I Loved To Teach

These pictures bring back a lot of memories. When we moved into this house in 1972, we put all the furniture for these rooms into the middle of the floor and covered it. There were rags hanging out of the fireplace meant to keep out the draft because the damper was open. A huge slab, about four feet by five feet, of the ceiling over the fireplace was hanging down with about a six or seven inch gap toward the center, exposing lathe. The chandelier had one bare bulb and no globes. One corner of the main room was a kitchenette, the wall butted against the fireplace. The once-wide doorway had been closed up and replaced with a small door into what was then a very long, narrow bedroom. The kitchenette had a dropped ceiling, and we had hoped the woodwork under it would be intact—our hopes were shattered. To make the kitchen a bit larger, someone had removed the walls to the right of the original opening and under the small window and let the room ‘bulge’ into the bedroom. The refrigerator was in the wide part of the bedroom.  The woodwork was gone.

I tore down the dangling ceiling piece. If you look, you can see the scarp from my patch—no plasterer we contacted would touch any of the defective ceilings in the home. I used drywall to replace the missing walls and took the woodwork from the kitchen side to make what you see in the photo to approximate its original appearance. If you look on the kitchen side, you’ll see that the woodwork is rather plain wide planks and a little trim molding. The huge pocket doors were also gone, leaving gaping holes where they had been. This I concealed with masonite, selected to resemble parquet panels. There were enough hand-carved oak pieces in the attic so that I could imagine what the fretwork in that wide doorway had been like. Ben Markley, in Joplin, Missouri, gave me a piece of fretwork he had that was about two feet short. I had master carpenter Jim Padgett add a piece to either end that curved somewhat like the original had. I also had to hang drywall on the kitchen ceiling from the chandelier to the outside wall. On the unsightly chimney in the kitchen, I used fake brick, applied one brick at a time, the back, unseen face is the original look, retained for historic purposes. This home is on the National Register of Historic Places, as the home is in the downtown historic region, one of the diminishing number of buildings left.

It was built, I believe, in 1868 by a doctor who saw his patients in this home. Stella Pratt, who lived in one of the apartments until her death at age 99, told me that this man had hanged himself in the barn at a time when the property included much land. We once had a visit from two people who told us they had grown up in this home as children when their father, Simon Koin, had owned a department store, probably in the Masonic Building which is now an art gallery.  Another lady, a Mrs. Widvey, asked us if the painted canvas was still on the ceiling.  It had been beautiful.  I had found narrow gold, very ornate trim molding with tiny pink roses in many small pieces in the attic, and when the ceiling paper had been stripped off, I could see small nail holes that showed where the trim had framed the canvas in a very complicated zigzag fashion.

Next, all the woodwork, including the fireplace, was stripped and  stained—the Baha’is of Greenfield, especially Ruth and Jim Alewine, came at odd times to strip the wood. The pillar capitals of the fireplace were ivory and were very resistant to the oak stain. The light switches were twist knobs—I left one in the hall near the front door. Chiseling into the plaster (the walls are all double brick and very thick), I buried the wiring and put in modern switches. An electrician came and rewired this apartment so that we could use modern appliances without blowing fuses. He put outlets on the wall in the kitchen and 220 for the stove. There is crawl space under these two rooms, which made changing the plumbing for the kitchen sink pretty easy.

I used vinyl wallpaper on the ceilings to resist further damage to the ceiling plaster. The globes I found in shops in Indianapolis, a few here and there, and the bottom one is what I call squat (not quite a globe), but they all match the etching on the glass of the chandelier. The kitchen globes are antique also, but as there were only four, we found some that looked ‘kitcheny’ with painted morning glories on etched lattice. The light fixtures in each of the suites in the house have matching chains. We made a special point of purchasing the living room chandelier from the former owners. It was in their basement across the street on State Street. We wanted the original in part because it had nine globes. Some of the globes had been removed, and I put finials in there temporarily. I purchased the lighting parts to restore it completely, but never got that job done.  The chandelier has since been removed.  Those owners had replaced the fixture in the master bedroom with a cheap one and hung the original milk glass beauty in their dining room.  That home is now a law firm, and I bet that fixture is still there.

The numbers 9 and 19 are significant in Baha’i history. This was our ninth home. It was on highway 9, and there were 19 steps to the second floor. The ceilings in the downstairs rooms are all 11 ½ feet (called 12-foot ceilings). Only the one apartment at the top of the stairs has lower ceilings and interior walls that are not brick. This is because this apartment was the servants’ quarters, and it featured a stairway that at one time opened into the large, original kitchen at the bottom (There are five kitchens and five baths in this large home). There has been a door added in the exterior wall to open the back staircase onto a back porch, which we changed into what we called our summer kitchen when we added the back deck and put a large greenhouse above this kitchen—later changed to permanent walls with skylights.  Incidentally, the iron railing around that porch was purchased in Indianapolis when the Black Curtain Dinner Theater went out of business in 1980. The summer kitchen cabinets were purchased from Dean Weatherall in Shelby County when he replaced them in his upscale house there.

When we were nearly finished with the original decorating job in this apartment, the carpeting was ‘bright berry’ red, and the draperies were the red antique satin ones I had Margaret make to use in my first production of Hello, Dolly! at Eastern Hancock High School, and the huge vinyl sectional sofa, snuggled into the bay made by those three windows, was a wet fire engine red. When the two elderly Pratt ladies who still kept their apartments saw this apartment, they were accompanied by a friend from up north who appeared to be Amish. Somewhat in awe (or shock) their guest said, “I bet you call this the Red Room.” And you know what, after that, we did.

We still have a sample of the wallpapers we used somewhere, also many pictures.  Several people asked us if it was the ‘original’ wallpaper because it fit the feeling of the place really better than its replacement a few years later (which is what you see in these pictures.)  Margaret’s father, Walter Goldsmith, then mayor of Harlem, Montana, helped me put up the bulkhead over the cupboards.  The company that installed those early cupboards (now in an upstairs apartment) said it would be the tallest bulkhead they had ever installed.  It was so high that we could not run the drywall lengthwise—more than four feet.  These cabinets were installed later by Jim Padgett, who let me help him and didn’t charge us for his labor—a really good friend.

Let me just add here that things with my laptop are looking up.  The crazy lines and colors were an indication that I had many, many viruses that had to be dealt with.  Daughter Tammy stayed online and on the phone for almost three hours and got the mess cleaned up.  New virus protection and a new two-year warranty cost me about $280.  I will get a box to ship them the laptop (minus battery) on Tuesday, and a new battery will arrive on Thursday.  They will also replace the keyboard under the warranty, which was good for only 7 more days.  I worried that it would run out before I got any of the problems solved.  What had happened to the keyboard was that Lori’s dog Homer (i forgot to mention that he had a stroke—they’d had him for 14 1/2 years—and had cataracts and was going deaf, so the vet put him to sleep on July 8th) was so happy one day about a month ago that he jumped up beside Lori as she was using the laptop, and his wagging tail hit the caps lock key just right to break it off.  We can use the computer without that key cover, but Compaq said, “No, under warranty, that is protected.”  They pay all the shipping, but something or other cost about $19, which I included above.  Hooray!  You can trust Compaq to stand behind their product.  If we had contacted the right support system (blame google) first, it would have cost LOTS less, about $100 for the virus protection and extended warranty.  We are just happy to know we’re now protected without purchasing a new laptop.

I woke up wondering if there is any way that I can get to the people at Compaq Computers or Staples to get them to stand by their product. The Staples store where I got the computer printed out a page that shows my laptop is under warranty until sometime in August, but I would have to go through the Compaq Company. They gave me a phone number that has a voice but no brain attached. It asks questions I can’t answer and doesn’t recognize my product number. I decided to go online. Same thing! Nothing gets a response and no question gets their attention.

The service man at Staples says I should get a new computer. I took it in to show how the screen turns pink and green, gets all wavy and only comes on when it is plugged in. It gives a message that I need a new battery. They don’t sell these at Staples—you get them online for about $150. Maybe I have to order one to get a voice with a brain, but I hate to think I have to spend that much money without knowing it will fix the problem, since it happens when the laptop is plugged into a power source. SOMEBODY HELP ME!

Now I know this is going to sound like a soap opera, but I will be 75 on September 4^th. My wife and I bought a home with our oldest daughter and her husband Sean, who is suffering with Gulf War Syndrome, has constant pain and sleeps with a sleep mask. He left Sunday for a pain center in Tampa for three weeks. We are optimistic and hopeful that the military will at some point face up to his needs. They are in the process of filing for bankruptcy, and most medical facilities will not accept his military insurance.

It gets worse! After 20 years of dedicated service with the US Navy, he gets a small pension. He is a valued employee, but he often is in too much pain to work and needs to see a doctor. He has cut his working hours back to 30 per week. Last week GM bought out Americredit where he works. The staff here in Huntersville (near Charlotte) were sort of assured that their jobs are secure, although the fact that about 30 employees were released two weeks ago, isn’t reassuring. Sean is strong, but in the five years we’ve lived together, he’s had knee surgery and a hip replacement. He is 46. I was never what I would call strong, but I am healthy. We had a lawn service because I have a sun allergy—probably due to my having worked in a sunless environment (neither the auditorium nor my “little theater” classroom had windows). Sean mows the yard and enjoys yard work.

On Sunday before he left, he was teaching Lori to mow with the riding mower I bought when his doctor said he shouldn’t be mowing with the self-propelled hand mower. The battery, fully charged when she started, died after four rounds. She finished the front and side yards with the other mower on Monday. Not long ago we spent $150 for a repairman from Sears to come out and get that riding mower started. The battery is new, but we bought the mower at Habitat for Humanity.

We will finish the yard taking turns, Margaret, Lori and me. It won’t take too long, but there has been record heat here with lots of rain, and the grass is thriving—growing fast.

There is more! We had out-of-town visitors from July 5^th-July 8^th, our son Danny and his wife and two children, 7 and 1. Sean’s birthday was July 8^th. Suddenly, the washing machine (the laundry room is just off the kitchen) overflowed and flooded the kitchen. We thought we had the problem solved, but on Friday it happened again. We caught it sooner, but there was still cleanup work to be done. We bought a new washing machine, delivered on Sunday Morning. That problem was solved. Whew!

Next it was Lori’s birthday—July 21^st. We had a happy family outing. In preparation for Sean’s separation from us, Lori got new cell phones from Sprint. Lots of new stuff that our phones don’t have. Well, before I had a chance to learn what my phone could do (I didn’t really want one but wanted Margaret to be connected) I misplaced my phone—looked everywhere, then forgot about it. She works giving piano lessons three evening a week near Harris Teeter grocery store and has to go out in the evening to get her car, not really dangerous, but she should have a cell phone.

Guess what. About two days later Margaret noticed that the power was off in all the bathroom outlets. The bathroom lights work, fans, etc. The refrigerator and the freezer in the garage also had no power. The food was still frozen, so it was a timely discovery. None of the garage outlets work. We ran a line from the laundry room to keep them running. No food was lost. We are in the middle of refinancing the house and would not like the appraiser to see that the garage is powered through an extension cord.

Then we noticed—it was 100 degrees that day—that a vent from the attic was dripping profusely just outside the kitchen door onto the patio outlet, which no longer is working. It is an industrial outlet, and the covers were closed tight. The air conditioning company that had replaced the air conditioning unit two years ago, when we got a larger, more efficient unit came out quickly and blew out the overflow lines in the attic. The house is a two-story with five bedrooms, all upstairs. He only charged us for a service call. After he was gone, Lori noticed that water was dripping in the downstairs hallway through the smoke alarm. We couldn’t figure how water got there on the first floor. There was about an inch of water in the small pan when the dripping stopped.

Later we noticed that there was dripping from the attic through the fan in the upstairs hall bathroom. That dripping also ceased, but the repairman returned (no charge) and blew out another line that connects to the sewer. We don’t know why there was dripping, but he propped up the line in the attic to make sure there was a downward slant to that line, which is now dry as is the other overflow pan. So things here are back to normal, except for getting a new circuit breaker to see if that returns power to the affected areas, and lots of hand mowing until Sean gets back. AND I GUESS I WILL SOON HAVE TO BUY A NEW LAPTOP—NOT A COMPAQ, FOR SURE.

When our Sprint bill came, instead of the usual $73.00, it was $690. All those charges were made on the lost phone. I tried to contact Sprint by phone, then online, and finally went to the nearby Sprint Store. Even though they could see that for nearly nine months there had been no calls from that line, I would have to pay the full amount for failing to report the phone lost (actually for being honest with them—if I had said I just lost it, they would have removed those charges.

I decided that while I was disconnecting the lost phone and not replacing it, I would return Margaret’s phone as well. “That will cost you $300.” I told them I would do jail time rather than pay them one dime, and I walked out of the store phoneless.

Gee, I hope this was entertaining. I really meant for it to sound like a comedy routine—a farce, of course—and not a bitching session. You have a good day now. I’m going to. My daughter Tammy’s three children will be here soon—we’re sitting them for the summer since their other grandma, Nana, got married to a South Carolina professor man and ran off and left us for happier times. She looks younger and prettier every time we see her. Her son Arthur has taken up separate residence recently, and I’ll need to go to Davidson to pick up the kids soon. Luckily, they’re delightful and we love them lots.

Our twenty-six-year-old granddaughter, Megan, lives with us and is a nanny for a lovely couple nearby with Winnie, 3, and Miles, 9 mos. Megan and the kids visit us for playtime with Tammy’s five-year-old Thomas, or sometimes, Lori takes Tom to their house. Are you getting dizzy yet? What you need is a very large bedroom like mine with a comfortable sofa and entertainment center where you can read, watch mature TV shows (we don’t have cable in there) or take a nap while the kids play downstairs with the Wii Sean got for his birthday and Lori watches the kids. The teenage girls use the upstairs office for their business center and the guest room for naps (or the loveseat in the office). We are just one big, happy family.

I

Having taught speech classes for so many years of my life gives me a different slant on the lives of others when our lives touch. You see, every day was a kind of “show and tell” experience. My class was a place of mingling in which, in order to eliminate speaker’s trauma, I tried to break them in with “easy-win” assignments with simple goals. At first we read—with eye contact and vocal variety. If you do this and this, you will earn an ‘A’, and many of them had not earned many ‘A’s’ before.

