How one teacher’s life led him to AP European History
July 25, 2018
John Dobmeier is good at routine. As Moorhead High School’s only AP European History teacher, he is known for many things: his coffee, his signature mustache, and his catchphrases.
“A lot of those phrases come from my father,” Dobmeier joked. Although he is a man of routine, there is nothing routine about him.
Dobmeier’s career didn’t start in a classroom. It actually started on a boat. He spent his first four years out of high school in the U.S. Navy as a medic just after the Vietnam War.
“My father told me ‘John, you need someone to cut your hair and kick your butt,’ and my hair was pretty long back then,” he said. “I had never thought about it, but I went down to the Navy recruiter. At that time, they really needed soldiers. Too many were let go after the war, so they were in need of new people.”
Dobmeier went to sea school and basic training and was later deployed to Vietnam where he would stitch wounds and deliver babies.
When he was discharged at age 22, he was still unsure of what he wanted to do. Before Dobmeier joined the Navy, he wanted to be a musician. He already played guitar (which his students get a taste of), mandolin, and banjo, and even thought about going to Nashville to start a career. But a good friend of his father’s and card-carrying member of the Musicians Union discouraged the idea, saying it was a hard life, especially if he wanted to start a family. So he gave up on the idea.
Growing up, Dobmeier was always fascinated with science and biology, and with his father running a funeral home, he got a little extra homework.
“When a person died, especially in the home, he would have to get the body. So he would wake me up to help him, starting when I was 14 or 15. I started to stay up with him and watch him work, until one day, he asked if I wanted to learn how to embalm since I would be there anyway.”
Even though he found mortuary science interesting, he never really wanted to do it.
“I didn’t like the schedule and having to get up in the middle of the night,” he said.
But in his last year as a medic, he worked in the Marines where the doctors would push the medics to go to medical school. So when he got out of the military, in his first semester of school he was going to be pre-med.
“I didn’t get the grades I wanted, so I realized it wasn’t really my cup of tea. And it was at this time when my parents sat me down and told me to consider being a mortician and take over the family business, so halfway through my freshman year I switched to pre-mort,” he said.
Dobmeier worked as a mortician for 22 years. In that time, he had gotten to know the mayor and fire chief of Barnesville. One day, they came into the funeral home and asked if he wanted to be a volunteer fireman. They needed someone who lives in Barnesville, so he said sure. In 2014, he left the force after 25 years.
Though Dobmeier loved working as a mortician, he wanted a change. The business was changing, prices were higher, and he was looking to expand to Moorhead, but decided it would be best not to. In 2000, he went back to college to begin a degree in social studies education. He eventually sold his business in 2011 and worked as a substitute teacher at Moorhead High until they offered him a job.
“And the rest is history, no pun intended,” Dobmeier said.
But going into to social studies was not necessarily a natural decision. At first, Dobmeier thought about being a choir director, with his musical background, and later he thought about science.
“I could have taught biology, but I realized that everything I had read in the past 20 years had some sort of historical theme,” he said. “And I really do enjoy history, especially European history.”
Dobmeier believes that learning history not only keeps us from repeating it, but also gives us a sense of identity, which he believes is pretty urgent.
Dobmeier has loved every career he has had, but said teaching is his favorite, especially if he’s teaching the Renaissance. He will continue to teach and inspire in the next three years before he finally retires. At that point he will have been teaching for 10 years and expects to move to Wisconsin. Until then, there will be more catchphrases, more coffee, and more study guides. But most of all, count on many smiles, many laughs, and some pretty enthusiastic history.
– Laura Jensen, Reporter for Moorhead High’s The Spud
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