Paul Lankford never expected a single one of his students to remember him.
So imagine his surprise when they started a Paul Lankford Fan Club on Facebook on May 17, 2009, full of treasured memories about a teacher whose influence was less about English and more about life.
“His impact really, truly is astonishing,” said Laura Ricketts, who took “Superior” English and World Literature from Lankford at Bayside High School in the late 1970s. “I don’t know of any other person who really had that much of an influence on me except maybe my mom and my husband.”
Lankford, 77, died on May 7 following years of dementia. More than 100 of his former students are expected to turn out on Saturday at his memorial service at First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk.
Lankford spent nine years as English Department chair at Bayside, 21 years at Green Run High and another nine at Cape Henry Collegiate. Named the Virginia State English Teacher of the Year and the Virginia Beach Teacher of the Year in 1983, Lankford was the first high school teacher appointed to a literature committee under the National Council of Teachers of English.
Lankford grew up in Franklin and graduated from William and Mary. Beyond the classroom, he favored prints and paintings, antique furniture and Victorian glass. He doted on his Papillion, Stella. He loved spending time in his home garden, though he was reluctant to trim back shrubs.
“He never considered anything a weed,” said his wife of 44 years, Deborah Lankford, who taught English for 40 years at Bayside and Green Run starting in 1969. “He’d always say, ‘Just let it be. It may bloom later.’ His yard reflected the outlook that made him such a wonderful teacher. He saw the beauty and possibilities in each of his students.”
In time, he said, they would blossom. He embraced nurturing them along that journey, introducing students to skills and experiences that connected them to the real world.
“He taught us how to set a proper table, to waltz and to write a thank you note,” said Ricketts, who remembers Lankford referring to her by her maiden name, Miss Quick, on the first day of school.
“He did not call us by our first names initially. Mr. and Miss were the standard until he ‘got to know us.’ He said this was just the respectful thing to do. To this day, he will always be Mr. Lankford,” Ricketts said.
Sean Siler learned under Lankford in the mid-1980s at Green Run.
“He saw the best in everyone,” he said. “He knew we had strengths and weaknesses, and he tried to nurture us not necessarily in the way the school wanted us to be nurtured but the right way for us to excel.”
As a senior at Bayside, Ellen Zeltmann recalls going to dinner with a handful of classmates at Lankford’s home in Hague Tower. A fellow student credits that experience for introducing him to salad.
“There weren’t a lot of guy teachers back then,” Zeltmann said. “Those who had trouble at home could talk to him about it. He was just very compassionate.”
Deborah shared Paul's affinity for teaching students how to think rather than what to think.
She remembers leaving an English department meeting thinking, “That new guy is funny!”
The two teachers married in 1979 and have one son, Alan Lankford, who resides in Richmond with his wife, Lindsey Stoneking. Like her husband, Deborah favored experiential learning that included dinner and theater outings and making holiday ornaments for Christmas.
Paul Lankford didn’t hesitate to call her to his classroom to waltz for students, an exercise that connected to the reading of the short story, “The Waltz.”
One of Deborah's favorite memories of her husband’s teaching style was his penchant for reading aloud. He didn’t shy away from raw language, like that found in John Steinbeck.
She remembers one time: “The assistant principal walked by and thought he was cussing at the students the day he read ‘Of Mice and Men,’” she said. “The students loved listening to him read.”
Siler recalls giving a presentation his senior year and using a silver goblet from home as a prop. He left it behind and several years after graduating, when he stopped by to see his favorite teacher, Lankford pulled out the goblet and said, “Sean, I have something for you.”
“I was absolutely floored; it’s like I had walked out to lunch or something,” Siler said.
Jonas Calacsan didn’t enjoy the tedious grammar and sentence structures many of his teachers stressed at Green Run. His senior year, he was thrilled to be placed in Lankford’s class.
“He had us memorize the prologue of “The Canterbury Tales” in Middle English, and that was heaven to a history nerd like me,” said Calacsan, a restaurant manager in Matthews, N.C. today.
His first written assignment didn’t meet Lankford’s standards, Calacsan applied himself and improved his analytical writing. Lankford read his final essay aloud.
“When he handed it back to me, he’d written, ‘I’ll miss you,’” Calacsan said. “Mr. Lankford's enthusiasm for the material was infectious, and it made you want to be a better student.”
Disillusioned by the rigidity of the public school curriculum after the Standards of Learning tests were introduced, Lankford finished his career at Cape Henry.
That’s where Courtney Camden had him for eighth-grade English. In addition to working for Kate Spade, she is a freelance writer who credits Lankford with helping her find her voice.
“His classroom was really the only place I felt safe, like I could be myself,” she said. “He was like a grandfather. He knew what it was like to be different, and he was so unashamed of it. It gave me more nerve to be myself.”
During an age when black and brown were the primary colors men wore, Lankford dressed colorfully and joined the cast of Green Run’s production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” His favorite trousers to wear at Green Run were green.
Siler described him as fashion-forward.
“Especially at springtime, he had some great looking outfits and wore beautiful colors and seemed not to have one care in the world about what everybody else thought about it,” he said.
Alumni of Bayside, Green Run and Cape Henry visited regularly when Lankford entered memory care in 2023 and later hospice. They often brought in his favorites: Coke, Cheetos and strawberry smoothies from Wawa.
Kevin Mark Wray is one of the 500-plus former students who joined the page. Learning of Lankford’s passing, he posted, “There are teachers who push you, those that pull you, and those that give you a compass for life’s journey. That was Paul Lankford.”
Added Ricketts, “He’s up there teaching Saint Peter how to do a proper pocket square and he’s saying to Jesus, ‘Now about that beard. …’”
