In the end, she got up and spoke, because that’s who she is inside this place. Outwardly strong. Usually smiling. Always standing at the head of the class, sometimes even in heels.
If she were breaking inside, which is surely how you are feeling if your husband gets up one day and dies, there was really no way of telling — except through human intuition and basic common sense.
"Thank you so much for being here," said Ellen Van Arsdale, principal at Palm Beach County’s nationally recognized arts high school, Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts.
"This has been a wonderful sense of closure."
It’s been just two weeks since Van Arsdale’s husband, Darryl, collapsed of an apparent brain aneurysm. He hung on briefly for a few days, still handsome and beautiful, still there, still hers, but he never recovered. He was 61 when he died April 19 in hospice care. They had been married 12 years.
Public education is a heck of a career to choose if you like to be home every day for supper, but Ellen Van Arsdale – or Mrs. V., as students call her – has been doing it so long, it probably seems normal.
"You really do spend more time in the school than you do out of it," says Jane Grandusky, the magnet coordinator at Dreyfoos, who gently presided over Darryl Van Arsdale’s memorial service on Tuesday.
School is the place where Ellen Van Arsdale will always feel comfortable. Indeed, she told about 150 people who attended Tuesday’s service at Meyer Hall that she’ll be back to work soon, next week at the latest.
But here’s a little secret about this put-together woman who’s been a school principal since she was 26 years old.
She actually does have an off-campus life. Honest.
And it was he.
They loved Duke basketball and the New York Giants. They loved their regular walks on the beach. He loved a quick bowl of cereal. (Apparently, Van Arsdale’s not much of a cook.) He bought her a baby grand so she could brush up at the keyboard.
And they loved to laugh.
Her dear, devoted mother loved him. Her three sisters loved him. Her colleagues loved him.
Former Palm Beach County educator Jack Caracuzzo called Darryl Van Arsdale a gentle man with "a great heart."
"In education, we work with a lot of people who help other people," said Caracuzzo, who worked with Van Arsdale when she was principal at William T. Dwyer High School in Palm Beach Gardens, before coming to Dreyfoos.
"You don’t always find that outside this profession."
But apparently, she found it in Darryl.
As a matter of record, my son attended Dreyfoos during the Van Arsdale years, but I’d never been inside her office – (lucky us!) – until late in 2010, when the newspaper hired me to write a profile on her. This is her 10th year at the downtown West Palm Beach school.
Could I see if she’d agree to a story? About her?
While Van Arsdale, 54, is known for her fierce privacy, she agreed to let me in, just a little. A few times, we sat, she and I, inside her big office filled with all the mementos and the pretty natural light, and she told me how she’d met him.
Van Arsdale – then Ellen Gray – was working as a principal on the west coast of Florida when she developed some serious back issues. Indeed, an orthopedic surgeon eventually sent her to a chiropractor for treatment on her herniated discs.
"And it was him," she said, smiling.
For years, they had a commuter marriage. He lived and worked in Charlotte County; she was here. But despite his happy heart and healthy physique, Darryl Van Arsdale developed his own back issues that required multiple surgeries. Recently, he’d closed his chiropractic practice and moved to their Singer Island condo.
He’d often drive her to work and pick her up, waiting patiently as she sat, sometimes for hours, finishing up her long workday.
My profile of Van Arsdale’s 10th year at the school never ran in the paper. Despite our snippets of time together, I was never really able to crack her shell. She’s private, this one. A Post photographer took the picture of the Van Arsdales together on the beach outside their home back in December, but I held onto the story with the intention of parachuting back into her life at the end of the school year – about now – and then putting the profile in the paper as the school year closed.
And then, this.
It’s a hell of a reason to tell you a beautiful love story.
Tuesday just after 4:30 in the afternoon, Van Arsdale entered the performance hall at Dreyfoos with a smile. She dispensed hugs. She sat where she usually sits, front row, center seat, as her students took the stage.
And while Meyer Hall has been filled with music and dance and theater a thousand and one times before, this time was different.
There were no judges, no score sheets, no win-or-lose at the end.
No audience. No orchestra. No out-of-town relatives.
Those students were there for her.
Just for her.
And for a while, that seemed to make everything all right.
Palm Beach Entertainment: Events, movies, restaurants, nightlife & more | pbpulse.com
Did we skip anything?
