Pretty is as pretty does - Jeannette Triplett

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The great Russian author, Leo Tolstoy, put it as only he so often could, “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

The first time I noticed it was when I was a child watching tv Westerns with my father. It occured to me that the good guy was always good looking. And the bad guy was often so ugly it appeared someone must have beat him half to death with an ugly stick as a child.

At just about the age I was noticing the ubiquitous ugliness of bad cowboys, I also became terrified of the Wicked Witch of the West. As in mortified. Stone cold dead in my tracks horrified. When watching the Wizard of Oz, every time her green face appeared on the TV screen, it was as if she was coming directly for me.

However, my mother did a most wonderful thing. She taught me to look “inside” a person, not just on the outside. “Pretty is as pretty does,” she said.

Mom even appeared to foreshadow the fantastically brilliant broadway show and movie Wicked way ahead of its time, telling me as a child, “Benny, I bet there’s a reason the Wicked Witch acts like she does. If we only knew more about what all has happened to her.”

Jeannette Triplett is among the most “outwardly” pretty ladies I have ever seen. And as a career elementary school teacher I saw a lot of pretty ladies, believe you me.

I was privileged to teach side-by-side with Jeannette for a few years. She was also a deeply moral and ethical lady - although (as can too often happen to physically attractive women) such worthy facets of her personality too often went underappreciated due to her physical beauty.

Once while we were having parent-teacher conferences at the school, a student’s father leaned over and whispered to me, “So how much fun is it to teach with that beautiful bimbo over there?”

Now I don’t easily anger, as all my friends will vouch, but I replied to him, “That ‘bimbo’ over there has more class and brains than most people could ever dream about.” (I wanted to add, “including you”, but I somehow held off.)

If only we would learn to search for the beauty of souls more than of faces.

Jeannette became a dear and trusted lifetime friend. I rank her among the very best, kindest, and most compassionate teachers I ever knew, as well. Teaching side by side with someone, day in and day out, in an open classroom like we had - you can’t hide “who you really are”. It was evident to me every moment of every day how much she loved every child who came her way.

Jeannette even chose me to teach her son during his third grade year, instead of teaching him herself, which I counted as an immense honor. Her husband, Danny, very much a “good ol’ boy mountain man” like me, also became a true friend of mine.

Eventually Jeannette transferred from teaching third grade to kindergarten, where she blossomed even further. Although she could have taught literally any grade you could name, kindergarten ultimately proved to be perhaps her finest niche.

Along the way she earned her doctorate degree in education from ETSU. As far from a “bimbo” as the night is from the day was this lady, at least for those who had eyes to see. Dr. Jeannette Triplett she is now - qualified to teach college classes anywhere - but her mission is still teaching kindergarten, even at age 63.

Outer beauty can be an absolutely spellbinding thing to behold, no doubt. Such beauty, however enchanting as it may appear, is fleeting, and will eventually turn to dust.