‘In mathematics, for example, I tell the children about magic squares. I actually have a magic cube that Benjamin Franklin designed’

Whether he’s studying the stars, or entertaining children with his accordion, 84-year-old Gordon Plummer is first and foremost a teacher--a teacher who can’t slow down. After his retirement in 1961, the native San Diegan took to the road like a wandering minstrel. He has spent many years traveling from school to school, teaching elementary-age students in a light-hearted, yet informative way about astronomy, philosophy, math, and--the accordion. He was also a camp counselor for 25 years, and is renowned for leading the troops up the mountainside, playing the accordion all the way. Now, Plummer, who is legally blind, has restricted his activities to just one school, Green Elementary in San Carlos. When he isn’t explaining to a classroom full of students the mysteries of the solar system, Plummer practices his magic act, concentrates on what he’s going to say next on the lecture circuit, and makes elaborate geometric shapes out of string and plastic sticks. Times staff writer Caroline Lemke interviewed Plummer at his home in St. Paul’s Manor, a senior citizen apartment house. Don Bartletti photographed him.

I never saw with my left eye, and my right eye was always poor. I had great difficulty in school because I couldn’t read what was written on the blackboard. I didn’t do well in school until I was in my teens. The thing that actually woke me was when algebra started. And then all of a sudden I took hold. I just loved the abstractions aspect, and looking for the value of “X”.

It’s all willpower. I simply go ahead. It isn’t easy. It never has been. The reason I’ve accomplished what I have is simply because I don’t give up.

My life has been so full of children. I have worked with thousands and thousands of children.

I retired in 1961, and I was working in the La Mesa schools in those days, doing enrichment work. By enrichment, I mean not duplicating what the teachers do, there’d be no point in that, but I’d bring a lot of resource material that the students wouldn’t otherwise get that is educational and also entertaining.

I was doing that for some years, and then the city schools got in touch with me. Because I couldn’t see to drive, consultants would come and take me to several schools. Finally I said, well, I’m not really accomplishing much by just giving a talk here and a talk there. I said I’d do better if I’d stay with a school and worked along with them, and so now I go to Green School.

In mathematics, for example, I tell the children about magic squares. I actually have a magic cube that Benjamin Franklin designed. It has 216 numbers with a magic square on each cross-section. Then I take it into the fourth dimension and I make magic hypercubes. I give the children a little key to follow. They get some concept, and they’re taking part in it also.

On astronomy, I give slide talks about the telescope. Then we have the satellite analyzing the atmosphere of, say, Mars, as an example. I get two or three children up and I say, “Now, you’re the Earth and you’re a satellite and when you launch, I want you to give him a push.” And then there’s Mars. I say, “You’re sending out signals that are received by the Earth so I want you to go beep, beep, beep, beep as you go along.”

At first they start laughing, but that’s all right. I don’t mind the children laughing so long as it’s related to what we’re doing. I’m not one of these curmudgeons who says, “absolute silence” and all that as long as it relates to what we’re doing.

People say, “Well, you’re doing it because you want to,” and people would argue that you don’t do anything that you don’t want to. They don’t realize that there is something within you that compels you to do these things.

You couldn’t say that Beethoven composed the Ninth Symphony, deaf as he was, only because he wanted to. There was something bigger than him working through him. That’s the way I feel about my work. And that’s the reason I’m doing things that no person in his right mind would do.