It was a grand service of thanksgiving at Washington National Cathedral, the kind I’d sung countless times as a young chorister, with the trompette en chamade blaring a bright echoing fanfare; a procession of dignitaries in full celebratory regalia; and an emotionally reserved — but nattily dressed! — congregation packed into the Nave.

But this time, I wasn’t an overheated treble sweltering in the choir stalls in a purple robe, wondering when the interminable service would finally end; instead, I was an overheated middle-aged man, celebrating the career of Paul Barrett, one of my favorite high school teachers, thinking, “Now this is going out in style!”

The music was splendid. The encomiums were thoughtful, heartfelt, and witty. You’d expect nothing less from the speakers, a group of academic all-stars that included Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic and MacArthur fellow, who also happened to be a former student of Mr. Barrett’s.

Alex’s speech started with reminiscences of an independent study his senior year at St. Albans. He’d chosen the intellectual history of fin de siècle Vienna as his subject — not your typical twelfth-grade fare, but Alex wasn’t your typical senior.

As he talked of doing battle with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in Mr. Barrett’s office, I was flooded with my own memories of sitting by that same desk my senior year, pursuing an independent study on a much smaller scale: the short stories of Raymond Carver.

I’d been introduced to Carver in an English class my junior year by way of a photocopied story from the New Yorker. I became obsessed with Carver’s prose, which seemed stripped of anything superfluous or phony. I loved how his stories barely seemed to be stories at all, and yet were somehow as profound as anything I’d read in the Norton Anthology.

For better or for worse, I already thought of myself as a writer — albeit a novice. My encounter with Carver was, as they say, “decisive;” meaning, I felt that he would stand in the way of my own stories until I figured out how he achieved his effects.

This was typical of my thinking at the time — or rather, typically arrogant. Even today, after a couple of decades of contemplation, I can’t really account for Carver’s effects, although I could probably describe them in enough detail to make a roomful of young writers squirm.

So in 1983, I had Raymond Carver on the brain. Mr. Barrett seemed to understand my affliction and kindly offered to guide my independent study.

We spent a semester reading Carver — no doubt fitfully; it was the season of college applications. I have no illusions about the depth or quality of the essays I handed in. And then there were the stories I contributed to the mix, hoping they didn’t sound too much like cheap imitations of Carver, which is exactly what they were.

Mr. Barrett received the stories in the same spirit as the essays: that is, very gently, the margins peppered with encouragement, and, from time to time, a collegial query, such as, “More here?” or, “Perhaps a bit vague?” or a quiet, but devastating, “Hm.”

What I needed most of all that semester was to be left alone to read stories I admired; to be humored in my literary ambitions, despite all evidence to the contrary; and to sit in a calm office while the anxieties and stresses of home and school swirled outside in the hallway, neutralized by an unassuming teacher in a coat and tie who, by some miracle, saw fit to treat me as a fledgling adult.

Perhaps not as a peer — at least, not yet — but as someone whose opinions nevertheless mattered; whose future was bright; and who, at his best, could hold up his end of a decent conversation.

It takes a teacher of the highest order to convey all of that seemingly without effort.

Mr. Barrett is a humble man. He’s as quick to deflect a compliment as he is to flush with embarrassment. Even so, at lunch the other day, I said as many of these things as I could — to his face.

Then I teased him about the Cathedral service. He’d been deeply moved, but also mortified, by all the love and attention beamed at him by friends, family, and a legion of adoring former students. He’d looked so miserable in the spotlight, so lonely on the dais as the applause thundered through the massive Gothic arches!

He nodded as I talked, his eyebrows permanently arched by a lifetime of active listening. Then he leaned in and said conspiratorially, regarding all the pomp and circumstance, “It was nice, but you know, I think they could have gone a little…bigger.”

I laughed so hard the iced tea came out of my nose.