BENNET — Gera Stilwell's kindergartners were getting ready for their party Monday when a young man walked into their classroom, hiding something behind his back. They stopped distributing their small Valentines to watch. The man smiled at their teacher, and she looked up.

She looked the same to him as she did 21 years ago, when he last saw her. Old, but not a day older, and kind. They embraced, and he handed her a bunch of blue flowers, and then a Valentine. "Happy Valentine's Day," Josh Young told Mrs. Stilwell. "I had to bring you a new one to replace the one you gave back to me."

Today, Young is an engaged man with a master's degree in performing arts. He's getting ready for his wedding next month, and then for a move with his new wife to Japan, where the couple will teach English together. They want to travel and teach around the world, trying to help the next generation.

But once, Young was just another little boy at a kindergarten Valentine's party, one of 10 students in his class, one of hundreds of kindergartners Mrs. Stilwell would teach over 36 years.

She loved those children equally, Young said, no matter who they were or what they were destined to become. "She never passed judgment," he said.

His family moved after that year, and Josh graduated from Waverly High School and then Nebraska Wesleyan University.

He met a girl, and they went to Australia together for graduate school. He proposed. They put their engagement announcement in the newspaper last week.

Mrs. Stilwell read the newspaper and saw his picture. She saw the man the boy grew up to be. He has a beard, glasses and earrings like a poet, together there with his rosy-cheeked girl.

She cut out the picture, and put it in her scrapbook where she keeps photographs of her kindergarten classes, together with all the news she hears about them as they grow up.

She got out her flowered stationery, and wrote him a note in her cursive. She congratulated him on his engagement, and told him some news of his former classmates. One little girl is now a physical therapist. Another is in prison. One boy is married and lives in Lincoln. Another is using his musical talent to play taps for military funerals.

When Josh opened the note, something fell out of the card.

A Valentine. From 1984. On one side Superman holds a big red heart that says "Happy Valentine's Day to my teacher."

On the other side a little boy wrote in pencil, "I Love You." There was a round mark on that side, where a magnet had been.

Josh read the letter. "This Valentine from you has been on the side of my refrigerator for 20 years. You wrote so beautifully I couldn't throw it away, and there were lots of days it gave me a smile."

Josh called his fiancee and told her all about it, how touched he was, how he couldn't believe it. They decided that after they got their marriage license Monday morning, they'd pay a surprise visit to Mrs. Stilwell's classroom.

Out of all those students, all those years, Josh said, "She had remembered me."

They stayed a few minutes, until it was time for Mrs. Stilwell's students to get back to their lessons, so they could have their party and open their Valentines. So they could grow up, and she could tuck them away in her scrapbook.

Reach Barbara Nordby at 473-7242 or at bnordby@journalstar.com.