Eilers pitches a winner at CHS

Chuck Eilers worked six years as an X-ray technician in Des Moines. But, while doing so, he was finishing a Bachelor of Science degree in education at Drake University.

“I guess I always wanted to teach,” Eilers said. “The only other job I would rather have was to pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals.”

Eilers, Creston High School science teacher for 35 years before retiring in 2001, is one of four new inductees into the Creston Schools Hall of Fame. Induction ceremonies will be held along with homecoming queen coronation 12:15 p.m. Friday in the high school auditorium.

“When I got a letter from Principal (J.B.) Slight, it really surprised me,” said Eilers, 72. “It is very much appreciated, and I’m very humbled by it, really.”

Eilers, a 1957 graduate of Parkersburg High School, never got that professional baseball offer, so he went to Iowa Methodist School of X-ray Technology in Des Moines for a 24-month training period. He became a registered X-ray technician at Broadlawns Polk County Hospital in 1966. He and his wife Janet were married in 1961, and they are the parents of three children, all living in central Iowa.

After earning his education degree at Drake in 1966, he began his first and only teaching job in Creston the following fall. While teaching, he earned a master’s degree in biology from Northwest Missouri State University.

At CHS, Eilers taught biology and human anatomy/physiology. He also coached girls basketball and track for many years. He never saw a need to move his career elsewhere.

One stop

“Well, it’s just a good place to live,” Eilers said. “Both Janet and I love it here, and our kids loved it here. There’s lots of fishing and hunting, and I like to fish and hunt. We really had great kids here, too.”

One of those former students was Dr. Robert Kuhl, a fellow member of the Creston Hall of Fame, and longtime Creston surgeon.

“Denise (his wife) and I both had him for high school biology,” Kuhl said. “He’s the only teacher both of us had, and all of our boys also had. He’s just an outstanding teacher. A lot of times you get science teachers who know science, but don’t really know how to teach. Chuck presented it in a fashion you could understand, and made things interesting.”

Eilers said lab projects were the key to keeping the interest of his students. That became much easier when the new high school opened in 1990.

“I tried to make things interesting and challenging,” Eilers said. “Moving to the new school made my job much easier. For the first time, we had really decent labs. The technology improved in what you could use in teaching.”

Former students

In Creston, Eilers sees many professionals in medicine, dentistry, optometry and law who he had as young students.

“I guess maybe what I’m most proud of is not necessarily what I was able to accomplish, but to see all of them who have come back to Creston after going through Creston High School,” Eilers said.

That’s the most satisfying part of teaching, he said.

“You think of people like Dr. Kuhl, his son (Dr. Taften Kuhl), Dr. (Steeve) Reeves, dentists like Dr. (David) Buck and Dr. (Dan) Coen, and lawyers like Todd Nielsen and the Kenyons (Skip and Tim),” Eilers said. “There are many others. Pretty much all of the professional people I go to see, I had in school!”

For a good portion of his 35 years at CHS, many of his colleagues also stayed on the staff for a number of years. Only in recent years did most of them begin retiring. Few left for other school districts.

“I think during the period of time from 1966 to about 2001 we probably had the best teaching staff we’ve ever had at Creston High School, and probably ever will have,” Eilers said. “We had a lot of master’s degree people. Excellent, hard-working teachers. A majority of them stayed 25 years or so. I worked for quite a few administrators, but Ron Levine was pretty special. He became a good friend.”

Task force

During the summers from 1991 through 1994, Eilers was part of a task force to write a new curriculum approach to teaching science, headed by Curt Jeffryes, Creston Elementary science teacher. Teachers from many neighboring districts served on the panel that was funded by a National Science Foundation grant.

“We had a team writing curriculum for Science, Technology and Society (STS),” Eilers said. “It was an approach relying less on textbooks and more on student questions developing the curriculum through their own investigation of the topic. We made a presentation in Washington, D.C., in 1992 at an STS convention.”

Now, with his career behind him, he’ll be on the CHS Hall of Fame wall along with the likes of Levine and former teachers Larry Osthus, Dorothy Peak, Tina Mueller and Jean Crane.

“When you think of the other people who are in the group, I’m really privileged to be included with those people,” Eilers said.