When Mrs. Yost was out of school for several months following a surgery during my senior year, a small group of student council representatives brought dinner one night to her house for her and her family.

She came to the door in her bathrobe, and her face lit up when she saw us. "You brought so much food!" she said. "Won't you join us? We can't eat it all; it will go to waste!"

We tried to politely refuse; we had brought it for her family, not for ourselves, and we didn't want to intrude on her time with her family.

But there was no refusing Mrs. Yost. She wouldn't accept that. So we sat down at her table with her husband and at least one of her sons, and we ate dinner with them. She asked about us, and she asked about people at school. Of course, she told us her stories — I can't remember hearing the same Mrs. Yost story twice. She laughed her big, hearty laugh that night, and she probably cried, too, as she often did when she'd find herself telling a story that would make her emotional.

She treated us like her family, which is how I remember her treating most people. She was always kind, and she always listened, and she always made whoever she was talking to feel like they were the most important person in the world in that moment.

Which is not to say she was an easily-manipulated wide-eyed pushover. She was nobody's fool, but BOY could she make fools feel their foolishness; she could make fools feel horrible about how they'd behaved toward her or toward others. She expected everyone to behave sensibly and kindly, and she had words for people who did not.

And although she could deftly instill fear and guilt in fools, she could also set people immediately at ease. When I convinced my notoriously awful tenth period English class to throw our beleaguered teacher an unironic birthday party during which we would behave for the entire class and follow her instructions, I invited Mrs. Yost to come join us. At first, our teacher, sensing a prank and rebellion, tried to shut down her own birthday party, frantically demanding that we put away the snacks and the plates. Then, Mrs. Yost came to the door, smiling and laughing. "Oh, Mary!" she boomed. "What a lovely gesture!" And she came in and had some snacks and laughed her laugh, and almost instantly, our beleaguered teacher relaxed and enjoyed with us the birthday snacks we had brought for her.

Everyone knows "a Mrs. Yost" at their own schools or in their own neighborhood or in their own (real) family. Everyone who knew THIS Mrs. Yost — Mary Beth Yost, who taught English at Shore Regional High School and who preached kindness and joy by embodying it — was lucky.