TEACHING JOB A GOOD FIT FOR EVACUEE
POST-TRIBUNE
BY: KAREN SNELLING

A slight smile appears on James Beard's face when students in his high school calculus class give a correct answer.

“Do you see that?” Beard asks as he reviews the math formula that explains why falling objects of different sizes hit the ground at the same time.

The convincing “yes,” from his 14 students produces another smile, but it fades quickly.

Beard, 47, is at ease at his alma mater, West Side High School, where he started teaching just weeks after escaping the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina.

“I never thought I'd be teaching here,” said the Gary native who was trapped in the attic of his New Orleans home for two days after Katrina hit.

When he arrived in Gary, he just wanted to sit on his mother's couch and collect thoughts.

“I never imagined the hurricane would do that much damage,” Beard said.

He moved to the Gulf Coast 16 years ago after earning a master's degree in mathematics from Indiana University at Bloomington. He worked as a math professor at Dillard University.

He was rescued from the chest-high water that filled his house after yelling out to a passing boat.

Rescuers transported Beard to a dry section of Interstate 10 near the New Orleans Superdome.

After a few hours of waiting, Beard decided to begin an 80-mile walk north to Baton Rouge.

The journey was interrupted when he met a stranger who said he knew where to find a truck.

Beard said he walked about a mile through high water and climbed over a barbed wire fence to reach a fish company's truck, described as a half of a semi.

They turned around and headed to a back gate which they discovered was locked.

Beard accidentally kicked a pile of bricks as he stood outside the truck. When he looked, he found the key that unlocked the gate.

Beard and his new friend drove back to the Superdome and picked up 21 others before heading to Lafayette, La.

In Lafayette, Beard caught a flight that eventually brought him back to Indiana.

“I just want to let my friends and family to know how much I appreciate their prayers,” he said.

Two weeks after arriving in Gary, he got a call from Benita Richardson, chairman of West Side's math department. Beard's son, James III, had enrolled in her algebra class after he arrived from New Orleans via Atlanta.

Richardson had met Beard several years earlier at class reunion and knew he was a math teacher.

“We needed a math teacher desperately,” Richardson said.

That night, she said, she called Beard at his mother's house and asked if he was interested in a job.

An interview was scheduled the next day and a week later the Gary School Board hired him.

“I can't really say in words how wonderful I've been treated by people,” Beard said.

“I'm just so overwhelmed by the reception I've received. And I want to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers,” he said.

Richard said Beard's arrival was no coincidence.

“We needed a math teacher and we feel it was God that relocated him here.”