The 1958 Makio is perhaps the most fitting memorial to Ray Haight.

Raymond Leroy Haight Jr., who taught at Redlands High School for more than 20 years, died Sept. 22 in San Francisco. He was 88.

"He was one of if not the best teacher I ever had," said Nancy DeMaggio of Redlands, who was on the yearbook staff and also had Haight for history.

Haight became known at RHS for his teaching techniques and care for his students.

"My father loved his students and it showed," said son James Haight. "He was very courageous in his teaching methods."

The Class of 1958 dedicated their senior yearbook to him, naming him teacher of the year with the headline "Someone Special" above his photo. The class

asked him to speak at their 50th reunion at the Redlands Country Club last year.

"He was the only teacher I ever had who made history fun," said Connie Jury of Redlands, who was in Haight's history class her sophomore year at RHS. "He made it come alive."

James Haight said his father would dress up as figures from the kind of government his students were studying.

"If it was a dictatorship it was Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, democracy it was Uncle Sam. He really had fun with the class," said James, an attorney in San Francisco.

He lobbed pop quizzes and probed students in the style of "The $64,000 Question."

"They were just fun - you were never were bored, you never knew what was coming," DeMaggio

said.

"You were encouraged and felt you wanted to be as creative with your work as he was in his instructing," she said. "There was never a dull moment."

Haight became a teacher because he wanted to have contact with high school-age kids, James said.

"They expressed themselves for the first time so he liked that (interaction)," he said.

He also liked history, particularly political history, and read biographies, James said. He served in the Navy during World War II, based in the Amazon jungle and a carrier in the Pacific. When the war ended, his ship went to Nagasaki to take home Australian and New Zealand prisoners of war.

Jury said she remembered studying the world wars in Haight's class. Janet Landfried began teaching history and social studies at RHS in 1964 and remembered Haight talking to his students about the conflict in Vietnam.

"I remember him telling students after the Gulf of Tonkin, `Some of you are going to war,' and he was right.

"I remember having very interesting discussions with him and people I was teaching with. He had a passion for education, a passion for learning," she said.

Haight was born "near the La Brea Tar Pits," as he put it, in Los Angeles in 1921. His great-grandfather was governor of California, and his father also ran for governor.

He got his bachelor's at USC before entering the Navy and being sent to Harvard Supply Corps, where he earned a bachelor of science degree. After leaving the Navy in 1946, he returned to USC to get his master's degree.

He received "honors in sports at college," according to the Makio, and was a devoted USC football fan. He first met his wife, Mary Ellen, at a USC-UCLA football game. Her brother was in Haight's fraternity, and she was 12 at the time. She ended up attending UCLA.

"He had a feeling a competition was coming up to marry her, so he popped the question," James Haight said. "My dad was very much a traditionalist."

He said he most misses watching football games with his father.

"He pretended not to care but he got into it," James said. "I miss my dad's comments - he could tell you who the quarterback at the Rose Bowl was in 1948."

He said his father was a great tennis player.

"He played tennis when he was 70 years old, and he was still beating me," James said.

At RHS, Haight coached track and field and the basketball and football B teams. He was also adviser of the World Affairs Club and Constitution Committee. He got his administrative credential from the University of Redlands.

He was a John Hay Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley in 1962 and 1963, which "recharged my batteries," he wrote in an e-mail to former student Carol Pechler. The Free Speech Movement was starting, and it deeply affected him, James Haight said. And he was never reserved about his beliefs.

"Public schools, he believed were the core of democracy," James said. "When he was alone with his thoughts he wrote a lot about the California public school system and I think the progressive nature of his politics were evident and I think they got him in trouble in Redlands."

After leaving RHS, Haight taught at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for a year and in 1970 ran for governor in the Democratic primary. He campaigned mainly in San Luis Obispo, opposing the war in Vietnam and defending public education and academic freedom. He campaigned in Redlands in April 1970.

James Haight told the story of his father receiving a visit from then-Gov. Earl Warren. Raymond Haight Sr. was Warren's campaign manager.

"Earl Warren came to see Ray Haight (Jr.)'s twin sons, Ray answered door in his pajamas, never got out of his pajamas," James said. "My mom tells the story of dad and Gov. Warren and (Warren's) wife Nina (visiting) in his underwear."

The Haights moved to the Bay Area, where Haight taught in Marin County schools and then in San Francisco inner city schools from 1970 through 2007. He substituted in kindergarten through 12th grade from 1984 through 2007. He retired at age 85.

One of the schools he worked at was Ida B. Wells High School, a continuation school.

"He was the only one who could tame them," James said.

"He wad one of the kindest persons I think you'd ever meet, just a kind man," he said. "He could associate himself with you emotionally. He was open with students, he cared about them."

Haight's relationship with students extended beyond the classroom. He had them over to go swimming after they graduated, Jury said, and a few babysat his four sons.

"He paid the babysitter better than most other people - I thought that was so nice," DeMaggio said.

"When you drove around everyone knew you in town because they knew Ray," James Haight said.

Students kept in keeping regular contact with the Haights, and when Pechler and DeMaggio coordinated their 50th reunion a year ago, they invited Haight to speak. In April 2008, the Haights decided they could not travel, and Pechler interviewed Ray the next month with video about his years at RHS.

"He had a big positive impact on my life, among other ways in my choice of teaching (university teaching) as career," Pechler wrote in an e-mail. "As editor of the Makio in 1958, I got the agreement of the Makio staff to honor Ray as our teacher of the year."

She said Haight e-mailed her five days before he died telling that he was getting weaker, and that afternoon he was taken to the hospital.

"Moral of this bio, Carol, `LIFE BEGINS IN 60'S,' not the 40's!" he wrote in the information he sent her for the reunion.

The Haights began yearly trips to Europe in 1980, when Mary Ellen and James began writing books on cities like Paris and Barcelona. They spent a year in Kyllburg, Germany, where they taught high school to meet expenses.

"I became a world traveler as an adult and give him some credit for that," Jury said.

Landfried said Haight was extremely knowledgeable.

"It was a wonderful introduction because I had such inspirational teachers around me," she said "Mr. Haight stood head and shoulders above."

The RHS yearbook dedication reads:

"To a man who is someone special to us: special because he has a mind all his own, because he is not satisfied with doing just all right, but pursues the high ideals in which he believes, because he is devoted to teaching and is concerned about each of his students, and who is able to instill that spark of wanting to learn, we dedicate the Makio for 1958.

"So loved by students who struggled through time charts, pop quizzes, and philosophies of life, he and his unique teaching methods have come to mean much to us. You, Mr. Haight, will always be Someone Special to the students of Redlands High School."

He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Mary Ellen of San Francisco; sons Raymond Haight III of Laguna Beach, James Haight of San Francisco, John Haight of Mill Valley and David Haight of Union City; and three grandchildren.

Contributions may be made to a memorial scholarship at Ida B. Wells High School. Donations may be sent to James Haight at the Hearst Building, 5 3rd St., Suite 1100, San Francisco, CA 94103.

E-mail Staff Writer Joy Juedes at jjuedes@redlandsdailyfacts.com