Frank McCourt, November 21, 2005.* Photo by Erin Patrice O'Brien/Corbis Outline.*

1983, New York City

I'm sitting at a hard, oak desk with its quaint inkwell at Stuyvesant High School, feeling more ill-at-ease than usual for a teenager. Word in the hall is that our creative writing teacher, Frank McCourt, collapsed in the cafeteria two days earlier. Even 25 years ago, Mr. McCourt was white-haired and seemed fragile so I was relieved when he took his usual spot at the front of the class. He stood, slightly formal, with his small eyes and odd manner. He placed his light brown leather valise, turning white at the edges, in front of him on the teacher's desk. It was a defensive posture, the valise between him and the high-strung, over-achieving teenagers.

He raised the valise and let it fall to the desk with a subdued clap. We all quieted. At Stuyvesant there was always a feeling that the students were waiting for class to start, rather than waiting for it to end. "Before we begin, are there any questions?" he asked, opening the valise and taking out the usual attendance binder with the Delaney cards. I raised my hand.

"Yes, Colin?"

"Are you dying, Mr. McCourt?" I asked, still concerned about the cafeteria incident.

He paused, thoughtful, aware. "We are all dying, Colin." He smiled and added, "But I'm not dying any faster than the rest."2009, Santa Monica

I now live almost as far away from Manhattan as you can and still share the continent. But that morning came to mind when I read that Mr. McCourt was gravely ill from meningitis related to his melanoma. News spread through the Stuy network, much like it had when he'd collapsed those many years ago. But it also made the national press. Most high school English teachers probably have an unfinished play or novel or memoir that they keep in their top drawer. Mr. McCourt had finished his and it had gone on to win a Pulitzer Prize. Angela's Ashes recounted his impoverished childhood, which began in Brooklyn and continued in Ireland. It's a heartbreaking story of dying siblings, an alcoholic father, the villainous Catholic church, and an overwhelmed mother, Angela, told with a remarkable level of detail. Here's one passage where Mr. McCount recounts his Limerick childhood:

We make our way up O'Connell Avenue, out Ballinacurra, in by the South Circular Road, down Henry Street and back to the office for more papers. Uncle Pat wears a cap and a thing like a cowboy poncho to keep his papers dry but he complains his feet are killing him and we stop in a pub for a pint for his poor feet. Uncle Pa Keating is there all black and having a pint and he says to Uncle Pat, Ab, are you going to let that boy stand there with his face hanging out for the want of a lemonade?

This precise recollection of a five-year-old boy raises questions. Do we really believe a child could remember all of that? Uncle Pat was called "Ab" by other adults? The route they took through Limerick, Ireland? What Uncle Pat was wearing that day? Did Mr. McCourt have an extraordinary memory for detail or an inventive imagination? There was no one to refute his memories. How much was fiction and how much was fact?

Oh, if I could, I would raise my hand.

1996, Brentwood

While browsing at Duttons Bookstore in Brentwood, I came across a stack of Angela's Ashes, and the notice that the author was giving a reading the following day. It made me smile to see the name "Frank McCourt" right there on the cover. I bought a copy, and made plans to return.

The next evening, I strapped my eight-month-old son, Rudy, into his car seat and headed over. A small crowd — fewer than 30 people — had gathered in the courtyard, so I stationed myself on the path from the parking area to the entrance to make sure I could catch him. Fifteen minutes before the reading, Mr. McCourt ambled toward the bookstore, looking just as he had when I last saw him at the front of a classroom: the tweed jacket, the white hair, the small eyes, and the odd manner. His manager (or p.r. flack) looked slightly annoyed to see someone holding a book and a baby on his hip, interfering with their quick entry to the store. I made my move.

"Mr. McCourt," I began. "I wanted to stay for the reading, but my son is too small and needs to head home. Can I trouble you for an autograph of my copy before I go?"

Mr. McCourt smiled and looked at Rudy. Rudy stared back with his huge blue eyes. "Sure, I'd be happy to," Mr. McCourt said. He took the book and flipped it open. "Who should sign it to," he said, then glanced up. "Wait." He looked me in the eye. "You were a student of mine, weren't you?"

A flash of memory or just a good guess? I imagine a lot of the people coming out to see him on the first swing of his book tour, before all the awards, were former students. My brother, another Stuy alumnus, once figured out that Mr. McCourt had taught more than six thousand students. And, if someone calls you "Mr. McCourt," the chances are even better that it was someone who sat in your class.

"Uh, that's right, I ..."

"You're Colin," he announced, looking down and back up again. "Colin Summers."

Well, that's a great trick. It's a dozen years since I saw him last and I can't imagine I look that similar to my high school self. I don't hide under a mop of hair anymore and certainly hadn't been hauling a baby about. I only had Mr. McCourt for a single class, but then some people have a knack for remembering names.

"Yes, that's me."

"And you sat in the front row," he continued.

O.K., I had forgotten that, but he was correct.

"Right next to your girlfriend." He frowned a little. "And she was your first girlfriend."

Well, first one that acknowledged being my girlfriend and the first girl I kissed, yes.

"She left you," he continued.

I still don't know how he remembered that. I tried to forget it.

"She left you for a drummer."

Now that was news to me - news right there in the garden of Duttons Books, more than a decade after the fact. I was just standing in dumb silence. He wasn't done.

"And you lived in the Village ... between 5th and 6th Avenue..." A little longer pause. "... on 12th street."

Wrong! "I was on 13th," I corrected him.

McCourt turned a little red. "Ach, I was on 12th Street and sometimes I confuse the two." He changed the subject from past to present.

"And what's this young man's name?" he asked, turning to my son.

"Rudy," I said, and he chucked Rudy under the chin and said he was a fine boy and cute as could be. Since he'd already signed my book, the handler took this moment to steer Mr. McCourt past me into the store.

Three weeks later, Manchester, Vermont

Mr. McCourt was still working the independent bookstore circuit and had turned up in Manchester, where my parents were for the weekend. They attended his book reading at the Northshire Bookstore, and while getting her book signed, my mother introduced herself: "I'm Peg Summers. My son had you at Stuyvesant."

Without looking up, McCourt said, "Your grandson, Rudy, is one of the cutest babies I have ever seen."

2009, Santa Monica

I've read Angela's Ashes a few times, and I've always taken every detail as fact—give or take a block. Every now and then, a mind comes along that can capture information and hold it forever. Mr. McCourt had that gift, and we're tremendously lucky that he shared it with us. I cherish my memories of sitting in class and having him slip from the topic at hand to a story about his mother or his first few years in New York. He never talked about his childhood. I think he was saving that. He was a funny, wry, honest, sharp and vulnerable teacher who had the astonishing ability not just to tell a story, but to tell the truth.

Colin Summers is an architect living in Santa Monica. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1984.