Because the class members spanned all four years of the high school age, and that increased the level of trauma, ice breakers were essential, but we had to get to the place where each student felt he could share almost anything. In an early assignment, the first speech not read, we changed the format to be seated in a circle. Each speaker was timed, and to get that ‘A’ he/she must simply share spontaneously for three minutes. I timed them, and if they spoke briefly the first time, they could be triggered in again and again until they reached the minimum. If someone’s ‘bullet’ struck a bold note on my memory board, I also shared. I needed to be included, and they had to get to know me in this special way.

So it was that I learned that one girl was in a car with her family when a tornado lifted them high into the air and set them down in a dangerous place upon a smashed gas pump in a filling station and they were able to drive away over roads made dangerous by fallen power lines. One tall young man (another year, another school) bared his left foot to show us that he had lost his two small toes to a lawn mower when he was trying to help. Another handsome “tough nut to crack” shed his veneer and told us how he got the long scar across his face when he was cutting lumber in a small woods close to his home and the chain saw caught and struck. As he ran for help, he said, his bloody lip kept hitting him in the eye.

The frequent sharing of tripe or humor or tragedy was inspiring in a rare way, and strangers became solid friends by the time I assigned group experiences in carefully assigned groups that overcame their differences. It was a delight to watch and share in these ‘adventures’. I watched a group, several of them male athletes, don wigs and foolish dresses to do an Oprah-like talk show with mikes and cameras. Hence, I do not see the people in a group in the same way that others do. When I saw a surgeon talking to my son his same age at a wedding recently, I had to ask him if he remembered that the two of them had slid down the nineteen steps in our twenty-four-foot-high entryway with their legs and feet in pillowcases while he waited for his piano lesson after his mom had dropped him off. I had coached Jon Gabrielsen in some delightful moments on the stage, had seen him win valedictorian honors, seen him grow to 6’5” and play college basketball, and I might have remembered many things, but there was that ‘snapshot’ in my mind that just ‘googled’ up at that moment.

When I wrote of Carol Belt in yesterday’s blog, I hoped that just maybe someone who knew her—I haven’t seen her since 1958—might tell her what I wrote and I could stop regretting that indignity.

I also find it hard to imagine that many men would find joyous memories in having lived in a historic home that he was constantly restoring and renovating and redecorating for twenty-some years, calling to Margaret from a walkboard over the above-mentioned staircase to “bring me my scissors quick” because the board sagged too much for me to move another step and I needed to cut the pasted wallpaper strip and hang it in shorter stretches. No one visiting that place could have imagined the patience and persistence it took to get it from a run-down state to what the banker called “a gold mine.” I will probably never live in another house that is paid off because I couldn’t bear to sell it to that lawyer and chose, instead, to keep it in the family.

Danny now owns that home, called Rhoades Apartments.  He was nine months old when we moved there, and he learned to use the back, very steep staircase as a substitute hill which he could slide down on his stomach at an incredible speed that startled and frightened ninety-year old Stella Pratt who rented a small apartment at the top of those stairs in a space that had once been the maid’s quarters.  When we removed the rubber treads and carpeted the front stairs, he stopped sliding down the bannister—that marvelous structure Margaret had returned to its original luster.  It wrapped around the steps on three sides in a huge, out-of-shape ‘C’.  The oak banister was held in place by cherry posts, and the newel post was cherry with eight burl panels, ornately shaped. The stairway lead down to the front door which, with its transum and eleven-inch–wide casings, was ten and a half feet tall.

Anyway, Danny discovered that it was fun to slide down in a pillowcase if there was someone to share the fun.  I decided, as an afterthought, to include this poem I wrote when Danny was four and still sliding down the bannister.  I’m sure it was this that broke the kidney-shaped velvet upholstered bench from a theater in eastern Indiana. I always thought I’d restore that bench when I retired, so it is still in the attic space that might have become a ballroom if Danny had finished what he began in his late teens.

                    DANNY AND JOHN

Danny is four.
Fast-action toys
Are anything within his reach–
And hardly anything is not!
Coke-bottle bowling pins,
Spray-bottle guns
Box-car rides and banisters
Are fun to him.

Tears and anger
Accompany paper airplanes
If daddy flies them better
And meet the mention of Pizza Hut
If Daddy says no.

When he gets tired,
He cuddles–
He spots a place beside me on the couch,
Dashes, dives, and, with great accuracy,
Fits.

If you’d like to borrow him
To add some noisy joy
To the end of your day,
He’ll return your love freely.
But let me warn,
He’s like a doll
That’s somewhat predictable–
He drinks; he wets.

Ask John,
Whose bed he scrambles into
Almost every night.
John knows his regularity!
John is thirteen
And likes to sleep
In warm, dry comfort,
But even he forgets
When love comes
In blond locks
And tattered socks
And fits into whatever space is left.

What comfort to be four
And Cuddly
And always welcome–
Or thirteen and loved so much.
                                    1976

In looking up Fort Belknap on Google, I found the following interesting information:
The Gros Ventre call themselves “AH-AH-NE-NIN” meaning the White Clay People. They believed that they were made from the White Clay that is found along the river bottoms in Gros Ventre country. Early French fur trappers and traders named this tribe “Gros Ventre” because other tribes in the area referred to them as “The Water Falls People.” The sign for water fall is the passing of the hands over the stomach and the French though the Indians were saying big belly so they called them “Gros Ventre” – meaning “big belly” in the French language.

The Assiniboine refer to themselves as “Nakota” meaning the generous ones. This tribe split with the Yanktonai Sioux in the seventeenth century and migrated westward onto the northern plains with their allies, the Plains Cree. “Assiniboine” is a Chippewa word meaning, “One who cooks with stones.” The Assiniboine are located on both the Fort Belknap and Fort Peck Indian Reservations in Montanan and on several reserves in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

While we were in the canyon, we could also see the Bear Paw Mountains, and going to and from Walter and Leona’s farm, we often took a route (there were not real roads—when one path got rough, they simply forged a new one nearby on the prairie) that took us over the top of Snake Butte.  There were cravasses in the stone (they had built a railroad to transport stone to create nearby Fort Peck Dam, which was then the largest earthen faced dam in the world, and some of the workers were housed in the basement of the home Margaret grew up in and also on the upper floor where Walter put in a toilet, small sink and a gas double-burner for cooking.  When that house was ready for their occupancy, it was completely paid for—a trait the Goldsmiths carried with them throughout life.  They never bought a car they didn’t pay cash for.  Two cars would have been unimaginable.  They rarely traveled apart.

On a very hot July day, I lay on my stomach atop a cravass and took pictures of snow still lying down there.  Those pictures couldn’t be developed—I was a poor photographer.  Also, we gathered what they called sarvis berries (or June berriies), which in Indiana and Kentucky were sometimes called service berries and some choke cherries, very bitter until sweetened.  Leona made jelly from the former and syrup for pancakes from the latter.  These berries were abundant near the natural spring at the base of the butte where we stopped to eat our lunch at a picnic table someone had placed there.  Once Margaret and I, reliving the past, got off the trail and found ourselves facing a herd of buffalo, which told us we were trespassing on Indian land, and we quickly retraced the path to the right “road.”

Incidentally, Snake Butte was not so called because of the abundance of snakes, although I have seen rattlesnakes there and near there.  It got its name from the face of the butte that, a bit like Mount Rushmore, seems to be a carving of huge snakes hung there for posterity.

I recall hearing my brother-in-law, Rev. Jack Atkinson of Elk City, Oklahoma, tell of climbing a mountain with a friend he had known in college.  Jack was graduated from that small Evangelical United Brethren college in Le Mars, Iowa, where he met Virginia Goldsmith, whom he married in that Harlem, Montana, EUB church after her freshman year.  I’ll ask him to email me about that adventure.  Margaret and I spent the summer in Harlem after our marriage in the beautiful EUB church on the campus of Indiana Central University (now the University of Indianapolis).  At the evening services that summer, they allowed us to be their guest musicians—Margaret at the organ and me at the piano.  I had played for the Indiana Central College Quartet (also sang baritone) on tours at school, and sometimes played for revivals to bring in a little extra cash.

I got pretty good at “showing off” on that old piano while Margaret kept the melodies solid for the congregational singing.  One Sunday evening after church, Leona remarked (Leona was remarkably plain spoken, and I never knew she loved me until she was dying), “They just really love that, don’t they.  I can just hardly stand it myself.”
During that summer, Margaret (I called her Margie then) and I went to church camp for a week.  We slept in a tent we set up in a small, open-at-one-end shed, placing the tent opening to face the inner wall to discourage any bear that might happen by.  We had taken about ten blankets and a sleeping bag, and because the ground was so cold, each night we put more blankets under us until finally we had only the sleeping bag (opened up) on top.  The last night we slept in the warmth of the bishop’s cabin (it was a Methodist camp in Hell’s Canyon, a terrific misnomer) with the “dignitaries” who had driven three hours from Harlem to pick us up.  There was a new bridge on the route that cut off hours of travel which still went far out of the way in order to cross a river in a deep canyon.

I always regretted the abuse to young Carol Belt, who gave up her seat in the Breitmeier’s large van so that we could continue our raucous visit with the couple who later bought the farm and became life-long friends.  How Rudy loved to hear me show off on that old upright piano!  Anyway, they told Carol that we wanted her to ride the bus back, and she readily agreed, thinking we meant that we’d like to get to know her better (as indeed we would have) and said when she saw us get into the van, “Oh, now I see why they wanted me to ride the bus.”  Carol was a lovely girl with at least some Indian blood.  I think she won a beauty contest, probably in Havre—they didn’t have such things in Harlem.

I wanted to add this about Leona’s manner.  Once when she was visiting us, I made the toast, and it had cooled before I got it buttered.  When I apologized, she said that she could hardly stand to have the butter melted.  I had carefully been sure it was melted for twenty years, and now she would tell me this?  She rarely signed her letters to us.  They often just stopped.  Or she wrote, “Us at Harlem.”  When she wrote, “You know how much we love you,”  I told Margaret, “We’d better go right away.  Your mother is dying.”  On her deathbed at the hospital, she asked me to kiss her.  The nurse had said we could go back home because she was certainly not dying.  Virginia decided to go home by way of Indiana, and I convinced her to save a few bucks and get a round-trip ticket.  Those were cheaper, maybe still are.  We had a pleasant trip on the express train to Chicago (had to go to Malta to catch it, though it sailed through Harlem), and when we got back to Greenfield, there was news that Leona had gone to her reward.

The three of us turned around, boarded another train in Indy, and slowly–painfully slowly–hurried back to Harlem.
As a drama director, I had collected costume items, and when cancer treatments caused her to lose her hair, I had mailed her a gray wig, which she wore.  But I had found a much lovelier one later, and I took it along now.  When we saw her at the funeral home in Chinook, the county seat, they had the older wig on back-to-front, and when the funeral director was called out, I turned it around.  Walter had had some brain surgery in his eighties, and began to experience what they called “sundowners”, although his death certificate said “Alzheimer’s”.

On the day of her funeral, which was at the church (United Methodist by then), we arrived early, and the funeral director walked in on me as I lifted her off the pillow and switched wigs.  He was startled when he saw me, but when I finished he remarked that the new wig was much nicer.  I had worked at the funeral home in the late fifties and sixties, and was comfortable doing this. On the way back from the cemetery, Walter asked me when we were going to have the funeral.  They died only a few months apart after sharing a room at the downtown nursing home which was right next to the Skogmos store they had been partners in and across from city hall, built during his term as mayor.  Leona walked the single block every week to Senior Citizens’ lunch day to join friends and play cards in a renovated store building next to a church that met in the building that had once been their Gambles store, built with their own hands.  We had decided she had to have assisted living when she needed another chair to get out of the chair she was sitting in.  She only protested once as we took her in, and later said, “They keep us so clean.”

Leona was an awful driver!  Once when Margaret told her she had driven right through a stop sign, she said, “It’s alright, they know it’s me.”  We could just imagine walkers diving for the side of the road because they “knew it was her.”  When someone called Virginia and said that we had to get her out of that car before she killed someone, we told the man at the home to go get the keys from her.  I think she knew this was coming, because she just handed them over to him.

When we cleaned out the house (we filled a dumpster) we found half-dissolved lemon drops on the carpet beside the bed where she had just spit them out before going to sleep, and when Margaret opened the bottom drawer of her dresser, she found where she had saved her hair as it was falling out.  As Walter was already in the nursing home, she was dying alone.  She had had chemo treatments twice before when she was younger, and so strong they hardly made her ill, and she insisted that, at the age of ninety, they do that again.  They said that, although she was full of cancer, it was the chemo that caused her death.  She had lived a remarkable life and had served as president of every woman’s club in town again and again.  At the age of eighty-nine she was the largest contributor to the county fair and took home the largest amount of prize money.  She entered about every category with quilts, rugs, woman’s garment fashioned from a man’s suit, fruit, vegetables, canned goods, pies, (she once won a new range) jams, jellies, etc.  Hardly able to get out of bed, she wondered if she should put out a garden—just couldn’t imagine life without one, I believe.

Many holidays bring special memories.  My only sister, Vivian,  was a Valentine; my parents were married on Christmas Day; Tammy, my younger daughter, and I were born on Labor Day; my niece Mary Jean (Dick and Sue’s girl) interrupted Thanksgiving dinner in South Bend, Indiana, to join and help enlarge the family; granddaughter Jesska (Jessica then) was born to Lori and Sean on St. Patrick’s Day in Honolulu.  When you add Baha’i holy days, there are lots more.  But my father, who died thirty years ago, was BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY.  I went alone to see the Tom Cruise movie when it first came out—knew Margaret wouldn’t like to see it—and I sat and shivered through most of it.  I’m just too much a gentle man to stand such films.  I thought I should see Saving Private Ryan since  my three oldest brothers fought in that war; so I rented the video and started it, stopped, started where I’d left off, and gave up after seeing only about twenty minutes of the film.

But I meant to write about the 4th, since it is coming around again.   A group I belong to is studying ways to bring the fine arts into worship efforts, and as a project, each member was asked to contribute something from the arts to the July 4th worship service.  Margaret is, of course, presenting some music—Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” from my collection of ‘Oldies’ and the hymn “For the Beauty of the Earth” with the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphonic Choir.  I am reading a poem I wrote about our bicentennial celebration on July 4, 1976.  I decided to preface it with a tribute to our parents (mostly Margaret’s parents who took us that day to a quiet place where no hint of modern society tainted.  Here are the two efforts, the first is poetic prose; the second, my poem from that time.

