“When he came, it was just going to be a vacation,” Andersen said.

But with the help of his brother-in-law’s parents, Laurent “just kept getting jobs.” The couple had connections at the Iowa School for the Deaf, so Laurent worked as a type of “dorm father” for the young boys who boarded there.

He wasn’t a formal teacher at the time, but he would get asked to handle some of the older, rougher boys.

“They learned to respect him,” Andersen said. “They found if they behaved, he would do things that they could enjoy on the weekend.”

He took the boys into town to go roller-skating or see a movie. One time, he and another teacher even built a go-kart from scrap wood.

“Some of his friends and other people working there saw how good he was with kids,” Andersen said. “They said, ‘You should go back to school and become a teacher.’”

So Laurent applied at Omaha University when he was 38. After graduating, Laurent started teaching sixth grade at Lewis Central High in Council Bluffs, where he met and became friends with Andersen, who was teaching there with his wife at the time.