One thing promised, one thing due, this New York professor promised his students in 1978 to organize a party to mark the next solar eclipse… and he kept his word on Monday, more than 45 years later.
When Patrick Moriarty started teaching science in the late 1970s, he told his ninth-grade classes that they were all going to get together during the next total eclipse in Rochester.
“I said to my students “do you see this one on April 8, 2024? Circle (this date). We are going to meet on this date,” he said. New York Post the retired teacher, now aged 68.
The teacher repeated this invitation in all of his classes for the next 16 years. Then, in 2022, he started planning the event on Facebook.
So, on Monday, nearly a hundred of his former students and their families gathered outside his house in Brighton to observe this rare phenomenon. Other residents further afield even contacted Mr Moriarty to tell him how much they wished they could take part in the event.
The former science teacher had everything planned out, down to the karaoke machine to share information about the eclipse.
“I had the opportunity to reconnect with many of my students who shared wonderful things about being in my classroom and the impact of the teachers. It was a moment like, “Oh, my God, I guess I did good. I had an impact on these children,” he told the American media.