                         A GLANCE BACKWARDS

Walter Joseph and Eudora Leona Legler Goldsmith were godly folks
As were my parents, Earl McKinley Rhoades, born on the fourth of July, 1895,
And Goldie Forest Bisel Rhoades, whose mother passed onto her
That healing power that could only be given to one who had never—
Ever used the Lord’s name in vain. She said “ither” for either and “nither” for neither,
”Zinc” for sink, “chimbley” and “warsh”—oh, she was a plain-spoken woman,
But she swayed the hearts when she spoke of godly things.

Walter, so very modest, had been a teacher, a principal, a superintendent
When he met a forceful, strong-headed old maid chemistry teacher
Who swept him off his bachelor feet, along with the great depression,
And joined him in a move to a small Montana town where they made a difference.

They bought an abandoned school in nearby Fresno, and, aided by needy,
Dollar-a-day men, tore it down and reclaimed its many building parts.
For awhile there in the early ‘30’s, joining brother Victor, they became builders,
Leaving in their wake four houses and three “downtown” stores.

Then they were merchants and began their family while living in the upper region
Of their Gambles Hardware Store until their home was ready for them.
So they lived out their wonderful, adventures in a place they had impacted,
Selling windmills and gas powered appliances to farmers without other power.

Walter erected the windmills, and they lived simply, clinging to many relics of the past—
Her ringer washing machine and tubs in the basement, clothesline in the yard;
Her first-of-its-kind portable dishwasher in the kitchen, and, looming large
In the sunroom, her top-of-the-line sewing machine and her loom.

They taught neighborhood children in Sunday School, sending them to camp
In the summers and giving anonymous “full rides” to the church college in Iowa,
Where Walter served on the board of trustees. She taught the nearby children,
Who came, rang a bell in back, entered quietly and went to work, to “make rugs”
To sell for money to go to Hell’s Canyon to meet Christian children and learn things.

Wally—no one called him that but her—learned to fly an airplane, though he never
Drove a car very well, and gave their two daughters piano lessons and bought them high quality
instruments so they might become pianists A clarinetist, a violinist, a flautist, a cellist
and outstanding musicians to this day.  Virginia, living in Oklahoma, once retired from
teaching needy children to read, went back to school to earn a second Bachelor’s degree and,
in her seventies, another Master’s, this time in piano performance.
So both their daughters taught and passed things on.

In their mid-fifties, they bought a farm out by Snake Butte, drove miles on unpaved roads,
Bought two old 1939 orange Allis-Chalmer tractors (one for parts to mend the other’s ills),
And became “pioneers” again, side by side on a thousand acres of dry-land wheat strips.
During those twenty-five years that Walter served as the mayor, fighting for “curbs and gutters”
And paving the streets as the town became a larger dot on the Montana state map.

He served on the school board where half the students were Gros Ventre and Assiniboine (Sioux) Indians
From nearby Fort Belknap Indian Reservation with such names as Pete Stiffarm and Walter Blackbird.

And on July 4, 1976, Walter and Leona Goldsmith took those city folk school teachers, Jack and Margaret Rhoades and their two sons and two daughters into the small Little Rockies Mountains, past an old mission, sort of Spanish looking, into the throes of Mission Canyon for a day away from the hustle and bustle of life as those children knew it for a glimpse into the past.
                                                                                                 Jack Rhoades, July 2, 2010

                                      JULY 4, 1976

We felt ourselves possessors of a private mountain.
A water track had led us to the top, where other,
Lesser mountains could be viewed,
And, called to, shout back in mocking mirth,
Bouncing rapidly till five or six replies reverberated.

We felt the ownership one knows on mountaintops,
Forgetting that this quaint mountain had been conquered many times before,
And, though we claimed it for our present joy and memory’s pleasure,
We would not cling to it as one does to tainting treasures.

Knowing this–but not in words or thoughts–
We darted downward as drops of melted snow
That could not stop to rest
Until the stream below–icy in July heat–was met
And self was swallowed by the shock and rapid racing onward.

Numbness awakened us to separate ourselves
And conquer even greater challenges: a sunny natural bridge mightily aloft,
A dark crater, hidden in high crags, that beckoned.
Then, horns shrieking, the impatience of today commanded us.

We could no longer leave our century behind
But hastened homeward in cool, refreshing, air-conditioned bliss,
Thinking that our bicentennial party, without fireworks or flag,
Embraced a pioneer spirit such as had proclaimed this independence.
There lingered, strangely, on my tongue
A bittersweet of berries stolen from the birds,
Tasting, somehow, like the mountain woods had smelled.

Then we crossed a shallow ford, turned a mighty bend,
And left the canyon behind.

                                               September, 1976

So I just thought maybe sharing these today might leave you with a lingering smell of the past that might feel a little patriotic.  Searching through my many LP records on the garage shelving, I came across one called “THE SPIRIT OF ‘76”, but there were no revolutionary songs, rather Civil War Era songs that hinted of division in the United States of America.  Interesting, huh?  Another was “AMERICAN INDIAN CEREMONIAL AND WAR DANCES.”  I couldn’t see fitting that into the worship service, but I was glad it was in there nevertheless.  Perhaps I’ll listen to it today when I’m creating CD’s of Kate Smith, etc., on the handy machine that does that.

Probably not too many folks have turntables any more (I have only two), but I see them in the stores again.  Just to have it, I bought a video disc player and a few of those electronic video discs, but have never hooked it up and tried it out.  When we moved here to North Carolina from Kentucky, my son-in-law’s father, Art Stanwood, helped me unload a truck or two, and, after unloading many boxes of vinyl records, he said, (he was a technical genius who worked as project manager for Bank of America) “I do hope you realize that these things are really terribly obsolete.”

I knew that.  I had started collected them for the beautiful artwork on their covers, and when the libraries began to sell them for a dime, I got more serious.  Habitat for Humanity still sells them for a quarter, but at Salvation Army, I might have to pay a dollar or more.  I have many poets reading their own works and deceased actors and singers performing amazing things.  Erna Sack, the Swedish Nightingale, for example, emulates a flute or piccolo when she goes into her magnificent high register.

My experiences with community theaters falls into two categories—as an actor, and as a director.  As an actor, I was once called to take on a role in the show Here Lies Jeremy Troy—I think the show is little-known, but well worth knowing.  I had not auditioned for the play because, upon reading it, I realized that there was no role that fit my profile.  When the director called me three weeks before opening to say that if I didn’t step in to help, the show would not go on.  I gave my excuses—“No one would ever believe that I had been a college quarterback—I was never athletic, and not built like an athlete.”  “I am ten years too old, and it is a romantic role.”  The director was a novice—his first show.  He had cast his wife, also a novice and a bit large, in the female lead.  That theater group was completely divided into those who did my shows and those who did not.  This cast was entirely made up of the group who held me in disdain.  I liked these people, but I knew well that they disliked me.  Why should I do this? 

The young lady who played opposite me was new to the stage, not getting much direction, and eager to hear any suggestions I gave her.  I decided to take it on.  My brother was a fine athlete, as were many of my friends.  I would imitate them.  We rehearsed at the boys’ club until Sunday of the last week.  There was one bit between me and the leading man that had, when introduced in rehearsal, produced hysteria among the crew and workers.  I’m sure he assumed the laughter was for me (but it was great teamwork—he was a fine actor).  That bit never came up again because he simply refused to deliver the line that set it off.  I didn’t need it, but I thought that was a shame.  The night we moved into the small former high school theater, I told the younger actress, “Watch carefully tonight.  For two weeks, I have been playing catch-up.  They have set their deliveries.  I never do that, trying to say lines a new, fresh way at each rehearsal.  Tonight I will pass them up with a performance-ready delivery.  That will send them back to their scripts to find fresh laughs, and they will get sharper and fresher.” 

And surely enough, it was a prophetic utterance.  We were in costumes and the set was coming to life.  In one performance, an older actor struck me in the back as I stood near the built-in footlights and nearly knocked me off the stage.  Backstage I heard him bragging thus, “I’ll teach him to walk in front of me!”  No one had ever told him that when an actor crosses onstage, he crosses in front if he is delivering a line.  I guess the director didn’t know that either.

I had instructed the prop lady to prepare a plate of half Pringles sprayed with whipped cream foam to dissolve rapidly as I seemed to be eating a whole plate of hors d’oeuvres.  What she gave me was Cheez-its with spray-on cheese that wouldn’t swallow.  I crammed them in, stepped offstage to spit them out and stepped back to cram some more in—awful!  I had figured out the Pringles for Hello, Dolly in the scene where she eats a whole turkey (?) “and dumplings, lighter than air they are.”

Very few people saw that show—about 25 people a night, and many of them were repeaters (family).  We took cuttings to a contest in Evansville, and I took off work to participate, although the cuts were carefully chosen to make sure none of my scenes were important so that I had no chance for an award.  In fact, the only award we got went to the young actress who played opposite me.  I had tried to insist that the cuts be prefaced by an explanation that the title,  Here LIES Jeremy Troy meant that everything about the young lawyer was a falsehood.  They were insulted, insisting that the play was so well-known that this would make us look stupid.  However, the judges said, “We couldn’t really understand any of the humor in the scenes because we didn’t realize the basic premise until the final cutting.

The girl in the blog was married and had two small girls.  I had to kiss her like an athlete might kiss a model there to pose for an artist.  She wore falsies and a blonde, sexy wig and her girls didn’t recognize her once she was made up.  I once heard her say she had slept with every member of her high school football team.  I thought she was really hysterical.  One of the gags was that she had removed her dress and the artist’s wife came out wearing it.  We had to have two dresses alike–one a size 7, the other a size 16.  Not too convincing, but funny in its own right.  You remember she was the wife of the director who had offered to direct the play free so he could give her the part.  I think the purity of my life was a constant joke among the rest of the cast.  At the "blow-off" brush up rehearsal for the second weekend, they set up surprises for me (actors are allowed to do this at the brush-up.)  When I lifted the photo that showed the lying lawyer had not really been graduated from college, saying, “These college graduation photos are all alike…” , it was a Playboy nude photo.  It got a whoop out of me that the cast enjoyed.  My gag was to put on the padded bra under my overlarge costume and sag my shoulders until the appropriate line when I threw back my shoulders and thrust out my chest–actors fell to the floor all over the stage.

Months later, the Lions Club of a nearby town asked us to learn and perform a new show for a dinner theater night.  We explained that royalties and playbooks, set, costumes, etc., would be cost prohibitive; however, we did have a show ready that no one had scene, and they agreed to a revival.  The place was sold out, and there was a wine bar, so the audience was remarkably warmed up, and we played to raves, so the experience was, overall, a good one.  My mother remarked after she saw it that she never had realized how much I looked like my brother Chuck, whose strut fitted a man who had boxed in Golden Gloves, so, with athletic shoes, heavy athletic sweats and a fitting swagger, I didn’t make them think, “That sissy was no quarterback.  The only student to have seen it said, “Mr. Rhoades, you should walk like that all the time.  It makes you look ten years younger.”  Nice, huh?  If you are looking for a pleasant show for community theater, you might choose to look this one over

In 1967, when we learned that Margaret was going to give me a third child (didn’t know that it was to be a birthday gift, born on my September 4th birthday, Labor Dan, and the day before school started for the year.  It is strange how our minds work.  I just thought perhaps we had overspent on the $18,500 home we build in an upscale neighborhood in Greenfield, Indiana.  In a panic and hoping to assist with finances, I decided to put my speech class project that had been the delight of so many first graders into a children’s book of my own creating.  I thought that my being untrained as an artist needn’t discourage my attempts to put the whimsy into Singo’s pathetic story—which was my own biography in a way, never quite satisfied with myself and wishing to be something else.  Incidentally, that home is now in the $150,000-200,000 range.

I think it was for my 70th birthday that Tammy took the very worn pages, once sewn together and sent, unsuccessfully, to Random House, and cleaned them up for self-publication as a surprise.  It cleaned up well, although lots of the brush strokes were lost.  I still think it is a darling book, and I use it as a special gift for special friends. 

This week the book is on sale in hardback on lulu.com for $18.01.  Lulu allows you to see and read the book without purchasing.  Personally, I think the last page is overlong, but the number of pages was determined by examining (in 1967) books of Dr. Seuss and copying their format to make publishing by Random House more likely.  When I had not heard from them in four months, I began to make phone calls to make sure the book, representing many hours of night labor while completing my MA at Ball State, was not lost forever.  There were no copies, of course.  Finally, someone gave me the right name to call, and her response was, “Oh, I remember that one.  I passed on it.  Don’t try to follow it!  It is lying on someone’s desk pile, waiting.”

After the sixth month, it was returned with a rejection notice.  No one has “found” it yet, but it’s out there.  Take a look at it, please.  Dr. Elizabeth Pilant, Ball State’s children’s lit specialist at that time, and its “most published” professor used it as a final exam for a few special students for a year or so, and I had used photo album corners to allow me to change the words on each page.  When it got to the point that I could lift off the ‘patch’ and show that we were back to my original wordings, I pulled it and decided to trust myself.

AN EXPLANATION:  Our lives have become quite busy lately, and with Tammy’s children here through the week, I find it hard to keep up the blog.  I’ll try to get back to it.  I thank you for following it.

Something ugly in my life reared its head again recently, and this made me realize that however distressing and perplexing your own life may become, to your family members, it is probably all about them.  If they are also in a distressing situation and you fail to meet their expectations, there is only one answer—you failed them.  You cared more for your students than you did for them.  You loved your job too much.
So I think it is the time to air an old dilemma.

During my early adulthood, I chose to serve as the minister of Charlottesville Christian Church.  The most difficult part of this job for me was the necessity of coming up with a sermon every week.  Then came a call from the minister of Greenfield Christian Church.  He wanted me to apply for the position of assistant minister to that much larger congregation.  I was flattered and excited, and it seemed like the perfect solution.  I loved sermonizing and was, I think, relatively good at it.  In the interview Rev. Harrod told me of the responsibilities I would have.  I got really excited  because they were all things I thought I would enjoy doing, and I said so.  As I was exiting the interview, he said something that changed all that drastically.  It was this:  “And you will never have to worry about any competition between us, because you will never fill the pulpit.  Whenever it is necessary for me to be gone, I will hire a guest speaker.”

I went directly to Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, where I was a student and talked to the placement director.  When I told him of this statement, he agreed that I should not take the job.  They had students who aspired to just this Junior Church and children’s choir sort of job, and they were all women.  They would not place a man who was preparing for the ministry in this position.  I never defended my actions—I was never called upon to explain them.

