For recently retired educator Paul Homer, saying goodbye to students did not mean severing ties.

The veteran of 34 years of teaching in the Peters Township School District has a shoebox full of postcards to prove it. And more evidence is on the way.

It all began in the early 1970s at the end of his first year at Pleasant Valley Elementary School, when he asked students to sign his diary and, if they liked, to write a message.

"I'm very nostalgic," Mr. Homer, 57, of Whitehall, said.

He then asked students to send him a postcard three times in their lives to let him know how they were doing.

So far, he has received more than 200 postcards and a few letters from addresses throughout the United States and abroad, including Egypt and Greece.

The district promised to forward any new ones addressed to him after he left in the spring.

One corresponding student was Kati Carmichael, 33, of Peters, who teaches at Pleasant Valley Elementary School.

At age 12, she sent her former fifth-grade teacher a postcard from a North Carolina beach in which she described the hot weather and the fun she was having swimming and shopping.

"He was a great teacher. There was an adult aspect to asking us to send a postcard. The message I got was, 'It's time to start growing up,' " Ms. Carmichael said.

Mr. Homer said he was not surprised by any of his pupils' success. His students went on to be physicians, teachers, lawyers -- even a Major League Baseball player, Brian Simmons of the Chicago Cubs.

"I'm a believer that anything is possible in life," said Mr. Homer, who also is a staff representative for the American Federation of Teachers Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh office of which is located on the South Side.

During his career, he taught reading, mathematics, science, social studies, history and spelling to more than 2,000 students at Pleasant Valley and McMurray elementary schools and Peters Township Middle School.

He was president of the Peters Township Federation of Teachers from 1990 until June, and served as a Baldwin-Whitehall school board member from 1989 to 2005.

His pleasure in old-fashioned correspondence took root as a boy who collected postage stamps for an amateur stamp collection.

Employed summers in the early 1980s by the U.S. Postal Service to supplement his teaching income, he frequently paused to gaze at the scenic pictures in the postcards he delivered.

When it was suggested to him recently that he learn to text message on his cellular phone, he had the feature removed.

"I'm old-school since I was a young man. If you want to contact me, call me on the phone or send me a postcard," he said.

The first teacher in his family, Mr. Homer is especially proud of the career paths chosen by his daughters: Melissa Skerbetz, 28, of Bethel Park, is a teacher in the Canon-McMillan School District. Kristen Homer, 22, of Baldwin Borough, is a graduate student at Duquesne University pursuing a degree in early childhood and elementary education.

Besides stirring memories of the writer as a student, the correspondence reminds him of what he calls the "greatest profession."

"I'm still going through withdrawal. I love children and miss that component of my life," he said.

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