficult subject a lot of fun to learn.  It stuck with me when I went to school for nursing. I continued studying chemistry and pharmacology.  I wasn't afraid of it like some of the other students, and I have Mr. Earles to thank for that.”

Mark Johnson, a 1972 CCHS graduate, said Earles influenced his life greatly both inside and outside the classroom.

 “Tom Earles was a wonderful role model for young folks trying to figure out what they wanted to do in life.  He was a master teacher, taking the potentially dry subject — high school chemistry — and making it interesting,” Johnson said.

“He knew that to hold a class’s attention while learning formulas and such, you had to do chemical magic — make things change color, make things go bang.  And, to ensure everyone remained awake, he introduced the class to killing errant flies with a rubber band, instead of a fly swatter.  The result was the instilling of a lifelong interest in science.  In my case, it was pushing me to choose environmental protection within the U.S. Coast Guard as one of my specialties,” he said. 

In addition, Earles’ volunteer work as a scout leader with Culpeper Boy Scout Troop 196 also left an impression on Johnson, he said.

“He was an assistant scoutmaster for Troop 196; a steadying influence for middle and high school boys,” Johnson said.  

“Working closely with another community stalwart, Charlie Robson, Tom Earles shared his passion for hiking with the scouts. We spent many Saturdays hiking up Old Rag Mountain and other trails in the Shenandoah Valley,” he continued.

“His willingness to volunteer his time to help shape boys into young men through the scouting program also had a lasting effect on me — give back to the community that has helped raise you.  He also was one of the most decent men I knew.  This combination of attributes is what qualifies him as a role model in my eyes,” Johnson said.

Aside from his career at CCHS, Earles often visited other schools in the community before and after his retirement to share his love of chemistry with younger students. His chemistry presentations were a mainstay of local public school systems for decades.

Thousands of students in and around Culpeper have attended Earles’ demonstrations and watched transfixed as he used varieties of chemicals, solids and gases to illustrate chemical processes.

A mainstay of the presentations included “making water flow uphill,” a process in which Earles would add a thickener to water so that the resulting substance could flow over the end of an upward incline, pulling the thickened fluid behind it up and over the incline’s edge due to its viscosity.

Retired CCHS guidance counselor Dennis Gordon characterized Earles as a quiet person who was passionate about chemistry and the other things near and dear to him, including his pets.

“He was not a rah-rah, “Go get ‘em,” kind of a guy,” Gordon said. “He was very quiet, but you couldn’t ask for a better colleague. If you asked him for advice, he always gave you an honest answer.”

Gordon said it was Earles who encouraged him very early in his career to begin planning for retirement and putting money away.

“He asked me if I had started thinking about the future; if I had a plan for putting something away for retirement,” Gordon said. “He encouraged me to take part of my money and put it into an annuity.  He was a really intelligent man. He’s the best there was. I will miss him greatly.”