Fast forward a few years.  There was a job opening in the Greenfield-Central Middle School, and I applied for it.  The interview with the principal went well, and he indicated that he felt I was the man for the opening.  I then went to see the superintendent, J.B. Stephens, who, instead of producing a contract, leaned across his desk and asked, “Aren’t you the young man who applied for a job with the Greenfield Christian Church a few years back?”  I indicated that I was.  He then gave this crushing pronouncement (he was a board member of that church).  “As long as I have anything to say about it, you will never teach at Greenfield-Central

Years later, after a terrible dry period in which I had attempted to go into business, thinking that if I put the energy and dedication I had displayed in teaching into the business world, I would succeed.  I did not succeed, and soon I was desperate for a teaching job to support my growing family without Margaret’s teaching salary.  I spent a full blog talking about finding the job at Southwestern High School, where, after five years I was granted the security of tenure.  Mr. Stephens had retired (he now has a school named for him) when longtime Principal Ernest Tidrow, also a member of the Greenfield Christian Church, called my home and lured me away from job security to be able to work in a wonderful new building with a wondrous auditorium facility.  I jumped at the chance.

In that position, with my weekends tied up with speech team meets, my evenings spent building the scenery that he had indicated were desired, and carrying what I believe to be the worst classroom load of any teacher in the building, It had taken, I believe, three different subs to finish the year for a teacher who died suddenly.  I struggled with depression, student antipathy and brought home the most significant speech trophies imaginable, largely due to the same kids whose attitude in drama depressed me.  Later, when I was teacher of the year, I had to make an acceptance speech in which I referred to those years as a time in which I wondered daily ‘whatever had made me think I wanted to be a teacher.’ 

After a year of gaining acceptance and working harder than anyone else, having good evaluations and learning that I had better not think of the assistant principal as a disciplinary provider who would back me up with difficult classes, I NEVER dared send a student to the office!  I lived in fear of a day when a substitute teacher would step into my room for a day.  After I had signed my contract for a second year, I was called to the office for a conference and told that ‘they’ were not satisfied with the growth of the speech program, and that, unless things improved, I would not be returning for a third year.  I again found myself haunted with thoughts of suicide.  I knew—I KNEW—that if I lost that job, with 23 years experience, I would never find another job in the field.  I was also told that “You have an enemy in high places.”  When I mentioned that at a board meeting of the local community theater group, they were incensed.  They told me that if I was ever told that again I should say, “And you must believe that I also have friends in high places.”  This was spoken by a very successful lawyer.

So I started my second year directing one of the hardest plays a high school can select—Life with Father.  I created the finest set ever placed on that stage up till then, and perhaps still.  (I haven’t seen recent productions.)  I lived in terror of repercussions in the classroom with again, difficult classes and no support.  I was told that the auditorium manager (another of my responsibilities) had always found it necessary to leave during a class, but I NEvER felt I dared do that and I never did.

So where does the idea come from that because I did not take a day off for a crisis in one of my children’s lives that I was too “dedicated” to my job and loved my students more that my own kids?  Not, I assure you, out of a deep love and respect for me and the work ethic I learned from a father who survived the depression with seven children.  But I was living in fear, directing a difficult play that neared a performance date and was not ready, and I knew I would not want to live if I lost that job.  That job became a dream job, and for sixteen years, I served willingly and never needed to go job hunting again.

Now I realize that when a man is deployed in wartime to action far away, he is not expected to react to the inadequate pay his family receives or to serious problems that occur in the home.  This in no way indicates a lack of love or concern for his family, nor would anyone think it did.  In such cases we find alternate solutions and we survive and get over it.

I’d like to end with what I consider a memorable quote:  “You may think you have empathy, but if it’s not your own pain, you don’t really understand what’s going on.”            –John A. Rhoades

One of the major differences between my first year of teaching at Southport High School, just outside Indianapolis, where I met with failure, and the little school at Carthage, Indiana, where I enjoyed success, was that my activities at Carthage put me in contact with my students’ parents.  At Southport I had classes full of students that had been sorted out by their lack of achievement—all low ability classes, and I learned to love them.  Many were athletes.  At Carthage there were so few students that almost every one of them had to fill many roles.  The most important thing, perhaps, that Margaret and I learned during our two years there was that if you love your students, their parents will, in return, love you, or at least treat you with respect.

We still lived there in September of 1961 when we returned from a quick trip to Harlem, Montana, to show off the tiny, beautiful little one to Margaret’s parents and friends there, and when we started to teach down the road in Charlottesville.  The folks in the hamlet didn’t seem angry with us for moving on.  We had met with ingratitude, broken promises and unreasonable demands after two completely selfless years—a promise of pay for creating a yearbook, mostly done at night and a great deal of it in our home was to net me $25 for the next year; a promise that being librarian would be temporary (one year) became a demand for another thankless summer at Ball State University taking courses that would aim my life permanently down that path.  No one had thought to hold a baby shower for Margaret, and then, after seven short days, we were out of town.  We were not prepared mentally for the outpouring of affection that came in the form of a steady line of visitors with gifts that made Lori the best-dressed baby we had ever seen.  For two weeks they came, and then we left them, sort of.

One way to get to know parents, we found, was to go to church locally, although this didn’t please parents of other religious persuasions.  So we visited around while we were choosing a church home. Later, when I taught in Lapel, Indiana, and drove a half-hour to school each day, I drove there with Margaret on Thursday nights for choir practice and on Sunday mornings when lots of parents were at church.  Our third child, Tammy, was born on Labor Day, the day before school started, and by her third week, Margaret was back in the classroom at Charlottesville, cutting short her year’s leave-of-absence due to the demand for an overflow second-grade classroom, meeting in the local volunteer firefighters’ large building.

By the time I had twenty-some odd years of teaching experience and was ensconced at Greenfield-Central High School, I had learned that theater should not be the job of a single adult.  I had been alone in buildings with groups of teens many nights, building scenery after school, sewing with Margaret on costumes many nights, trying to teach choreography, which I knew nothing about, and direct choral music for which I had no aptitude.  I certainly knew I could use some help by the time Carolyn Cash—Christina’s mother—asked about forming a parental support group.  “The band has one.  The chorus has one.  The athletic department has several.  Why can’t the parents of kids who choose drama have a group that lends a hand?”

And so it was done.  Soon the music department joined in putting on the musicals and parents helped in every aspect of a show.  Children’s Theater became a reality, with its heavy dependence on mothers and the music and art departments, and our efforts became a tour de force.  We opened the doors to parents and never looked back.
We soon needed eight to ten officers.  We held a kick-off party in September after several planning sessions.  We had a huge table of food and drinks, tables across the front of the thrust stage for officers to sign up students who were interested in their particular function, collected modest dues, danced under theatrical lights, and then got down to business.

The next night the officers met to address envelopes to the parent(s) of every child who attending containing a letter from the president of drama club inviting them to an organizational meeting the following Monday.  At that meeting, each officer got up and told his area of obligation and asked for a volunteer to assist and encourage other parents.
By the end of the evening, we had qualified persons from the community to assist with the programs (just for an example) and deal with printers, etc.  Advertising was assured, not being left up to one individual (or me).  Seamstresses were ready to create, staple guns, saws, hammers, etc., appeared in the hands of able men who could do carpentering better than I ever dreamed of.  And all of these people helped create a dream.

At rehearsals, one mother came up with the idea of taking everyone’s picture and creating badges (at her expense) that said, “My kid is in ‘Oklahoma’” or some such thing—both advertising and keepsakes.  We had sweatshirts and T-shirts (your choice), miniature posters that were delivered to every pizza place in town to go on every pizza that went out—one pizza parlor called to ask, “Why didn’t we get flyers?”  It grew and grew.  Parents felt free to come to see me during my prep period.  One parent became my directing assistant with drama class, which made it possible to use more that one short play and practice in two locations at once.  (Thanks Sarah Davis).  Parents arranged to sell flowers inexpensively in the lobby and have them delivered backstage.  We also sold fifty-cent telegrams.  Once for a period play, a mother brought all her beauticians in to do fancy coifs in the dressing room—they even worked on some of the males.  Another beautician, a male, once had the leads come in to his shop where he did their hair with no charge.

I think you get the picture.  At rehearsals parents were reluctant to approach me as the play developed, but I no longer had to fit costumes or ask that a pair of pants be shortened to fit—those things happened magically.  I recently heard of a school that had to ban hugging in the halls due to over-indulgence.  I never saw inappropriate hugs, but I told my students this:  “Society is such that it is not permissible for me to hug you—but you may hug me anytime!” 

I once got up on the runway for Hello, Dolly!  and told the cast that they didn’t appreciate the people who made this show possible.  “It’s so easy to do, and it doesn’t cost you anything.  Let me show you how.”  And I called my wife from the piano.  When she stepped up on the thrust, I hugged her, and called for Gail at the other piano.  When I had hugged her, I called for the band director, and Jerry Bell stepped up and got his hug.  After that I saw kids hug their parents, parents hug their kids.  Jamie Broome called out at rehearsal after curtain call, “Everyone needs to hug five people before they leave!”  And I think most of them did.  Was it lascivious?  It was not.  Did morale soar?  It certainly did.

There was a lady who sat on the aisle in the back row all week during dress rehearsals.  After I had stood on the arms of one plush seat and got the male chorus to increase their volume at least three-fold, I got too excited and used the word ‘damn’, which was hardly even in my vocabulary.  Then I worried about the lady I didn’t know in the back, so I went back and asked who she was.  This was her reply, “My niece is playing Minnie Fay and she asked me to help her with her costumes.  You can’t imagine how much I wish this week would never end!  I am a teacher, and I have learned more about teaching in one week than I had learned in seventeen years of teaching.”

Wow!  I wondered what she had learned.  I hoped it was that parents and kids could become more loving if they worked on a project together—that if the project was successful, it was a shared success in which everyone had a part.  I used to encourage students to paint something on the set so that when they looked at the scenery they could say to a friend, “See that!  I painted it.”  Or I built it, or I helped in some way.

Dr. Felker used to bring his table saw on all-day Saturday “finish the set” day.  Once the sets got done too soon, and I needed busy kids.  I always said that I designed scenery in three layers—the first was if I dropped dead, the show could go on; the second was finesse; and the third was ‘impossible additions.’  So I had the students cover the thrust with canvas, roll on a gray stone layer of paint, and sketch a Greek key design around the front edge—a big project.  Then using string from a vantage point, I had them mark off squares in perspective.  I mixed paint, selected a brush for each tone, and painted about one foot of the Greek key.  During rehearsal I saw Laura Chou’s mother painting, fascinated was my guess.  As action moved, she moved to the other side.  When I realized she was finishing what I had thought would take days, I asked her if she was a painter.  She laughed and replied, “Mr. Rhoades, I am Dr. Chou.  I work at Eli Lilly.  This has been a wonderful diversion for me.”  Wow, again!  Who could have predicted that.

I urge anyone who teaches to USE THE PARENTS!

I often wonder just what causes any individual to set out to write about himself and his life, as if the life of just an ordinary man would strike a responsive chord in ordinary men who might choose to read it. In everyone’s life there are mild moments of glory and memories that grow more aggrandized with time, and each man/woman holds onto these moments with fierce pride and satisfaction. When I was three, a lady walked up to our door and insisted that she somehow knew this was the place where she was to live. She talked my parents into letting her rent the largest upstairs bedroom and part of the hall for a kitchen. We called her Auntie, but her name was Florence Horton, and she carried herself with a gentility that I would not have known otherwise. She taught me much about manners and courtesy. And she had stories she loved to tell about her past. I loved the one about the day a lady walked up to her on the street and said, “Mrs. Horton, you don’t know me, but I just wondered if you know that you are considered the best-dressed woman in Henderson, Kentucky.”

And although we were poor in the post-depression, my mother, before society in general was aware of germs, was meticulous, fearing the ‘disgrace’ of any kind of bugs. I never saw a roach, and none of us ever had head lice. If any child at school had them, we all got treated for them at once. And even though our coal furnace that my dad had to stoke during the night put out a soot that settled over everything, there was hardly a trace of it. Walls had to be scrubbed, curtains washed, starched and stretched, and wallpaper cleaned with a pink clay-like ‘dough’ that turned gray and crumbled as you pulled it in downward strokes over every inch of wallpaper. Maybe this was because my father had a habit of inviting church folks for Sunday dinner upon a whim without asking her or telling her. He was so proud of the way she could put out a fine meal at the drop of a hat and of the fact that our house was always ready for company.

There are also moments of failure that shape lives. My entire lifetime was spent going to school—I never outgrew that, never stopped getting pleasure from it. Perhaps I never quite “grew up.” I know that there was something that set me apart from other men. It was not always that my determination was so very great or my dedication, either, although it often was. And there was not always a strong feeling of self-worth that I believe many other men have to a greater degree. But there was certainly a spiritual compass to my deeds, actions and thoughts.

As the youngest of seven children, I was over-protected and considered to be somewhat delicate. Even other children did not swear in my presence. I was allowed by my peers to be fragile, eccentric, confident and happy. I believe that no one picked on me because my brother Danny, nineteen months older than I, was a terrific athlete and a brilliant student. He was, for me, beyond competition, although I compared my efforts and found them wanting. He was also more handsome, sought-after, self-assured and stronger physically. And he had a strong moral compass. I knew I was from a poor family, but then so was Danny and it was all right. I wore hand-me-downs, but they had been Danny’s and it was all right. I didn’t question my lot until my early teens. I was happy-go-lucky. However, I was denied the opportunity to develop any of my talents very fully; so I became a Jack-of-all-trades, a man of too many talents to choose just one (although my burning desire for a few years was to be James Dean and bring great roles to life in a way that was unique.) I claimed I was saving my heart for Marilyn Monroe, but maybe I was afraid I might disappoint my dear mother as I had witnessed brothers doing on a few occasions. There was always a woman involved in what, to my mind, was inexcusable self-satisfying gratification that led to unwise marriages, regrets and divorce. “These things would not happen to me, “ I thought. And they did not.

I was almost always a kid with popular friends. I attended high school in the early 1950’s when most families had only one car. My father, an auto mechanic, purchased an old one and repaired it for me to drive, so I provided the transportation for the drama crowd and, therefore, was included in all their group activities, which, perhaps due to my presence, were never centered on the venturesome or the risqué. I had a young, beautiful, talented Christian girlfriend whom I protected and admired for three years.  She was the tie to South Bend, Indiana, and when that bond was broken, I was free to look at the world differently.

