The Wayland High School Class of 1966 reunion June 25 will be a sort of “homecoming” for long-lost English teacher Mary Ellen Nyuli.

Nyuli, who taught at Wayland High School from 1963 to 1972, and her husband plan to make a trip from their home in Florida to drop in as a special guest at the reunion at the 84th Street Grille, Byron Center, that Saturday evening to renew old acquaintances and catch up on what’s happened in the 44 years since she left.

Michael Johnston, a 1972 graduate of Wayland High School who himself became a history teacher at Kenowa Hills, used his research skills to track down a teacher whom he said made a difference for him during his troubled youth.

Johnston reported, “I found out she was born in Ludington, went to Western (Michigan University), hired to teach in Wayland in 1963. Retired from Wayland in 1972, the year I graduated. She went to Florida where she met her future husband and got married. She became a Disciples of Christ pastor and retired recently.”

The Class of 1966 members invited her to their 50-year reunion and she has agreed to make the long trek.

Johnston has Nyuli as one of the featured people in a book he is writing about his early youth experiences.

“I told her I was hunting down all the people who had a huge impact on me. It is Hillary’s ‘it takes a village’…  nuns, priests, social workers, foster parents and others. I was salvaged from a cesspit and PTSD growing up in a warring household, poverty, and a ‘fine white trash pedigree.’ Five foster homes, two orphanages, a different school every year of my life until the last half of my junior year at Wayland.”

He said the working title for his memoirs now is “Beneath the Roamin’ Ruins.”

“I told her (Nyuli) I’ve been writing a memoir since 2010 when I retired,” Johnston said. “Before I left Florida, I met a published author of several books. He read it and passed it around to other authors. They all agreed it had a very good chance of being published. He ordered me to not go the self-publishing route. I have a deadline of Nov. 5 to get the 80,000 words done to secure a pushing agent and publisher. I’m at about 50,000 right now.”

Johnston, besides being an educator, has been editor of the Grand Valley Labor News, a union historian and he nearly pulled off an astonishing upset as a Democrat running for Kent County Commissioner in the Kentwood area in 2012.

PHOTOS: Mary E. Nyuli   Michael Johnston