Roger Youtz tribute

As all of you know who read the Daily News, Roger Youtz died on Feb. 24 in Billings. Roger was one of my favorite people and I was distressed that he’d passed on, even though he was 93.

I first met Roger in the fall of 1958, when starting my sophomore year at Worland High School. Roger had been teaching and coaching at the Greybull High School. The word on the street was that Roger was brought to Worland primarily because he was a good basketball coach, but I learned, as well, that he was a very good history teacher.

I also learned that he was a tough guy. He let us know immediately that he was a Marine who would not brook any foolishness. If you didn’t show him the proper respect, he’d let you know it right away (“Don’t call me ‘teach,’” he barked at me one day). All this may seem inconsistent with the sweetheart we knew for the next 58 years, but the tough Marine was also there from the beginning. He was just a complex guy of many parts. And one part was a teacher and coach who was not going to put up with any nonsense.

After I returned to Worland in 1973, I got a chance to become reacquainted with Roger, but this time as an adult. As much as any human being I’ve ever known, Roger was instantly likeable. I don’t know how that transpired, but almost everyone in his presence felt that. He was also a deeply honest and decent man. My best guess is that the reason he was so well liked was that his core, that unflinching honesty, fairness, kindness, and sense of humor, never changed.

In the 1990s I started writing history books and learned, to my delight, that Roger was a fan of my writings. And this gave me the opportunity to tell Roger how highly I thought of him. He asked me to inscribe one of my books, and so I wrote a dedication to Roger, saying, among other things, that, “Roger, you were my favorite history teacher.” I could have also said that Roger was everyone’s favorite teacher in the class of 1961 (and, probably, a number of other classes). I knew that from my involvement in a couple of the reunions of the Worland High Class of 1961. More than any other teacher, the one person my classmates wanted to have attend our reunions was Roger Youtz, and I was charged to make sure that I got Roger to our sessions.

Roger aged remarkably well, and I teased him by saying that he had an unfair advantage on the rest of us, being immortal. But I knew how hard he took his wife’s death; it was the one event that he couldn’t seem to shake off, and I knew that in the last couple of years he had suffered health crises. Still, I couldn’t avoid the feeling that Roger would live forever. Well, sadly, Roger was not immortal.

As part of my writings, I’ve done a lot of research in old newspapers, and I remember coming across a phrase that made me think of Roger. It was an obituary of a man who had obviously been well thought of in his life. The phrase used about him was “whole-souled.” By that I understood that the man who died was a thoroughly decent, open human being, caring, generous and sensitive to all those around him. I think Roger, too, was “whole-souled,” and we’re all the less for his passing.

John Davis was raised in Worland, graduating from W. H. S. in 1961. John began practicing law here in 1973 and is retired. He is the author of several books. John and his wife, Celia, were married in 1967, have two adult sons, and several grandchildren. Their home is known as the Worland House and is on the National Registry of Historic Places.