GUEST EDITORIAL - As if our third disrupted school year is not challenging enough, the universe delivered a powerful blow to Madera South High School and our entire community. Toward the end of the summer, we learned one of our most beloved and trusted teacher-leaders had fallen ill. Many of us tried to follow his progress with worry and prayers. Sunday night, after a valiant battle to return to his wife, grown children, students, and work-family, Mark Lohuis passed on. For those of us who knew him well, the word "mentor" fails to capture what he inspired. Mark was a moral compass in our lives and his sense of professional ethics was powerful and dignified. To many of us, Mark's advice was profound and his loyalty was powerful.
With all he had to give, Mark LOVED Madera South High School and has been an essential pillar of Stallion Pride since the school's founding. He believed in the underserved and underappreciated who needed us most. Mark believed in students with a fierce relentlessness you only find in screenplays. The difficult students were his specialty and therefore the specialty of the entire Stallion PE department. Mark challenged us to serve them with devotion informed by his deep faith in God. He believed in high expectations, accountability, self-responsibility, compassion, and above all, redemption. Everyone was worth one more effort and one more expression of goodwill. No task, effort, or gesture was beneath him if it lifted up a student or colleague.