I steered away from aggressive women, and I fell in love when I met my soul mate, a young lady who had traveled by train from Harlem, Montana, to my part of the world.  Margaret Goldsmith did not know she was beautiful, nor did she know she was my soul mate. She was as determined as I to accomplish things before she married and to wait until marriage for sexual gratification. My life was also shaped by the presence of wonderful personages male and female who became truly my friends. There still is out there in the distance a wonderful man who as a college student protected me and returned my admiration and affection.  He was enough taller than I was that his arm rested easily on my shoulder as we walked about the small campus of Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis). We were not very successful as roommates because, I think, the continuous proximity bred some contempt in each of us and caused us to focus on our very different idiosyncrasies. But otherwise we were happy lads, very funny as a comedy team, good as a musical team (usually within a quartet), and devoted as well to our own pursuits. I believe I could not be the person I am today without the acceptance of this young man and his wonderful large family. Three of his five siblings went to Indiana Central, and at some time or other I sang with each of them.

I never questioned who I was or where I was going until my parents put up a roadblock in my path to fame, or at least my focusing on the development of a career that would use many of my gifts. I suppose God put those stumbling blocks there because that was not the predestined path my joy-filled life, centered upon my wife, my children, and my students, was to take. My life has been devoted to the path I found myself trodding down with little concern for “The Road not Taken.”

There are many memories that have a tartness to them. It must be understood that this is in no way bitterness. I am so deeply indebted to my colleagues, even those who appeared to dislike me, because they helped to shape my days and bring them into focus, and they were nearly all days filled with joy and a zest for living. Almost every student who ever sat in my classroom knew me better than my colleagues because of my practice of making others reach out to me except in the classroom where it was my job to reach them. I always said that if their minds seemed to be unreachable, I taught their souls because I believed that the soul had the power to recognize truth instantly.

I believe that those of my colleagues who reached out to me over the years could understand that, even though I tell here stories that show dealing with jealousy or pettiness of a sort, I loved all of those people and wished for their happiness and success. When I think of them as I write, unless they never gave me a happy moment, I miss them.

I must warn the pragmatist who would scour these pages looking for meaning that my life has been transcendental in nature. I have lived amid muck and not felt a part of it, have loved the “muckers” without judging their particular stirrings. Students who have sat in my classroom endured an almost subconscious attempt to create together a cushion of surreal air to walk on above the trials of outside life—to make and share a place worth believing in. I can’t explain this—don’t want to, even; but it is tucked neatly in these pages which are told randomly from my memory because they are in some way memorable to me and tell of “that place.”

Not all students felt present in this “Twilight Zone.” They brought in books to read secretly in order to escape it, wrote notes to a lover or a cohort in the muck whom they could not brush off their feet at the door. They applied makeup for the “image”, unaware that the very act set them apart as non-participants in the journey. Some tried to make the journey all about themselves, and still the magic continued to happen all around them while they were unaware.

One such non-participant from whom I had been unable to pry one gram of effort and into whom I was unable to pump any discernible grain of knowledge and who would not take one sip of the cup of caring approached me, accompanied by his cohort in crimes, in the hall the following year to ask why I had “failed him”—although we both knew he did not deserve to pass. His parting shot gave me a glimmer of hope: “You know you liked us!”

Another girl, years after I taught her in a seventh-grade class that was out-of control when I arrived upon the scene, said haughtily, “I didn’t learn one thing in that class!” And it was obvious that for her life held no magic. I spoke to her pragmatic superiority when I asked, “Oh, you didn’t? I thought I gave you a spelling test every week.”

“Well, duh.”

“Didn’t I test you over every single story in your literature book?”

“Well, yes; I guess so.”

“Autobiography? Didn’t you write one? Journal—didn’t you keep one? Did you learn to recognize third person plural, present perfect passive tense, for example?”

“I hated that stuff.”

“But you passed it as I remember. Just what was it that you didn’t learn?”

. . . But, you see, she was in a different place than I was in that room, breathing air from another source of escapism, keeping a library book under her grammar text or lit book and reading in snatches about another place where she would rather have been. I’m sure she wouldn’t be one of those who sometimes say to my children in the town where I no longer live, “Your father was the best teacher I ever had.”

Once, my speech class was delivering researched speeches-to-convince on some very demanding subjects. After each I had exhausted myself to pull them into the reality of their subject as it existed within the confines of their daily lives, however sheltered that might be. One boy raised his hand and said, “Mr. Rhoades, why do you insist on talking between speeches? It’s so boring! I wish you’d just let us give our speeches without boring us to death.”

What had happened in that moment to me personally was that he had stripped the wires of my nervous system of their insulation and left me quivering from the shock. In a stunned manner, pale and perhaps shaking, I said, “How dare you say that to me? Don’t you realize how much trust it involved just now for me to bring my awareness of an abhorrent matter to your attention on such a personal level?” And, in spite of myself, my head went down on my desk at the back of the room in complete disillusionment.

The next day he came to me and begged, “Will you tell these people to just leave me alone! They won’t stop bugging me about what I said yesterday. I can’t help it if I think it’s boring.”

And I let them know in cloaked language that we were often at the mercy of those who chose to stay outside of the transformations I knew were taking place. Individuals who had seemed to have nothing in common, perhaps believed they disliked each other, and felt disassociated with each other were becoming a group of friendly faces, pulling for each other, working on projects together and looking forward to this hour each day. What they pressed upon us was allowable because it came from need and not from malice. It was not fair that we press upon them our displeasure because they were outside a window, looking another way.

A most commonplace conversation was with students from the previous semester who stopped by my room to say, “Mr. Rhoades, I miss your class. We all do. There’s something missing in every day.” I think that doesn’t last long as the new elements of magic begin to play in other classrooms.

Once, after the Rural Electric Membership Corporation (REMC) held its annual convention, its president, Fred Powers, whom I had taught at another school, stopped me outside the building. Fred was with Eli Lilly. The gist of what he said was that he felt speech had been his most important course in high school. “I don’t know how you did it, but we all got so we could stand up in front of people and not be nervous. I work with brilliant men with doctor’s degrees who can’t project an idea without projecting to a greater extent their own discomfiture. I’m so glad I don’t have that problem.

Mrs. Mary Parido, as head of the English department at Greenfield-Central once said, in voting to reject a course offering I had proposed, that she did not believe any course in her department should be fun. I was appalled. As luck would have it, the newspaper the next day carried an article in which an interviewer asked then-President George W. Bush what courses at Yale had been most beneficial to him. He named two—one was speech. He said that, first of all, it was fun. Secondly, it was valuable because he used it every day of his life. I highlighted “It was fun” and placed it in Mary’s mailbox unsigned. She never commented.

I can’t guess what anyone can read into my scattered memories. Know that I tailored with a fabric that might not be as enduring as it was beautiful. Be aware that I exposed students with many levels of brilliance to a kind of “pure air” because I believe with all my heart that purity is the greatest force of attraction between the souls and hearts of men.

In the English/drama/speech classroom, the shelves around three sides of the room are deemed absolutely essential. A dictionary must be on the desk or within easy reach, and many books (yes, real books) of great poetry, short stories, humor, and novels should be available for student use. The poetry of Robert Frost, in his complete works, is introduced with an invitation, in “The Pasture,” to join him on his own turf, saying, “I sha’n’t be gone long,—You come too.”

Now you might pretend that this writer is a poet, inviting you to go on a little stroll because he means for you to share the intimate moments of what he feels makes teaching high school students in America the happiest profession.

POETRY MUSE

Sense suffocating loneliness, gloom,
Silent as the violin on the wall of our fireside room,
Strung, but out-of-tune,
Out-of-reach, untouched, a boon,
Yearning, like the bow,
Neatly slanted a few inches below.

Feel the tremors within it moaning,
“Take me down! I will not consent to being ornamental,
An embellishment, a turn, a grace note merely–NO!
Tighten a turn or two the horsehair bow,
And render into tune each string;
Rosin generously and let me sing!

“Caress cold ebony of my chin piece–bright,
Black curves reflecting a bold fire’s light.
Grip me closely, pressed against your shoulder.
Release soft melodies which soon grow bolder
As resonance fills the chambers of my chest
And the music of the muses swells your breast.

“O, stir my strings with nimble, tremulous touch.
Vibrate into life silent pages with passion such
As only prayer and poetry can proffer–
Pain and happiness your fleeting memory must offer.
Place your cares like logs upon the fire across the room
And warble sacred mem’ries from your journey to the tomb.”

Replace the bow with care upon the wall when done–
In the probable event another such a one
Stops here for warmth with sagging soul so coldly grand.
Loosen its strings and leave the rosin close at hand,
And, just as you might close your fondest book,
Hang the fiddle quickly back upon the hook.
It is not soundless, though muted now like a melancholy word
Upon an unturned page, awaiting reader, lonely, and unheard.

CHAPTER ONE

Discipline

Why wouldn’t a teacher become defensive when people compare today’s educational system with the schools of the past and see today’s as a terribly flawed and floundering system?  Many parents have two sets of stories they tell their children, and they seem not to notice the discrepancy—the “we could never have gotten by with that kind of thing” story and the “wild-and-crazy guy” version, telling of their own exploits.  I’d like to share with my readers, as I used to tell my students, a few of each.  Those readers who are former students should recognize many things.  Study halls have long been a gauge for telling how successful the discipline is in a school.  When I was a high school student in 1952, Riley High School in South Bend, Indiana, had hired an older lady to run the study hall.  The poor woman had no cheerful, inspiring class to be the bright spot in her day–only those very impersonal study halls.  By the end of the day when I had study hall, she was often mystified by the day’s experiences.  By sometimes asking her questions, students might soon have discover that she was at least knowledgeable about math, English and biology.  That didn’t matter much.  She was tested daily on the matter of control.  A favorite attack pattern of this group was to be absolutely quiet as she took attendance at the front of the double room and to wait for her to begin to move.  (Diagram that sentence!)  As she walked to her desk at the back, nearly two-hundred teenage feet (honestly, not mine) echoed her steps.  When she stopped, they stopped.  If she hurried, they hurried.  The second-floor room shook as from a series of thunder bolts.  Finally, after losing her temper and screeching a bit, she began to weep openly.  That also was not effective.

After much abuse from members of the football team, assigned first semester to last hour study hall because they sometimes left early to travel to away games, she had seated them in every other seat along the windows with admiring female fans in the other seats.  (Doesn’t every teacher at some time try to maintain order by putting quiet folks between loud ones or girls between the boys?)  One bitterly cold winter day when she stepped into the room from doing that hall duty which many principals believe is necessary for all teachers to do, all ten windows in the room stood wide open.  The temperature in that room was dropping rapidly; there was no time to lose.  She realized she would have to close them herself when there was no response to her commands and no positive response to her pleading.  Many feet echoed her steps to the back window, where she strained, turned her head toward the front, gave a powerful downward thrust and closed the window with an angry bang.  Loud cheers!  A volley of mocking steps accompanied her move to the second window!  Her style was identical for all ten windows.

Without her realizing it, as she turned her head to strain and reach for the fifth window, an athletic figure gracefully slid out of the seat at the back and again threw open the first window.  The next four ball players repeated this action with admirably perfect timing.  As one window closed, its sliding and colliding masked the noise of another window opening as if it were a piston, powered by the action of the  piston she controlled.  As she closed the last window, four windows opened.  When she turned to see the nine open windows, the brazen halfback in the front seat threw open the tenth one before her unbelieving eyes, and she realized that the gales of laughter that had accompanied the window-closings were not just because her slip was showing.  The icy air streamed in as she screamed, “Get out!  You boys get out of here!  Down to Mr. Dake’s office!  GET OUT!  GETOUT!!  GET OUT!!!”

And those heroic athletes rose as one man, closed the windows, took deep formal bows and filed out of the room—except for one little fellow.  He could not resist stopping here and there to pick up the pennies that were now rolling down the aisles in increasing numbers to bang against the baseboard at the front of the room.  Unable to restrain herself any longer, she took up the fragile wooden pointer which had hung at the blackboard for many years, and, as if to add to her confusion, broke the fragile dowel as it was applied to his back,  And he, feigning serious injury, limped from the room amid howls from his amused classmates.      I don’t know a great deal about study halls back then.  That was the last day I was ever in one.

I asked for and received daily passes to the library from first one and then another of my teachers, worked diligently on research work so that no one would send me back to that unkind place.  As soon as work on a play began, I got a series of week-long passes to work on scenery and props.  I remained very sensitive to unkindness and always wanted my students to know that my classroom was a safe haven where there would be no anger and the teacher would be happy to see them every day.

Well, that was a fine goal, anyway.

ADDENDUM

The sociology paper I labored over diligently each day for three weeks was my master work.  I swelled with pride of accomplishment as I handed it to the teacher the day before it was due.  He turned a few pages, flipped to the back page, glanced up and asked, “Where did you find so much material?” as he put an A+ on the title page, assuming I would consider myself well paid for my efforts.  He didn’t read one word—he had never intended to read what his students wrote.  Thus was I introduced to the lazy teacher who has no concept that sometimes students write papers for the specific audience of their instructor’s mind.  I was to experience this disappointment many times in college as well.  I made it a practice, not only to correct papers, journals—whatever my students wrote—but also to write something back to show that I had thought about content.  I believe that action distinguishes anyone who attempts it.  Occasionally, in a journal, my comments were longer than the student’s.  Once I got Stacey Cone’s mother’s version added to her daughter’s side of a story that was critical of her.  Her comments were also much longer than her daughter’s.  The humor in it indicated that she had read the entry at her daughter’s insistence, as if to say, “See, I told my teacher on you.  He understands teenagers.”

I began teaching in 1958 at Southport High School in the Indianapolis area.  I kept an uneasy peace in a very large study hall.  In my second year at Carthage, Indiana, I inherited another.   Southport had been in a growth spurt that meant continually shifting the 9^th grade to the junior high and back again as the corporation provided new, underbuilt, inadequate buildings which required that another project begin immediately—we had almost bi-weekly fire drills that were timed by the fire department, and although I stood on the landing calling, “Move!  Move!  Move!” we were informed that hundreds of students were lost in every mock fire.

Carthage,on the other hand, was a very small paper-mill town, and the school housed about 200 students in grades 7-12.  Grades 7 and 8 were double the size of grade 9, due to huge dropout rates among the mill families, and each year of high school witnessed the elimination of a few more students until there were only about 21 graduating senior.  In 1959 about half the teachers (not many of them in the elementary, so an even higher percentage in the high school) were new; most of them were a different breed—quite unusual.  I heard that in firing the staff, rumored to be anyone that had not voted for him in the election, the trustee had said, “Teachers are a-dime-a-dozen.”  And that is the kind of teacher he got, mostly.

