William Durkin
I'm from Baldwin Class of 1968 and I was in the first Physics class that Mr. Spahr taught at Baldwin High. I was impressed by his passion for teaching and his ability to clearly explain the underlying principles of physics. His class was about logical reasoning and understanding the nature of the universe rather than about learning \"the facts\" of physics. I had already decided that I wanted to get into a science or engineering career, but the way he approached science made me lean in that direction rather than engineering. While attending Carnegie Mellon University as a physics major and wanting to find a place in physics research I decided that there were too many fellow students who were more capable than I was and decided that maybe teaching physics would be a good alternative. So I got into the small group of students who were pursuing teacher education at CMU. I lobbied for doing my student teaching under Mr. Spahr, and enjoyed learning from him. Though I taught high school physics for only a few years before deciding to find a position in research and development, the success I had as a teacher I credit to him. And I used the teaching skills that he helped develop in me for 30 years at Eastman Kodak to teach many engineers and production workers the physics of electrostatics in photographic film manufacturing so that they were better able to understand how to keep product from being damaged. Mr. Spahr was the standard I used as my goal in my teaching. He was one of the best teachers I ever had. William Durkin