You may have heard about the Kentucky Census worker, Bill Sparkman, whose body was found in a state park with the word “fed” scrawled on it — on Sept. 12, the same day as nationwide “tea party” protests against President Obama‘s health reform effort.

Well, the story is even more tragic: It turns out Sparkman was a single father who recently survived cancer and earned a college degree through online correspondence courses. In addition to working a few days a month for the Census, he was a substitute teacher. One of Sparkman’s Western Governor’s University professors found his story so inspiring that Sparkman was asked to travel to Salt Lake City to address his graduating class. The local paper wrote a story about the event. “There are no failures,” Sparkman said in his speech, “just teaching moments.”

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.