The junior varsity basketball coach, it was soon well known, kept liquor bottles in the tank of a downstairs restroom.  He was thrown out of the away game at Morton Memorial, the school at Indiana Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Children’s home,  that year after running red-faced onto the floor, excoriating his boys:  “Look at that scoreboard.  How could you let that happen?”  This, when his team was far, far ahead.  It was just too obvious that he was intoxicated.  The wonder was that the referee who threw him out, who was also a state policeman, didn’t arrest him on some charge or other.

The new young math teacher was bright and knew his subject but was so addicted to tobacco that he could be seen holding his yellowed fingers to his nostrils to inhale what residue was there because he just could not survive a fifty-five minute period without a fix.  He left every class about ten minutes early to smoke in the boiler room, but these were small classes and the students welcomed the chance to “help  each other.”  I recall that Linda Harrold sat at the back of the room and worked from a calculus textbook.  Later, at Purdue as a home ec major, she tested so high in math that she had to take engineering courses to complete her math requirements.

Another of these teachers taught art, among other things.  My wife Margaret taught first grade in the first-floor classroom just above his art room.  One September day she heard a great commotion during the time her class had gone to art.  She followed the noise to that lower-floor room.  She looked in through the door glass to see her pupils playing follow-the-leader and stomping about on top of tables placed in a U pattern.  The helpless, balding, middle-aged teacher sounded like a broken record, “Boys and girls!  Boys and girls…”

Margaret paused only a moment before opening the door and stepping into the room.  She clapped her hands twice in quick succession, whereupon the children dropped instantly into their seats in stunned silence.  (She was young and beautiful, and these children kissed her at the door as the left at the end of the day.)  As if he had just witnessed an incredible magician at work, he asked her, “What did you do?”

The next day—I assure you this is true—as I passed the high school study hall across from the library I was to serve, I saw a grown man standing in socks and sandals at the front of a very noisy group, saying nothing, but with an eagerly expectant look on his simple face, clapping his hands twice, looking around as if to say, “There, did you see that?” and repeating the ordeal over and over.  I walked on, unaware of any significance.

Later in the period, I stepped out into the hall to investigate a series of explosive noises.  As I discovered a teacher present, I returned to the library to continue checking the shelf list.  The next morning I was called to the office and informed that my schedule had been expanded to include a study hall.  The principal told me this incredible tale:

When the students had refused to quiet down, this teacher had devised a remarkable scheme.  Anyone who talked would have to take his books and stand against the grimy yellow wall.  As no one stopped talking, he soon had everyone standing, laughing and talking along three walls of the room.  (The fourth wall was a little stage.)  When the last student took his place there, the troubled teacher said, “Now are you satisfied?  Anyone who talks will have to sit down.”  And soon they were back in their desks, attached to wooden floor rails in five long rows.  Now he was forced to make a decision.  Removing from the desk drawer an enormous paddle with three drilled holes (which I myself was later to use on two occasions), he announce dramatically, “Anyone who talks is gonna get this.”  Soon he had a boy in the hall.  (Stage whisper)  “Now, I don’t want to hurt you, but I gotta scare those guys in there so‘s they’ll be quiet; so when I hit these books, you yell loud as you can.”  Of course, the resulting noise only slightly resembled a paddle touching flesh.  The boy’s over-projected howling produced gales of laughter from the amused kids who thought they had never had it so good.

The next day two memorable things happened.  My wife overheard one of her first-graders say as the art teacher shuffled past, “There goes that guy who spanks books.”  I, of course, had learned from the principal what the child was talking about, and that I had been put in the unenviable position of replacing the ineffectual study-hall teacher.  That mild man, by being incredibly inept, had earned himself a second free period while the young, already overloaded teacher-librarian had been moved across the hall to deal daily with the hornets’ nest this man had stirred up.  I could get my library into shape by working extra hours after school.

Four other brief memories concerning that teacher, who was retained at that school more than one year only because he had a license to teach many things. I believe him to have been a once-brilliant man who had “lost it” while he was away at war— perhaps he had been too delicate emotionally for the weight of those kinds of memories. He was sitting at the large central table in the office grading papers one day. He would stare at the paper (no marks, just a grade), then write “A” and proceed to the next paper, pause, stare, and write “B” before proceeding to the next paper, upon which he placed the letter “C.” Then he would start over. No “D’s” or “F’s”. I wasn’t watching as closely as the secretary, who noticed that he had given a “C” to a senior who was in competition with his cousin Cathy for valedictorian honors. “I see David Ruby got a ‘C’ on your test,” she commented.

“He did? Oh.” Pause… shuffle papers… change grade to “A.” It was a system that worked for him.

Another time when a student’s mother had passed away after a long illness, we were discussing funeral arrangements in the office. This man said, “I don’t think I know who Sheila DeWitt is.”

I, who had walked past his basement room once, said, “Sure you do. She’s in your world history class. She sits in the fourth seat in the middle row.”

“Oh, does she?” Blank stare. End of discussion.

*     *     *

The third occasion was in the far distant art room which had belched up an awful stench that had seeped into the entire facility—two buildings joined by a hall above and a tunnel below—until it reached the office. The principal scurried down to investigate. “We think it’s the mill,” the teacher stated. (Carthage featured a large paper mill that sometimes was odiferous.

“Oh, for crying out loud, it’s not the mill! Any idiot would know it’s not the mill,” the principal grunted as he stormed in, found the stink bomb in the waste basket and held it up accusingly. This accusation was directed at the teacher as much as the students who had lit it and placed it there.

He shrugged. “We thought it was the mill,” was his only explanation.

I remember that I emceed the Carthage Talent Show both years I was there, and one of the jokes (Clara Jo Henley and I were dressed as clowns) went like this:

CLARA JO: Smell this perfume. Wow! Evening in Paris–$25 an ounce.

MR. RHOADES: That’s nothing. Smell this perfume. (Opening a gallon jug) Wild Night in Carthage—25 cents a gallon. (There was some truth to that—hence, the big laugh.)

Well, he believed that noxious odor was “the mill…”

*       *       *

His students put off a test for a week once by unscrewing a fuse to leave the classroom in darkness. The cloakroom light stayed on. When, after six day of trying, he made them crowd into the cloakroom and sit on the floor to take the test, suddenly the lights miraculously came on in the main classroom. This teacher’s contract was renewed. He was a fixture in that place for as many years as I was—two. It only seemed like a much longer period of time.

Addendum

A beloved former student who became a wonderful teacher/coach was very upset at having lost his first position over some ridiculous personality thing at just such a small school. I consoled him by saying, "Don’t be too angry. I know it hurts now, but they just did you a great favor. Now you will move, and anywhere you go from here will be a step up. He took a giant leap upward within just a few days.

Using the Board

I am sure that if a teacher did today what I did when I faced that study hall, he would be hauled into court. I might have ended my teaching days right then. However, either the parents backed me up, or more likely, the boy I paddled never told them about it. When I told his sister (a student whose sparkle and humor I remember with a great deal of pleasure) at a class reunion, she was shocked by this story. I began my first study hall period by standing on that small stage at the front and staring them down one by one, row by row. However, one medium-sized sophomore boy with a hard countenance and a mischievous look in his eyes continued to try me as if he placed me in a category with the teacher they drove out the day before. A warning was not effective; so I, paddle in hand, took him across the hall into Mrs. Lord’s empty English/Latin classroom to "do the deed."

Like many of the boys, he wore very tightly tapered jeans so that he needed little zippers at the ankles in order to get them on and off. College classes and life experiences had not prepared me for this moment. It never occurred to me that I should take a witness along as we learned to do in later years. "Grab your ankles," I commanded. He grabbed. I don’t know how hard I hit him, not, I’m sure, as hard as any of the paddling I was later to witness, but the tight jeans worked much like a drumhead, and the noise filled the small school building through the open door.

After three whacks he stood up and snarled, "That’s enough!"

"I’ll be the judge of that!" I said sternly, and I proceeded to give him, in spite of several more protests, the full ten blows I had always imagined would be administered to me if I were ever troublesome in school.

In the office the principal quizzed me, "John, was that you using the board upstairs?"

"Yes," I replied, sort of casually, "I suppose it was inevitable with that large, unruly study hall. Why?… Could you hear it clear down here?"

"How many students did you paddle, John?" (Why did principals always call me John, though everyone else called me Jack?)

"Uh… just one."

"Good grief! (This principal was also a minister, but I think that in general people’s language was considerably cleaner in 1959 than it is today.) How many times did you swat that poor boy—I hope it was a boy?"

Believe me, this ‘poor boy’ had really pushed me to the limit in front a study hall that had already run out one teacher.

“Uh…ten times, I guess. I thought…"

"Ten!” astonished, unbelieving… “John…"

"Well, he wouldn’t stop arguing with me to stop. I’ve never paddled or seen anyone paddled before, and I really didn’t think I ever would. …Uhm… How many is usual?"

"Three, John, just three. Never—let me repeat that—never more than three."

However, my reputation was so firmly established by this act that I was rarely even gently nudged by a student, much less tested, even though my classroom disposition was very gentle. I always claimed to be a ‘gentleman’ and a ‘gentle man’ (and my swinging arm was pretty weak, too).

*        *        *

I was never to have that boy in the English classroom, but I believe my ability to inspire him would have been severely impaired. I personally believe that spanking is not a very effective way to change a child’s mindset. Margaret sometimes used the technique very gently on her first-graders when the naughty chair proved ineffectual. I sometimes found that eight to ten years later when they got to my classes, what those who had been paddled remembered best about Mrs. Rhoades’ class was that they had received a punishment they felt they had not deserved.

I eventually found that the most effective thing for me was to send the child out into the hall to contemplate for about five minutes while I continued class as if he or she did not exist, then I would join him for a talk, one on one, not in a scolding manner, but in a disarming way, looking him straight in the eyes and asking him, not in so many words, “Who are you?” and “What do you intend to become?” and “What do you hope to gain from me and the class I am trying to teach?” I would admit that he is really a likable person and give him the opportunity to admit that he doesn’t really hate me. Then I’d explain the positive expectations I had for him and the potential I saw there. Does he feel there is an acceptable penalty for the kind of infraction he is guilty of? What would that be? Does he realize that he enjoys the friendship of the other members of the class? It’s a kind of popularity in itself.

In this conversation there is no anger, no bitterness, no lack of control, but you are the adult; he is the child; you have more wisdom than he has given you credit for. If you can think of a suitable one, send him on an errand to show you trust him; and ask as you start into the room so the class can hear. It will allow him to reenter the room in a helpful, non-distracting manner void of defiance after you have resumed your lesson.

Of course he will ask friends later if you talked about him while he was gone, and as you will not have, the next such discussion will be easier and even more successful. That’s about it. It was gentle; it was friendly. It was just. Be just—teens have strong feelings about injustices against them. And don’t be selfish. Put student interests ahead of your own. That was usually enough, though such measures were not needed in most of my classes and only in very rare situations administered to a girl, in which case it was equally effective.

Addendum

I once had a very outspoken girl in English class. I reminded her daily about her flamboyant socializing and her attempts to derail the assigned work I had in mind. I believe Hillaire was barely passing my class. I stood in front of that class when I received a memo containing the news of the death of a toddler who had been hanging onto life for several months. His brother was in my play. Everyone in the cast would be devastated, I knew, and the play was to open on Friday night. It stunned me, and I lost emotional control in front of the class. I stepped into the hall to sob and regain control. In seconds that “inconsiderate” girl was there with comforting arms around me, consoling me in a very personal, caring way, discerning in a very adult manner what was the source of my grief and helping me regain control. As she took hold of my shoulders, she pleaded, “Mr. Rhoades, what’s the matter?” Then we cried together and I consoled her in turn. She slipped back into her seat and waited for me to reenter the classroom and continue as the teacher, and left it for me to explain to her classmates this tragedy that would affect some of them as well.

I saw her with completely different eyes after that. I realize that it was a moment that changed our impersonal, indifferent relationship. She began to behave as a student should, and she did well in my class because it had become important to her that I not think ill of her. Does that tell you anything about teenagers? About teaching?

Going to the church for that funeral service with my entire cast was difficult and emotionally taxing. The organist played the toddler’s favorite tunes, and folks wept openly when she played “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean” (O, bring back my Bonnie to me.) I was unable to console anyone, but I had schooled my young people to care about each other and to show it in actions as well as words. I always told them that drama club was a family–had to be. They were incredible! They spread warmth and affection in a way that uplifted everyone. Late that evening the teenage brother slipped into the final rehearsal in the middle of the final song in which the Von Trapp family singers were huddled together in a cemetery, squeezing each other in fear of being seen. He was able to slip into character as they climbed the mountain holding onto each other, and we knew he would be able to perform with us the next day.

I don’t mean to take credit for everything our group accomplished. One year at the drama club awards banquet, we had the seniors stand on the concrete edge of the main stage, which became a wide gray line when the elevator brought the thrust stage to the top where it was level with the main stage. This was a tradition started before I arrived on the scene, and I continued it. Although it was a bit maudlin, perhaps, I sometimes read a poem I had written at Southwestern for a wonderful group of seniors I knew I would miss terribly. It goes like this:

AT GRADUATION

I dreamed I drove along a lonely road
And came upon an upturned car
From which the single occupant had been thrown.
Climbing down, I ran to find
The one I knew was just beyond a little hill
But I knew not it was a life that had touched mine.

There only was a moment of relief in trusting eyes
When, reaching out to touch me, pleading silently,
The life was gone.Grief welled up into a pool of nausea;
Moments of shared laughter flashed by,
But tears would not come.

Disconsolate and irresolute,
I kneltAnd gripped a pulseless wrist,
And I would not let go!
It was as if, by hanging on,
I felt I could give life
To something I could not allow to die.
And that was all the dream!

It lingered, in the form of dread, for days,
Growing daily more intense,
But from the moment I awoke,
I could not remember who it was
That haunted with a moment’s silent love.

Something more tormenting than the dream
Was dread of dreaming it again,
And I did, repeatedly.In every dream,
I realized, the face was changed,
Though not the look, the death, the pain.
And every new awakening erased the memory of the face.

Soon I surveyed on every side
Students and friends in a startling light,
Trying to put them into the dream to know who was to die.
Then I knew it was not a dream of death
But of parting, having just discovered love
And having shared but a moment of knowing it.

When I knew this, the dreaming stopped.
But looking up familiar rows on this last day,
I know again the pain I knew
When I dreamed of you… and you… and you… and you…
Nothing is the same–no lonely road, no wreck, no hill,
And only this is here: I know I cannot let you go,
And that I must and will.

