He has been a carpenter, a steel drum musician, a preacher, a mountain climber and a global trekker. And now, he’s a retired elementary teacher from the L.B. Morris School in Jim Thorpe.

His name is Wesley Holmes, and he has stories to tell about almost everything he has done in his life. One look at him and he might be mistaken for Harrison Ford. Or, better yet, he’s been called a Steve Martin look-alike and he carries a personal style of the actor’s sense of humor with him wherever he goes.

His life has been anything but normal ever since his older brother, Stanley, locked him in a suitcase when he was a young child, which has left him claustrophobic to this day. Then there was the time when Holmes was 8 years old and his father and his brother were swimming in a lake in Maine. A storm shot a bolt of lightning that struck the mast of a nearby sailboat while little Wesley was paddling a Styrofoam surfboard a few feet away.

“We felt the electrocution go right through us,” he said. “Afterward, we talked about how half of our family could have been erased that day.”

The outdoor life, however, appealed to him when his parents would take the family camping.

“For some reason, I wasn’t bummed out about dealing with heavy rain that had soaked through our canvas tents,” he said. “I still like the challenges that nature provides.”

Holmes also became skilled at using tools at a young age.

“While my father would watch Phillies’ games on the couch after his hard days at work, my mother would be down in the basement building a cabinet or something else,” he said with a chuckle. “She was pretty handy with tools. I improved my own carpentry skills during a wood shop class I had taken at Emmaus High School and also in the late 1970s when I attended the Johnson School of Technology in Scranton.”

From there to here

He traveled to the Caribbean Island of St. Kitts in 1985 for a mission with a church youth group. He drove a bus for a few weeks, but since the pastor had known about his carpentry skills, Holmes was asked to build new church pews. He fell in love with the island people and he was permitted to preach to the congregation a few times. He also played the steel drum in the church. On a return trip, he formed a steel drum band called Lime Time. He’s gone back to the island many times to visit friends, and this past November spent several weeks there at what he calls his home away from home.

His desire to see more of the world took him to India in 1998, where Holmes experienced the native culture firsthand.

“You sense everything while you’re there; the sights, the scents. You see the Taj Mahal and then you see poverty nearly everywhere,” he said.

Without a traditional career to call his own, and with a degree in building construction technology, Holmes had a desire to do something else. After discovering his positive relationships with the kids from St. Kitts, his mother suggested he teach elementary school. A few years at Lehigh Carbon Community College followed by a degree he earned at Kutztown University led him to a tech position in the East Penn School District at age 36. He moved into a tech job in the Jim Thorpe Area School District in 2004 and then he was hired to teach fourth and fifth grade.

“The kids learned quickly that I am a comical and goofy guy,” Holmes said with a laugh, “but when it came to teaching the curriculum, I was serious and all business.”

On the road again

His love for adventure continued before he had become a teacher in 2001 with a five-week trip to Africa for a safari and a mountain climbing adventure with his brother.

“Our guide drove us in a Land Rover and at night when we had camped, we heard lions roar and the guide said, ‘If you can hear them, then they’re close,’ ” Holmes said. “Of course, you get a bit scared, but what was a bit scarier was when my brother and I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, which stands about 19,000 feet high and is the largest free-standing volcano in the world.”

Even his marriage to his wife, Judy, was a little out of the ordinary. They married in Switzerland in 2004, and their ceremony was accompanied by the voices of two Swiss yodelers.

In 2009, he traveled with Judy to Egypt to see that country’s rich history.

“We paid a van driver $150 to take us to see the pyramids and the west side of the Nile River,” Holmes said. “We visited papyrus and perfume factories, the Valley of Kings and a pharaoh’s burial chamber.”

Flirting with danger

Holmes and his brother decided to go on several mountain climbing excursions. They scaled the highest peaks Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming over a 10-year span.

“Weather is a major concern when climbing mountains,” he said. “In California, we stopped a climb to the peak on Mount Shasta because of a storm that had come through.”

Climbing mountains comes with certain risks, because high elevations are covered with snow and ice no matter the season of the year. Holmes has also experienced altitude sickness, a shortness of breath along with dizziness and nausea.

“You just have to go slow and wait it out and you need to drink a ton of water,” he said

He traveled to Peru with Stanley in 2009 to ascend Huascarán, the highest peak there at over 22,000 feet. During the descent from the top of the mountain, he thought he was about to meet his demise.

“I fell through a hidden crevasse covered in snow, and I was swinging on a rope with absolutely no way to regain my footing,” Holmes said. “It was scary for sure until I was rescued by the guides, who used a pulley system to attach me back to the mountain.”

What draws him to mountain climbing.

“It’s the gratification of reaching remote places of natural beauty that takes special tools and skills,” he said. “I get to enjoy what only the birds and other wild animals enjoy.”

Then and now

Returning to the quiet life at his home in Jim Thorpe after all of his excursions has been rewarding in its own sense, especially what he has accomplished in the classroom before his retirement in 2022.

“I really loved to teach,” Holmes said. “Every day you’re like an actor on a stage doing another performance. The best thing you realize is that you possess the opportunity to have a real impact upon the kids. I get a great feeling whenever a student I had taught approaches me to tell me how much he or she enjoyed learning in my class.”

So, what’s left for this man who has collected plenty of memories to fill a lifetime or two?

“I have thought about getting a chopper motorcycle like the one Peter Fonda rode in the movie ‘Easy Rider’ and just biking across the American Southwest,” he said.

Retirement after nearly 20 years of teaching will not sit this man on his couch for too long.

Just like Huckleberry Finn did by ditching civilization for more adventures on the Mississippi River in Mark Twain’s iconic novel, Holmes will put on his Adventure Man’s cape and add more anecdotes to his collection of stories he has gathered from outside the box of an ordinary life.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com