Teachers we've loved: Pierre Olivier, Collège du Léman, 1975

The teachers we've loved: Monsieur Pierre Olivier, a patrician John Houseman-type at Collège du Leman, circa 1975. Picture the Rector of Justin, but French. He insisted on Gallic professorial formality, but he gave it, too—we were all "monsieur" or "mademoiselle" to him. He never had to raise his voice in class. Forty-seven years later, I can still hear him say "Monsieur Rrrove" with a guttural French "r." He was never really interested in the English "w" but nonetheless made the whole thing sound like an unfurling banner. Notable also was that in the early 1970s, an era of breathtaking sartorial ugliness, he was always impeccably and classically attired. He enjoined us to become ladies and gentlemen, but we already instinctively knew we had the blueprint standing at the blackboard, lecturing us about French Equatorial Africa and occasionally teasing us in Latin.