There was the occasional roll of the eyes and knowing “Here we go again” looks exchanged by those in his class when he would begin one of these tangents (especially if they happened to fall on the one day each year when he wore a toga). I ate it up, though. These weren’t things that were talked about in my other classes, or even at home.

There have been moments during the 15 years since graduation when I have thought back to those discussions and realized the importance of what he was trying to tell us.

Sometime during my sophomore year, I stuck around for a few minutes after class to see if Mr. Voss could translate a Latin motto contained in a book I had just finished reading — Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove.”

The slightly garbled phrase, inscribed by Capt. Gus McCrae on his sign for the Hat Creek Cattle Company, was “Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.”

Translated literally, it’s a proverb about how a grape changes. We talked about its possible meanings within the context of the novel, and how — if taken metaphorically — the word “man” could be substituted for “grape.”

What wound up inscribed in the paperback copy that still sits on my bookshelf was: “A man becomes a man by enduring certain things.”

It’s not terribly profound, but it’s a phrase that I’ve carried with me over the years through everything from the death of loved ones to dealing with a child whose diaper seemingly exploded in the middle of the night.

As the father of two now, I can’t fathom having to endure the loss of a child, or even think of something to say that might make such a senseless tragedy begin to make sense.

But from what I’ve gathered, Christa’s was a life well lived — and the importance of such a life was at the root of so many of those off-topic lessons that Mr. Voss offered to his students.

They’re likely lessons that she learned well, because she had something so much more valuable than just a teacher: she had a father to guide the way.

Scott Meeker is the features editor for The Joplin Globe.