High school is the time we begin to figure out who we really are — when we first gravitate to the interests that will take us toward adulthood. If we are lucky, we get teachers who help point the way forward.

I was blessed to have had several such teachers, and one of them has just died. His passing has left a hole in my heart that surprises me, since it has been over 50 years since I graduated from high school.

Mike Ferrara’s subject was freshman English, but he did much more than introduce us to Silas Marner, Madame Defarge and Shylock the money-launderer. Although he tried in vain to pique my interest in poetry, he did give me a lifetime addiction to limericks!

To Mike, teaching high school English was all about helping young people communicate clearly, factually, professionally and without fear.

Like generations of educators before and after him, he made use of technology – radio.

In those days, Salamanca was able to support a daily newspaper and a 1,000-watt AM radio station, WGGO.

The WGGO management welcomed the chance to sell the kids two hours of otherwise unsellable airtime every Saturday afternoon so they could produce a weekly radio show.

This was the 1960s, but even in that simpler time and in our peaceful little town, the idea must have been radical. Imagine turning over a valuable radio station (not to mention your precious FCC broadcast license) to a bunch of teenagers!

Soon, the earliest waves of kids were fanning out, selling advertising to local merchants, researching and prepping scripts and picking which records to spin. WSHS – the Voice of Sally High – was born.

It drew kids like a magnet. Approaching the age when we began to have something to say, WSHS gave us a megaphone. Our two-hour show was much more than music, news and weather. There were weekly five-minute interview programs, sports features and student-produced special programming, all supported by advertising the kids sold and wrote themselves.

It was an outlet, at a time in our lives when we all needed one.

Overseeing it all, but keeping a respectful distance, was Mike Ferrara. As the founding advisor to WSHS, he was a thorough and disciplined taskmaster who did not suffer fools gladly.

He knew that every element of a radio show could teach us something. We learned to muster the courage to meet with a complete stranger and sell radio advertising; how to investigate and produce factual news stories; how to write in a coherent and entertaining way; how to speak to an audience with strength, confidence and poise.

We couldn’t fully appreciate it at the time, but WSHS was teaching us to become real adults by doing grown-up things. Mr. Ferrara was teaching communication with advertisers, station management, each other and with our audience.

Since FCC rules required that a licensed engineer be on premises at all times, many of us sat for the exam to obtain an FCC Third Class License with Broadcast Endorsement. This, in turn, enabled a few of us to score part-time jobs at the “real” radio station. People don’t believe me, but I actually got to host a radio call-in show when I was barely 17!

When Hurricane Agnes roared into Salamanca in June of 1972, one of the kids (I think it was Mike Sweeney) remembered from his FCC License class that, in an emergency such as a flood or hurricane, a daytime station like WGGO could extend its airtime beyond daylight hours. After securing the written consent of our local and county Civil Defense coordinators, we broadcast emergency warnings and news for 48 continuous hours.

Agnes didn’t actually “roar” into Salamanca. More accurately, it snuck up on us — at night and without much warning. Silently, it overflowed a new dike system that had been built to withstand a once-in-100-year flood.

Had it not been for the warnings from Mike Ferrara’s WSHS club, some people in low-lying areas might not have gotten out of the way.

In the decades since, WSHS evolved alongside technology. What was once a two-hour Saturday radio show is now Warrior Vision TV, a daily in-house telecast to the high school as well as cablecasting and webcasting of sporting events and a regular news magazine.

It has been many years since I last saw my friends from WSHS, but I know that many of us found careers in broadcasting, communications, media and journalism.

There are thousands of teachers like Mike Ferrara out there — visionary men and women with a zest for their subjects and a burning desire to engage their students to learn. We can’t pay such people enough, but let us at least give them the flexibility and resources they need to fully pursue their talents.

Growing up in a small, remote town surrounded by the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, Mike Ferrara introduced us to a world beyond our horizon – and taught us that we had nothing to fear from it. Those are big lessons to learn, and I’ll never be able to thank him.

He was much more than a gifted educator. To me, he was a mentor, a guide and a friend. I will never forget him, and I will miss him as long as I live.

Rest well, Mr. Ferrara. You earned it.

(Mike Collins is a Salamanca native who spent much of his career in communications and now owns a public relations firm with operations in Florida and Washington, D.C.)