Mr. Mitchell
On a cold night in February, 2008 Rayburn Mitchell’s life suddenly went out of control. A driver unexpectedly collided with him, sending his car tumbling across the pavement. In a single moment, a life of adventure and purpose was left hanging in the balance.
Mitchell is a substitute teacher at Sandy High School. He’s famous for telling exciting stories from his life when he subs for a class, some of which involve his earlier career as a flight crew surveyor for the forestry service.
“I picked up a job as part of a flight crew for the department of agriculture. I got out of school, and the next week we were in the air flying over Oregon and Washington,” Mitchell said.
Mr.Mitchell had always dreamed of being a pilot. Unfortunately his vision wasn’t quite good enough for the military, so he took the commercial route, where he could take to the skies and live out the adventure he had always wanted.
“Once we were in a twin engine and lost an engine. A single engine wouldn’t keep you in flight, it would just slow down the descent. It was one of those classic instances where my life was out of my hands. It was life changing,” Mitchell explained.
These incidents would happen rarely but when they did there were lives at stake. Having recently begun a family Mitchell made a tough decision. It was time to be done.
“After the third near miss incident we almost went in the drink and didn’t survive it,” he said.
Even though that chapter of his life was ending, his adventures were far from over. He needed something to do after retiring from flying and had a real passion for teaching, so he got his teaching liscence, then administrators license and superintendent license. Throughout his career, he taught and was an administrator at many schools, including Sandy High school and Grade School and Newberg School District. While he loved to teach his true calling was to help the students.
“It wasn’t about teaching genetics, nobody remembers that, I remember people and I remember how they made me feel. If they make me feel good about myself, if they give me confidence,” Mitchell said.
Mr.Mitchell’s teaching style was defined by his friendships with his students. He didn’t just want them to know the material, he wanted them to progress as people.
“You hear things, funny things, sad things. You cry with kids once in a while when a parent dies or something. I’ve had students come ask me how they should break the news to their parents that they were expecting, which was an honor but it’s a tough thing to work through,” he explained.
Rayburn Mitchell had a full and fulfilling life. He was living according to his purpose, and then disaster struck.
“One night I got into a really bad car crash. I was lucky to survive it, and it literally ended my career because I had traumatic brain and back injuries. I couldn’t walk, I had to crawl to get around the house. I certainly couldn’t drive. I couldn’t speak well at all, I couldn’t put sentences together,” he explained.
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It took three long years of physical therapy for Mitchell to regain his main functionality.
“Through time and healing I learned to cope and kind of compensate,” he said.
Even though the accident took his career from him he was really thankful to be alive. He leaned heavily on his faith and his family through that time.
“The beauty of it was I was able to be home with my kids again, and I was able to participate in their lives. They literally helped me walk, so that was a real blessing,” he said.
As his motor skills began to improve, he decided he needed a project. Something that could help him fully recover.
“I called an old friend who was the metals teacher at Sandy years ago, we hadn’t spoken in ten years, but before it was over he talked me into buying an old model A. It was rotted to the ground. As my therapy I rebuilt it,” Mitchell explained.
All the instructions and screws and hand eye coordination required in building a car was hard work, and it was only made harder because he could hardly move his hands, keep his eyes focused, or read. However, over the course of five years he redeveloped his skills and rebuilt it. Just as a car had seemingly taken apart his life, here it was helping him put it back together.
“It’s how you respond to adversity that makes good character. I wasn’t always graceful about it. I went through all the emotions of being angry and feeling sorry for myself. But you can’t feel sorry when you’re doing this,” Mitchell said.
Mr.Mitchell’s perspective on life was undoubtedly one of the reasons he pulled through. Giving up was just never an option for him.
“I do think that your character and the way you handle those life lessons is important. There were times I just had to have faith that this will work out. You have to find the good in it somewhere, and I have,” he explained.
Since the accident things have improved incredibly for Mr.Mitchell. His son joined the airforce and recently took him up in a plane for the first time in twenty years. And he’s slowly gotten back in the classroom too. While he still struggles with memory and can’t be a full time teacher he enjoys being able to serve.
“I feel that I have a calling to do this. It’s more of a holy calling. I feel like the lord is saying, ‘this is what you should do.’ I can’t say no. And once I start seeing the kids I just get so much energy again, I feel alive,” he said.
Mr.Mitchell has led a full life, and he’s enjoyed it for better and worse. The most important lesson that his story can tell you is that no matter what happens in life, don’t give up, and especially don’t let anything take you from what you were born to do.
(Authors note: Original article written for The Pioneer Press, a High School newspaper in 2022. No edits have been made since the original printing.)
