Diane's obituary does not mention the time she spent teaching AP Senior English at John Marshall High School in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles during 1969-70, but there are many students there who remember her to this day. How do I know? Because I had to ask around about her, and I finally found someone that actually had her contact information. I had tried to find her for many years, decades even, to tell her of the impact she had on my life way back when, and I was finally able to speak to her in 2018. She was a phenomenal teacher, and conveyed a love of English that I had never understood before, as I had also never understood grammar or writing. Within weeks of graduating I had written a grant proposal for $2,000 (about $20,000 today), a fair sum for a 17-year old, and it was awarded with the approving comment of "anybody who can write like that deserves..." I owed it to her. Many, many times over the past half-century plus her writing lessons have blessed the lives of our seven children affording them opportunities they never would have had, they've been used in business settings, and eventually in authoring books. No teacher in all my school years, including 10 years at the collegiate level, ever impacted my life or career so profoundly. She told me of her battle with cancer when we spoke briefly, and having been gone for a few years, I was hoping she might still be with us, so I was mightily disappointed when I learned she had passed on. God bless her for keeping up the good fight, and I hope we might have the opportunity to get reacquainted in the hereafter so I can express to her my sincere gratitude for the impact she had upon one student's life. I will never forget Mrs. Roth the English Teacher, who obviously was so much more than that to so many others. I hope her family, husband and children, might know there must be many of us out there who were grateful for your wife and mom.
