Se?ora JK Candullo

A few months ago I went to my local library and cruised the shelves of their books for sale. You can't generally go wrong buying a book for a quarter. Among the treasures was the AMSCO Review Book for Spanish 3 Years (known in New York as Regents Spanish)
The book is a paperback that has a black and pink cover. Not exactly the prettiest color combination for the time. And I remember as a freshman being thrown into a class wherein the first month we were learning the difference between the preterite and the imperfective. "Do Spanish speaking people really make these critical distinctions between the quality of the action as it had occurred in the past before they make their utterances?" I thought to myself.
What really made the class most interesting at the time was the engaging participation of the instructor. To me she was an exotic. First of all she was from Kansas and didn't sound anything like us. In fact, she didn't sound like much of anyone... except a newscaster from the midwest. She had long brown hair that fell nearly to her hips. I remember seeing her in her AMC Pacer brushing it in the morning. She wore open shoes with enormously high soles. Mini dresses were also the vogue.
She drew on the blackboard and had quite extensive creative artistic ability. Even something as simple as a staircase was put up with precision to depth perception and form. She read poems from the turn of the last century and had a fascination with writers from South and Central America. We seemed to learn more about Argentina and Mexico than we did about Spain.
Of all the high school teachers that I had during those four years (and you have to figure there were about twenty-eight to thirty-four of them) I'd have to say that Judith K Candullo my most memorable.
It's now thirty years hence and I'm tempted to look her up and mail her a copy of the AMSCO Review Book for Spanish 3 Years.