Monroe High School alumni remember the late Darol Straub

MONROE — After Darol Straub’s death on Dec. 12, his former students had a lot to say.

For decades, Straub, 78, taught physics and computer engineering to thousands at Monroe High School. He was fondly remembered by his students; some even called him a legend.

Straub of Ann Arbor was an MHS graduate himself. According to his wife, Nef, Straub first retired from Monroe Public Schools in June, 2008, but retirement didn’t last long.

“He went back when a need arose and taught for a few more years. He worked from February, 2016 through September, 2019,” she said.

After his second retirement, Straub remained active in the district. In 2019, he started the Monroe Public Schools Equinox Scholarship, which is awarded each year to students who are following their passions.

Straub would annually raise money for the scholarship. In his memory, MPS recently set up a virtual fundraiser for the Equinox Scholarship Fund on the district’s GoFan site.Straub is the subject of the Facebook group Darol Straub is My Hero.“It is very evident from the posts and comments that he made an incredible impact in the lives of his students,” said Wendy Krouse, MPS’ community engagement coordinator.

Jacob Heck of Monroe, an MHS graduate, started the Facebook fan page in 2006, when he was a freshman in college. Heck went on to earn a doctoral degree in geodesy. Today, Heck is a geodesist for the U.S. National Geodetic Survey. A geodesist studies the Earth’s shape, size and location on points on its surface.

“Mr. Straub inspired us to follow career paths into science and engineering, and geodesy is just a ‘small branch of physics,’ as Mr. Straub would say,” Heck said. ”I even dedicated my dissertation to him. As I was going through my PhD program, I would occasionally find myself digging back into notes from his physics and computer science classes to help me make sense of some of the things I would encounter.”

Heck wanted the Facebook page to bring together others who also were inspired by Straub.

“He was a character, and we all appreciated that. As the years went on and former students of different generations stumbled into the group, you could really see just how much of an impact he had on people’s lives over many years,” Heck said.Others agree.

Jacob Gladieux called Straub “the most brilliant teacher I ever had. He was also the most genuine. It goes without saying how much his students admired and appreciated him.”

“He taught more than just physics; he taught about observing and seeing beauty in nature,” said Christopher Balk. “He was childlike in that aspect, making it so much more fun to learn difficult things. Even after I had my own kids, he was there to help with Washtenaw Elementary Science Olympiad science projects. I will miss his handshakes.”

Balk, a 1991 MHS graduate, still has a couple pins Straub made, including one that says “Physics is Schmo Much Phun!”

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Nef Straub said her husband helped to write his own obituary. The notice said Straub “derived a lot of pleasure from following the adventures of his friends and former students.”

“I met up with Darol last spring for lunch,” Heck said. “It was the first time that we had caught up in well over a decade. He looked exactly as he did while I was in high school, a testament to his timeless quality.

Over the couple of hours we discussed a variety of things relating to science and teaching and even my classmates from those years. He lit a candle in all of us; now it’s up to us to carry that flame forward.”

1999 story on Darol Straub

In 1999, Monroe News reporter Joshua Kennedy interviewed Darol Straub. Here’s Kennedy’s story:

Darol Straub is out there. The Monroe High School physics teacher from Ann Arbor has some different views about teachers and students and the roles they play in each others’ lives.

But his thinking is making a difference. Even in the middle of summer, students drop in on him in his lab — just to chat about their summers.

“These kids are my friends and colleagues,” Mr. Straub said. “We’re all in this together.”

He means it. Mr. Straub spends most of his free time trying to figure out how to make the classroom even a little bit more educational for his students.

As the director of a three-year computer program at Monroe High, where students actually build, from the ground up, a functioning computer, Mr. Straub takes high school education to new levels.

“We don’t use PCs,” he said with a sly grin from his crammed lab and classroom. “You can learn that at home. We use computers at their most basic levels. That way, when the kids get home, they can get into their PCs and change the suckers to work the way they want. Nope. We don’t point and click here.”

But he’s not just a computer guru. Mr. Straub likes to explain away calculus by holding his arm at a steep angle.”One way, it’s figuring out the slope of a line,” he said. “And the other is finding out the area under a line on a graph.”

There you go. You now know calculus, thanks to Mr. Straub.

So, how did this Monroe High School graduate end up teaching to a legion of students who are affectionately know as “Straubies?”

He graduated from the University of Michigan and “was waiting to see if he’d be drafted” when a friend told him teachers were needed. He tried parochial elementary and “to my amazement, it was fun.” He started thinking about how much he would have loved to have a physics teacher in high school, so he sought out the position.

“At that point I was still in grad school,” Mr. Straub said with a chuckle. “Now, here I am, 30 years later.”

What he’s accomplished in that time is nothing short of amazing. He’s published all sorts of books and studies, worked for aerospace programs, built and designed computers that are marketed and fathered a 3-year-old son, Lang, with his wife, Nef.

And along the way “I’ve had 6,000 friends,” he said.

His students go on to be computer engineers, physicists, you name, they’re doing it. Mr. Straub credits his teaching methods and relationship with students with his success.

“You have to like students,” he said. “No matter how weird they are. I’ve decided I’ll find a way or something to like about them.”

Once a student in high school realizes teachers aren’t the enemy, Mr. Straub said, things will work out. He likes to give birthday cards to his students.

“Why not?” he asks. “It’s easy to do. It surprises them. They seem to enjoy it.”

He’ll even drop in on students that he thinks might be playing hookey. Not to bust them, but to show them how important it is that they learn now. Once, he said, he visited a student who’d been sick for a while.

“When I got there he was outside playing soccer with some friends,” Mr. Straub said. “I said, `feeling better?’ he said `yeah.'” So Mr. Straub and the student, and all the other soccer players, conducted a physics lab using sunlight on the back of the teacher’s Triumph Spitfire.

“An hour with him meant 160 hours he’d spend in the classroom,” Mr. Straub said.So why isn’t Mr. Straub teaching college students?

“College students are great. They’re smart, they’re mature, but high school students are really alive,” he said. “They believe in crazy things. That’s what physics is: crazy ideas that aren’t true, they just work. See, it doesn’t matter if they’re true or not, just whether they work.”

In addition to teaching classes of 30 and 35 students at a time, Mr. Straub advises the Monroe High National Honor Society. The group has consistently raised more money for worthy causes than the entire Detroit Public School System, Mr. Straub said. Now, two of his students will sit on one of the NHS boards.”It’s funny,” Mr. Straub said. “Some of my students think I know everything. They’re 17. The only difference, I tell them, is that I’ve been here a lot longer than they have. The idea is to teach them this stuff now so eventually they’ll know more than I do.”

— Contact reporter Suzanne Nolan Wisler at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Remembering Monroe High School physics teacher Darol Straub