Anyway, with all the senior members on the line, I led the rest of the officers and the parents in going down the line giving congratulations and hugs. When I reached the end of the line and stood off to one side, Rob Eagleston’s father John, a Mormon bishop, was headed right for me. John’s older daughter, Laura was my mainstay onstage that year. But John was thinking of Rob, his small, quiet next-in-line (the rabbi’s son in Fiddler) when he said, “This is the man I want to hug. You took my son, put him on the stage and got him to sing and dance, and I don’t believe anyone else on earth could have gotten him to do it.”

“John,” I said, “I didn’t do that.”

Let me rephrase my statement then. “You created an environment in which he knew it would be safe for him to sing and dance onstage.”

“I’ll take that,” I replied as I took his bear hug—took it and shall always cherish that kind gesture. I doubt that he could have known how much I loved his children.

*        *        *

There were only a few years, and those at Southwestern, when I taught seventh grade—an age group for which I have little talent. One day I was very disappointed with a boy who was the smallest child in class. I took him out of the room and down to the office. We found the principal out and the office virtually empty. In the outer office, I got down, almost sitting on my heels, till my eyes were level with his and focused intently on them. I began by expressing why I was so angry with him, then I mellowed and began to tell him what I expected of him, asking often, “Do you understand that?” Then I stood and patted him gently on the shoulder, looked up and saw that the office had soundlessly filled with spectators and so had the hallway beyond the wall of windows. I said, “Excuse us,” and as we were leaving, I heard someone comment, “That was the most remarkable thing I’ve ever seen.” I don’t see anything remarkable about it unless it was my affection showing through my dissipating anger or that I expressed myself to him as I would have to an adult, an equal.

*        *        *

Just after our third child, Tammy, was born, things had been in a furor at Eastern because of opposition to their building project.  My wife Margaret had taken a year’s leave of absence, Lapel was nearer to Muncie where I was completing my MA degree, and they were offering $1,000 more in salary (a lot of money in 1967).  When I signed to teach at Lapel High School in a small town twenty-five minutes to the north of Greenfield, things had already been scheduled for the year ahead, so I took what was offered in the vacancy—eighth- and ninth-grade English. No speech. No duties with drama. However, Mr. Roudebush, the principal, promised me that the following year I would have older kids in English and would teach the speech and direct the plays. That didn’t happen. And in spite of the fact that those junior high kids were the brightest, most educable kids, I felt I needed to be with older ones. In my one year there, Jeannine Terhune, whom I had taught at Carthage while Margaret had taught her piano, and I decided to schedule Brigadoon, and I loved directing it with her.  Incidentally, she has carried on the program of musical theater with so much more musical talent than I ever had and brought it to incredible heights.

When contract time came the next year, I was offered the same class schedule, unaltered. Eastern Hancock was proceeding with a fine building program with an auditorium that I had fought to have included, while Lapel would continue to hold its plays in the gymnasium. The teacher who had replaced me at Eastern was not returning. I lost no time seeking an interview and signed a contract on the spot. When I returned to Lapel for classes on Monday, Mr. Roudebush sent for me. From the grapevine I had learned that the band director, who was also president of the Lapel Classroom Teachers’ Association, had resigned after twelve successful years. Asked what they could do to change his mind, he replied, “Find out what it takes to keep Jack Rhoades and get him back!” That, I suppose, was the reason things had been rearranged so that the promises that had been made to me could be kept. I thanked him kindly, but explained that I had signed with Eastern Hancock the Saturday before.

“There is nothing to force you to keep that contract, Mr. Rhoades,” he ventured.

“I understand that, Mr. Roudebush, but I gave my word.”

“Well,” he countered, “we got to have you for one year, anyway.”

Those words were to give me great comfort years later when a really vicious student started a smear campaign during my first year at Greenfield-Central. One of his rumors was that I had been fired from every teaching job I ever had. There is a spiritual principle involved in cases like this that assures Bahá’ís that they need not defend themselves against false accusations. When a person, any person, tries to create enmity against another human being, the negative energy generated is inevitably turned against the person himself. Leave it in the hands of God. If you get in there and muck up the works, the spiritual solution is weakened. One has to recognize that problems are never in and of themselves with solutions you have to formulate. You must see beyond the problem to the spiritual nature of the event for hope and courage, although that’s a really difficult test.

The Lapel fall play was a senior play with which I had nothing to do beyond creating the most elaborate scenery their audiences had seen, designed to include all the set pieces needed for Brigadoon in the spring. The seniors called upon the director to present him a gift. Mild applause here (the play was not outstanding). Then they called me up to acknowledge my efforts and present me with a gift. Here the applause was prolonged so as to be embarrassing.

During the final week of Brigadoon rehearsals, we rented a spotlight and placed it on a scaffold on the gymnasium floor. I had difficulty understanding why there was insistence from the music department that the spotlight be on the stage left side of the house. I carried the directing responsibilities, but the production belonged to the music department. I argued without success that the stage lighting would not be adequate from that vantage point (as if one spotlight could really suffice, anyway.) On opening night when the conductor came through the curtain at stage right and bowed at center stage before descending to the orchestra level, I knew immediately that lighting him had been more important than lighting the actors—to someone.

*         *        *

But wait! This chapter is about discipline. At Southwestern where the paddle was sometimes the measure of a teacher’s effectiveness, I was once asked into the principal’s office to witness a spanking by the male guidance director. The child was told to empty out his hip pockets and grab his ankles. He complied. Because he was a small boy and the swing of the paddle was swift, he was lifted off the floor and his head hit the wall. He was already crying hard, yet this was repeated twice before he was dismissed, sobbing and alternately rubbing the top of his head and the spot I am sure the paddle had left bruised. I was livid, but all I said was, “Don’t EVER ask me to be a witness again.”

I had received very high evaluation marks my first, difficult year, but on the second-year’s evaluation there was a comment indicating that I needed to use the paddle more frequently. (I hadn’t used it at all.) When, in my third year I used the paddle on one occasion, my evaluation improved. That was the year I heard a young female teacher being told by an older female teacher that the very best method of gaining control in the classroom was intimidation by humiliation, “Figure out what that student is most sensitive about and hit him with your best shot.” I stood to leave to get away from the discussion and remarked at the door, “My advice would be that a teacher NEVER humiliate a student.”

The next day working on scenery after school, Mike Yonts, the eventual valedictorian of the senior class, said that the older teacher had told his English class, “Anyone who says ‘Don’t humiliate the students’ just doesn’t know anything about teaching.” As this teacher got her pick of the best classes and students, I would guess that using this method of discipline had been considered successful for her.  I also realized that her antipathy towards me was growing.

But wait! This chapter is about discipline. At Southwestern where the paddle was sometimes the measure of a teacher’s effectiveness, I was once asked into the principal’s office to witness a spanking by the male guidance director. The child was told to empty out his hip pockets and grab his ankles. He complied. Because he was a small boy and the swing of the paddle was swift, he was lifted off the floor and his head hit the wall. He was already crying hard, yet this was repeated twice before he was dismissed, sobbing and alternately rubbing the top of his head and the spot I am sure the paddle left bruised. I was livid, but all I said was, “Don’t EVER ask me to be a witness again.”

I had received very high evaluation marks my first, difficult year, but on the second-year’s evaluation there was a comment indicating that I needed to use the paddle more frequently. (I hadn’t used it at all.) When, in my third year I used the paddle on one occasion, my evaluation improved. That was the year I heard a young female teacher being told by an older female teacher that the very best method of gaining control was intimidation by humiliation, “Figure out what that student is most sensitive about and hit him with your best shot.” I stood to leave to get away from the discussion and remarked at the door, “My advice would be that a teacher NEVER humiliate a student.”

The next day working on scenery after school, Mike Yonts, the eventual valedictorian of the senior class, said that the older teacher had told his English class, “Anyone who says ‘Don’t humiliate the students’ just doesn’t know anything about teaching.” As this teacher got her pick of the best classes and students, I would guess that using this method of discipline had been considered successful for her.

*        *        *

During scenery time when he and I were the only ones to show up, Mike sometimes allowed me to read his theme for the week that he had written for his senior English class. He would say, “All I have to do to get an ‘A’ on a theme is follow her three-step formula, but that gets boring, so this week I got creative. It won’t get an ‘A’, but my grades are high enough that I can afford it. He was right. Although remarkably clever and well-written, it didn’t get an ‘A’. The only mark on it was beside a sentence that started “Back then…” because, although it had just happened (a car accident after an away basketball game—we all had heard about it) he wanted to make it timeless and had set it in the past. She hadn’t recognized this convention, although it was very deliberate, and wrote, “This doesn’t make sense.”

Sometime later in the semester she wanted to enter some of her students’ themes in a contest at Ball State University. She asked Mike to submit his B+ theme about the car wreck. When he brought it in, she looked at the sentence she had written in the margin and crossed it out. (Because now, the event was “back then.”) As Mike’s theme won a monetary award, she was to take him by car to accept it. He wondered what he should say if she asked him questions about me. I suggested he should just say, “We never talk.” We laughed a bit at that.

Afterwards I asked him what she had to say about his award-winning essay, written, I remembered, at risk because it varied from her “pattern.” His reply was, “Oh, she took credit for it.” (It’s a danger we teachers face, have all been guilty of and should avoid at all costs.) I believe our program at Greenfield was as successful as it was because I gave ownership to the students and parents who shared the labor.

Mike also shared a story he had written in the style of James Thurber—I thought that was a great assignment. He chose to isolate events and, with digressions, relate them out of order. It was a Thurber-like touch and very effective, I thought—obviously intentional and delightfully humorous. Her critique claimed that the paper was seriously flawed and would be strengthened by using chronological order in telling the events.

On one occasion I was working onstage with student volunteers who just wanted to get out of study hall during my prep period. They were talking to each other about how much one teacher picked on them. When I challenged that statement to defend my colleague, the girls replied, “She hates us. She sits in the dining room and talks about us every day at lunch.”

“I think you have over-active imaginations, “ I countered. “What you say just could not be.”

“Well, it is. Just ask anyone.”

So sometime later I asked one of the teachers who ate at the teachers’ table during that lunch period if she had ever heard the accused teacher talk about those two girls. “Oh,” she offered, “she talks about them every day.”

Teachers! Wake up! You can’t fool them. Even if you are eating in another room, you should not stoop to backbite about your students. If you discuss their problems with another teacher, it should be in private and with the spirit of trying to help someone in need of help. Teenagers have so many problems. Why should having a teacher who dislikes them be one of their biggest ones? They cannot avoid you legally. The system has thrown you together. Treat them as you wish to be treated.

*        *        *

After my first drama club production, I received a letter of commendation from the superintendent which praised every aspect of the play and used the word “professional” very kindly about Karen Gravely, who was my leading lady.  I dislike directing by “parroting”, but at one rehearsal, I fed Karen a line.  She became very energized and exclaimed, “Say that line again—I want to say it exactly like that.”  Talk about winning ways!   I was a bit nervous as I took that envelope with the return address of the office of the superintendent from my mailbox and equally excited when I saw its contents. I slipped down to the library to show the librarian, who was one of the supportive teachers who had rushed backstage after the performance, announcing, “We never had a scene change before.”.

Let me explain that Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker was the farce upon which Hello, Dolly! was based. The scenic demands were much like the musical, but it includes a fourth act that was omitted from the musical—one with a few delightful new characters and a great drunk scene for the innocent Minnie Fay from the hat shop. After the curtain opened for the brightly colored second scene there was a super response from that audience that had watched plays with sets that had remained the same dull color for four years or more.

When the second act ended, all heads in that gymnasium were lowered to the level of the space between the curtain and the stage and heads began to nod as if to say, “They’re changing it again,” perhaps thinking we were going back to the first set. Instead, after intermission we visited the plush set of the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant, where an incredible talent named Vincent Matthews as Horace Vandergelder, joined Karen—two eventual valedictorians.  Nearly the entire basketball team was in that show, and they were superb athletes.

The set for that fourth final scene had been made possible by a phone call from one of the elementary principals at a school that had once been one of three high schools (eighteen years before) that were consolidated.  He called to inform me that they had on their stage a full set of professionally built scenery that was in their way. It no longer had canvas on any of the pieces, but it was all there—would I be interested? Would I ever! And thus it happened that scene four was able to display an alcove across the back that the audience could see into through painted frames shorn of their fabric.

After the final curtain the applause was prolonged, and six or seven of the faculty members that were truly interested in plays rushed backstage, as much to see me as to see the fine actors who had come to understand farce so well. It was an amazing cast.

Anyway, I showed Mrs. Johnson my letter. Another teacher looked over her shoulder and enthused, “Frame it, Jack. Believe me. No one ever got one before.”  (I remind you now that for three years before my arrival, there had been no plays, always cancelled by conflicts or insufficient interest.)

At this moment Mrs. Nay walked up, snatched the letter and reddened as she read.

Her comment, one I heard often in my career, was this: “Well, I never had that much talent to work with,” as she handed the paper back to me.

My reply was not subtle—“I consider it my job to reach the most-talented students and help them develop their talent.” Oh, well. I never got around to framing it. It’s in a file somewhere, as is the one from Bob Albano, principal at GCHS.

*        *        *

One of the plays I selected for the small Southwestern stage was the daring, seldom performed Mrs. McThing, which is a comedy by Mary Chase, author of Harvey. This play was written expressly to be performed for children for a limited engagement with Helen Hayes in the leading female role. To everyone’s surprise, the play appealed to the ‘child’ in everyone in the audience, and it moved directly to Broadway, where it enjoyed a successful run. Its difficult scene changes are very demanding. Also the leading roles are exceedingly challenging, as are all the whimsical parts. Mike Yonts, short with curly hair, played the dual role of a bratty boy and the “stick” (robotic android) with perfect manners, which a witch put in his place. I thought it was great fun to see the farce unroll. The real child was placed with a gang of chaotic (Three Stooges?) crooks who were portrayed, as were all the characters, as if a child might just have ‘made them up.’

At one performance of this play Mrs. Nay entered with a small group of family and friends and took a conspicuous seat near the front. Not only did they not stay for the entire performance but waited through the intermission until all had returned to their places before getting up and parading out as if offended somehow by the play. I’m sure she had no idea how my hard-working actors and their families would take this slight. At first in class she told them that she felt it was a really dumb play. I believe they knew there was no “child” inside their teacher for the play to speak warmly to. Then, when she realized how deeply they were offended, she explained that there had been a crisis in her family. 

