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ONE OF THE people who got me where I am today died too young last week after a tough fight with cancer.
Jack Breen taught me what they used to call "Bonehead" English at Marin Catholic High School 24 years ago-I was so boneheaded, in fact, that I had to take two of his classes back to back my freshman year.
He was Mephistopheles and St. Francis in a short, stout package, with bushy, graying hair flying around his head like a mad scientist's.
Jack, descended from one of the surviving members of the Donner Party, was a no-nonsense teacher who seemed old-- school even in the 1970s. His wit was without peer. Of Irish descent, he quoted Shakespeare like Laurence Olivier and had Bob Hope's timing. He used his ice-blue eyes the way conductors use a baton. He comforted the afflicted and...