When Patrick Furlong’s 8-year-old son asked for help with his tie before his first communion, Furlong found himself transported back in time.
“I’m starting to put the tie on. And as I look in the mirror, I just have this moment where I’m taken back to that bathroom, where I was in high school. I can see the green wallpaper, I can see the lights that were above the mirror,” he recalled.
That mirror moment brought him straight back to 2000, when a 15-year-old Furlong sat alone, struggling with a tie he didn’t know how to knot. His parents had just divorced, and the frustration spilled over.
“I sat in front of the mirror and fruitlessly tried and failed, over and over again, to twist the tie into different knots that might make it look like it was supposed to,” he said.
“As I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to figure it out no matter what I did, there were these tears of frustration that started to bubble up in my eyes. And I think they represented so much of the pain and hurt I was feeling in my life at that time.”
So he stuffed the tie into his pocket and went to the event anyway. That’s when his guidance counselor, Clyde Archibeque, noticed.
“When we got out of earshot, he just asked me if I had my tie. And I think I just started crying at that point,” Furlong remembered. “I pulled the tie out. And I’ll never forget the loving, gentle smile he gave me as he tied it for me. And I think all he told me was, ‘We’re gonna be OK.’ And we were.”
Decades later, as he carefully tied his own son’s tie, Furlong imagined Archibeque still with him.
“I’m standing in that same position, lovingly putting his tie on. And I could picture that Mr. Archibeque was standing behind me. And that he had his hand on my shoulder. And I’m just looking into my kid’s eyes. And then I’m glancing into Mr. Archibeque eyes, who are just smiling at me in that same loving way and telling me, ‘We’re going to be alright.'”
Today, Furlong works as an educator at Loyola Marymount University, guiding students through their own challenges and dreams.
“I sit with students in different capacities and just help them process what they’re going through. I get to do that with colleagues, students, it’s very similar, just in a different educational level,” he said.
And he never forgets the small act that helped shape the mentor he would become.
“It was just this really pivotal moment in my life,” Furlong reflected. “I realized that I don’t know that I ever got to thank him for that. So, if you’re out there, Mr. Archibeque, thank you. You have no idea what it meant.”
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