When Kim Mohler moved to Sacramento, California in 1967, her mother had just divorced after an abusive relationship.

“She was working and trying to support two little girls and maybe did not have the best parenting skills,” the 64-year-old remembered. “Our basic needs were always met, but my mother did not know how to do the nurturing.”

Instead, it was her third grade teacher, Bermudian Esme Williams, who met that need for her.

As an adult, whenever someone asked who had influenced Ms Mohler the most in childhood, outside of her family, she always thought of Ms Williams.

“She was always my favourite teacher,” Ms Mohler told The Royal Gazette. “She was one of the best educators I ever had.”

Her innovative teaching style influenced Ms Mohler’s career choice.

“I worked for 41 years for the City of Sacramento, managing their youth programmes. I also did a lot of youth and workforce development.”

Last year, after more than half a century apart, Ms Mohler decided it was time to find her old mentor.

“I just wanted to thank her and tell her how much she changed my life,” she said.

Finding her though, was rough going. Ms Williams did not seem to be living in California any more.

Then one day, Ms Mohler remembered that her former teacher was from Bermuda. She googled ‘Ms Williams and Bermuda’, and found an article about her online.

“I was relieved to see she was still alive,” Ms Mohler said. “She was dressed up with some friends, and I knew immediately that it was her. She was always a snappy dresser.”

In fact, when Ms Williams taught her, Ms Mohler would often go home at the end of the day and tell her mother what Ms Williams had been wearing.

“I really dug her sense of style,” she said.

She found a Bermuda telephone directory online that listed Ms Williams’ number.

“I was really emotional when I dialled,” she said. “It had become really important to me to tell her what she meant to my life.

“I didn’t know if she would remember me. After a lifetime of teaching, I was probably one of thousands of students she taught.”

She expected to get an answering machine, but Ms Williams picked up on the second ring.

“A voice asked if I once taught at Marshall Elementary in Sacramento, California,” Ms Williams said.

She recalled Kim Mohler very well.

“She was a little White girl with curly, curly hair,” Ms Williams said. “She was also smart as a whip.”

The reunion was emotional for both ladies. “I cried,” Ms Williams said.

They had a great time going down memory lane.

Ms Williams taught Ms Mohler at the end of the 1960s, the height of the civil rights movement in the United States.

“I had an afro and people said I looked like Angela Davis,” Ms Williams said, speaking of the political activist and philosopher.

On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

“I will never forget where I was on that day,” Ms Mohler said.

At school Ms Williams wheeled a television into the classroom so that the students could see news coverage of the event.

“I remember Ms Williams being very upset and crying,” Ms Mohler told The Royal Gazette. “She was trying to explain to a bunch of eight-year-olds the significance of what occurred.

“She was so patient, and we tried our best to understand. The image of it will be imprinted on my brain for ever.”

Meanwhile, at that time a controversial programme was in place to bus minority students into schools in White neighbourhoods in an effort to improve education for them.

“Desegregation involved moving physical bodies from one place to another, but for something like that to work, there has to be a heart change,” Ms Williams said.

She said it was quite a difficult situation with people unhappy on both sides.

“Some people asked why Black students had to be bused to White communities,” she said. “They wanted to know why White students couldn’t be bused to Black communities? It was a very uneasy time. We had to talk with the parents and help them to understand.”

Ms Mohler was not bused to school.

“We lived eight blocks from Marshall,” she said. “It was a straight walk.”

If there was tension around busing in the community, she was largely unaware of it at such a young age.

“I only knew in my classroom, there was a lot of work done around creating community and appreciation of one another,” she said.

In one of the exercises Ms Williams put a map of the world on the wall and then photos of all of her students around it.

Threads from each child led to where their ancestors were from in the world.

“We were instructed to all go home and find out about our ancestors,” Ms Mohler said.

There was a map of Africa on another wall, and the children studied all aspects of life in Africa.

“There was this stereotype that people in Africa all lived in huts,” Ms Williams said. “I wanted to dispel that idea. It was part of our social studies class.”

Another memorable moment during her time with Ms Williams as a teacher was when Ms Williams mobilised the entire class to help a family who had lost everything in a fire.

“They were not in our class, so we did not know them,” Ms Mohler said.

However, students brought clothes and even furniture to school to help.

The phone call last year was not the end for the newly reunited pair.

Ms Williams had a trip planned to visit Sacramento later that summer.

“I still have friends and family there,” she said. “I was going back to celebrate my 80th birthday.”

They made plans to meet up, but there was just one problem. When she arrived in California, Ms Mohler was just recovering from Achilles tendon surgery.

“I was in a boot,” she said. “I got released from it at the end of the visit. I wasn’t letting her leave the continent without getting together. We went out to eat.”

It felt like only a few years had gone by instead of more than half a century.

“You can tell that she is still in authority though, as she is still bossing me around,” Ms Mohler joked.

Ms Mohler is the only student from Marshall who has contacted Ms Williams.

“I worked at Marshall for two or three years,” Ms Williams said. “Later, I worked at junior high school. I have kept in contact with some of those students.”