Just before having tryouts for my second “senior” play, I had asked her—she was the senior class sponsor—if I should give the bills for expenses incurred to the class treasurer or directly to her. Her curt reply had been, “There’ll be no bills!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There’ll be no bills. How much money did you make on your last play?”

“Mr. Wade made it clear to me that money was not to be the object. There hadn’t been a play for three years, and he wanted me to deliver a play.  Uh… we made $200.” (I’ll touch upon that play later.)

“Well, I never directed a play that made less than $300!”

I think I am rarely rude to anyone, but I’m afraid I was rude to her then. “Do you want to direct this play?” I shot at her as I walked straight toward the principal’s office. Young principal Bob Yoder looked askance at me when I told him I could not work with that woman.

“But, Jack…. What are you going to do?”

“Well, I’d like to start a drama club, open to students in all four grades, to do one play and one musical each year.”

“Let’s do it.” And we did. No principal could ever have been more supportive!

I was always aware when I attended high school plays at other schools that there could be someone in the audience who would recognize me, and thus, my actions and reactions would reflect on my school as well as myself. And I never NEVER left in the middle of a performance, however bad it might be, especially when I had students with me who had done the same show very well and wished to leave . Now that courtesy did not extend to movies and professional theater.

Let me hasten to add a word of praise, however. The woman who sometimes gave me misery had dedicated her life to that school and its students. I was there for five years and left because I felt my “mission” at the school that required a 45-minute drive each morning and evening (I fully anticipated dying on twisted, narrow Highway 9 some exhausted midnight) had ended and opportunity awaited two minutes from my home. There is certainly something positive to be said for those teachers who have absolute rule in their classrooms. There is a learning atmosphere for the gifted in those rooms—it just never worked for me as a student. Inside my head there was a roar of protest that drowned out much of their instruction, and I had to make up for that on my own outside the classroom.  I truly believe that a great school should have representatives of both types of instruction areas, warm and cool.  Students need to learn coping skills!

At Greenfield-Central there was a terrible lack of unity in the art department at one time, and Sandy Hall became, I felt, a victim. When the principal called her in and dealt the blow that made her jump at the chance to teach at the junior high (where she has been an enormous blessing), I went in to Mr. Albano’s office and protested. What I tried to tell him was this: “That woman, whom , I understand, you must support as she is the department chair, will not be here very long. She has ambitions and is using this school as a step to somewhere else. Sandy Hall is a blessing to every student in her classroom. She has our students at heart and will stay here for them through thick and through thin—and she is a professional artist and is fantastic with stage painting. If you don’t also give her some encouragement and support, I feel sure you will regret it.”

And that prophecy came true at the end of that school year when the chairperson left, took the second art teacher with her, and Sandy went to the junior high. Fortunately, I was able to continue to use her services to drama, and Jeff Weiland, carpenter, 3-D artist, etc., became a second blessing as he and Sandy worked together in children’s theater.  I had learned so much from Gail Sturm and continued to learn from the associations with the other wonderful teachers who worked with Hancock County Children’s Theater, the organization that took over that north wing of Greenfield-Central High during the month of June each year.  During my ten years, we did some wonderful shows ranging from Peter Pan, Finean’s Rainbow, Wizard of Oz and Hello, Dolly to shows like Hooray for Hollywood (Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Davy Crocket) and an original historical pageant, Sing Out, America, attended by the Governor of Indiana and recipient of a state proclamation, thanks largely to the work of Linda Quick.

*        *        *

When word of the first opening in art was out, a former gifted student whose father was my surgeon and whose younger brother Jon was to become valedictorian and, as Cornelius Hackl in Hello Dolly!, be a pure gift of delight to me, applied for the job. When she was passed over, I objected. In the office they asked, “Are you sure you want her father in here every week about something or other?”

“I have no differences with Doc. What do you mean?”

“I mean he was in here constantly about Jon’s playing time on the basketball floor.” (I believe Jon was the only member of that team who played college ball.)

When Beth Gabrielsen was passed over for the second art opening that summer, she called about a recommendation for Indianapolis Tech High School. I asked her about her interview at G-C, and she mentioned that she had told them of her intention to go back to school for a doctorate in a year or two.

“Don’t mention that in your Tech interview. In the first place, you don’t know what the future holds. In the second place (even though the person they hire might be released by them in a year) they are looking for someone who will stay their whole lifetime. Act as if your dedication to that job would consume your greatest passion, and you’d be there forever.” I wrote her a somewhat florid letter of praise, and she gave them five years of youthful dedication, during which her wonderful parents were an enormous blessing of support to drama in that school. Margaret and I had the joy of seeing her final gift to them of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. From there she went to do mission work in the Soviet Republic, and recently married, moved to Africa, where she will serve God wonderfully in some capacity, I am sure.

I wish I knew how to put this all together in a foolproof system. I know I was far from the ideal teacher. Sometimes my anger and immaturity amazed me. But I have never been afraid to let a classroom or a student see my anger or my tears, which lets them know I am being honest with them and that I do not pretend to be superhuman or above making mistakes.

O CHILDREN OF MEN!

Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust?
That no one should exalt himself over the other.
Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created.
Since We have created you all from the same substance
it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet,
eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land,
that from your inmostbeing, by your deeds and actions,
the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest…
from The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh

My daughter Lori, in the days before I became ensconced at Greenfield-Central, brought home a paper written for Academic English 10 which had only one correction—“sentence fragment.” There was no sentence fragment. I wrote in the margin “Nominative absolute” and told her to show the paper to her teacher. His comment, after “Oh, it’s not, is it?” was that he had not deducted anything from her grade for that and left the grade a “B+”. I was probably foolish to let her English teacher know that her father was a grammarian. On her next paper there were no errors or helpful comments, only the explanation, “I’m sorry, I just can’t give you an “A” on this.” Am I wrong, or is there an educational weakness in that statement that would discourage a student and not give any hint of ways to improve?

*        *        *

(I’m not sure why this comes next—it’s random thought, and memories that delight me come randomly.)

At Greenfield-Central, Charlie Pasco (now deceased), owner of Pasco’s Funeral Home, approached me after a play. His statement, “I want to thank you on behalf of the Greenfield community for giving us this strong, solid program to be proud of. I don’t think you realize that after a couple of years in which athletic teams failed to rise to prominence, people have begun to notice and feel pride about the successes you have given them.” (Words to that effect.)

“Mr. Pasco, I can’t take the credit for this program. A lot of … “

He interrupted me, “Are you the producer-director of this play or not?”

“Well, yes, I am, but…”

“Then you’re the man I need to say this to.”

Back to the Paddle

During my fifth and final year at Southwestern, the principal asked me to witness a spanking for him. I reluctantly agreed. Now this man was 6’ 5” or more and solid, and I feared for the boy even though he too was husky. The interview began with a talk. He told the boy that he had tried every other method of discipline to no avail. He asked him several questions about things he had said to him in warning and asked if he thought he had any recourse but the paddle. The boy meekly said, “I guess not.”

“Well, grab your ankles then.”

After he had given the boy three quite gentle whacks, the boy stood up with tears in his eyes, put things back in his pockets and returned to class.

The principal turned to me and said, “See? I’m learning, Jack. I’m learning.” Yesss! We both were.

When I reported to work at Greenfield-Central, I learned that paddling was not an option in that school.

*        *        *

The second time I had attempted to use the paddle back at Carthage, an eighth-grade boy who was bigger than I absolutely refused to allow me to spank him after an altercation in study hall.  I became aggressive and shoved him angrily toward the stairs, and to the office. The principal said repeatedly, “Now, let’s keep our voices down. There’s no need to shout.” I reminded the boy of an incident downtown at the Fall Festival parade after I had been up all night with the seniors who were building the award-winning float, Stairway to the Stars. Oh, what floats those Carthage kids built! Suddenly a voice from across Main Street had called mockingly, “Heeey, Jack! (With the accent on the ACK). It was this boy I now confronted in the principal’s inner office, and I reminded him, “I’m not Jack to you, Mick!.”

When it became obvious that I was getting nowhere and getting no support, I said, “The only reason you refuse to allow me to spank you is that you want to go back to your friends and brag that you got away with this. I like you, Mick. I like you a lot, but if I let you do this to me, I will no longer be effective in that study hall, and I can’t let you do that to me.”

From the moment the words “I like you…” left my lips, it was as if he understood that I was angry at his behavior and not because of a dislike for him, and he was ready to take his punishment. I gave him three very light whacks, because that was all that was called for by that time. And I was never to use the board again in that school, and I don’t believe I ever shoved a student again anywhere. My aggression was exacerbated by my having lost my first teaching job at Southport after a year of rude treatment, intrusion, mistrust and departmental distrust. This time I felt I had to be in control.

At Greenfield-Central High School the issue of paddling students had been dismissed by the time I got there in 1979. I should probably mention that at Southwestern, the practice was usually to give the student his choice of punishments—a three day suspension or the paddle. “Three days or three whacks?” was the question.

I came to realize that it was sometimes necessary to explain to a rowdy class that my life was not out of control. I chose to live a happy, controlled existence which they had little power to change however much they allowed themselves to lose control over their own lives.

*        *        *

I guess this incident is more about self-discipline that anything else. On one occasion at Southwestern as we were preparing for the final performance of Oliver, the cast received word that a young man’s father had passed away very suddenly of a heart attack. We began immediately to plan a replacement for him for that night’s performance, expecting to explain to the audience why we had one character with a script. Before we could put someone into his costume, the grieving son entered quietly, explaining that his father had taught him always to finish what he had started. I believe our youth have an enormous potential for strength and self-discipline, and they do remember what we say to them, especially if they can tell it is important to us and that we practice it in our own lives.

Change Factors

“…the tongue is for mentioning what is good; defile it not with unseemly talk.” –Bahá’u’lláh

My mother set me down on the steps when I was three years old and talked to me for a very long half hour or more about swearing and what she practiced in her own life and what she expected and hoped for me to practice in mine. I was the youngest of seven children, and most parents would probably have felt there wasn’t time for such a talk. But I remember almost all of what she said and the high standard it set for me—no room for substitute swear words like the one I had just used, “Gee whiz!” No place for others like cheezow, dernit, and other popular words and phrases I heard people using that might call to mind their counterparts in out-and-out curses. But probably the strongest influence was her example and the clean speech of my father. If anyone in the household used such words, I never heard them. I was myself nineteen years old before I ventured to say the word “damn.” Gee willikers!!

I did not, as a child or even as an adult, realize why people did not swear in my presence. I thought that perhaps for some reason I led a “charmed” life. It was as if everyone accepted the fact that I was kept slightly apart and somehow admired and protected. My parents were not protective—I was often allowed to wander recklessly—but I knew I was safe. I had an unusually large vocabulary and used it. I think I learned most of these words from hymns. I could recite the fourth verse, for example, of nearly every song in the hymnal. When I took a vocabulary test, I saw those words and put them into context before choosing another word that would fit into the sentence in my mind. In elementary school, I scored a grade 12+.

But I realize that, to a large extent, an extreme purity of speech set me apart, even as an adult when I thought I had relaxed the stricture. And big brother Danny set a good example, but l think that he sort of kept the athletes he worked with and competed with in the dark about his life when he was away from them. He let no one see his grade cards, and as he never took a book home, he seemed not to be studious. And although he sang in some capacity nearly every Sunday at church and often through the week, no one of them knew he could sing. When he sang a solo at his graduation, his classmates were astounded. And when he sang again at his wedding, they had forgotten and were amazed again. I, on the other hand, was transparent; even my students could read me like a book. Somehow, my colleagues could not.

“Beautify your tongues, O people, with truthfulness, and adorn your souls with the ornament of honesty.”                                                                                                                      –Bahá’u’lláh

In 1946, my grade-school principal, a Mr. Harris at South Bend Franklin Elementary School, came into my sixth-grade class to talk about honesty. He set a very high standard, and I don’t know if many others adopted it as I did, but I think teachers need to talk about standards to the kids they hope to influence. He said that we should all be so honest that if a pencil were to be left in the groove on our desk, it would still be there when the owner returned the next day. None of us would take it because we would know it was not ours. I have a small drawer in our secretary full of unsharpened new pencils. When I pick one up on the street (to protect it, I guess), I think of Mr. Harris.

One incident was repeated with both of our sons—the matter of stealing something that involved the Danner’s (five and dime) Store. In each case I took them back and had them explain their actions and make restitution to the store manager. As an adult in a position of authority, John was once tricked by a customer into a shortage that exceeded $700. The boss explained to John that he in no way suspected him of any wrong-doing, but he would like him to tell the other employees that he had been required to pay back half the money that was missing. John was nearly as insistent about repaying the money as his boss was that he would not, but John would not lie to the other employees by misrepresenting the matter.

A few days later a lady called and asked to speak with the owner. She told how her sister-in-law was bragging that she had taken the money back when the young man turned his back right after she laid it on the counter. It was a relief for John, although no action was taken, but his boss had once told him, “John, I feel I could trust you with anything and everything I own.”

Trustworthiness is the greatest door to the security and tranquillity of mankind. The stability of every affair always depends on it, and the worlds of honor, glory and affluence are illuminated by its light. –Bahá’u’lláh

*        *        *

Southwestern High School is a consolidation of three very small rural schools in Shelby County, Indiana. When I arrived upon the scene on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving vacation in 1975, the most recent attempt at a class play had been scheduled for the previous weekend, but had fallen through under the teacher I was to replace, making it three years since the last play.

Margaret and I had decided with the birth of our fourth child that we would go into business instead of teaching. I had been spending countless hours at the school in the evenings preparing for plays and proms, and I felt I was experiencing personal growth and development that was satisfying to me at the expense of my wonderful family. Drama Club had begun to produce musicals so that Margaret, at the piano, could participate and get to know the students I worked with. John had learned to lower two seats in the auditorium and sleep curled around an arm post.  Danny slept in his infant seat until he learned to sleep on the concrete floor.

At Wabash College during a summer institute, I had found a path to enter the school of directing at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, a school that had paved the way for my entrance as an actor in 1955 when my parents stepped in with moral objections to this profession. So we bought a five-unit Victorian home to repair which would give us financial support while we were in London. Our new home sold quickly with a provision that allowed us to stay in the home while we worked to make the old house into a home.  Before the month was out, the buyers insisted we must move.

There was another matter that was involved in these decisions. Margaret was unhappy at school and had too much education and experience to find another position on the elementary level. I think it might be well for me to mention what I have observed in many cases of selecting elementary teachers to praise and reward. For a long time what has been stressed above all else is firm discipline. Margaret was youthful, but she was a kindly mother-figure to her students, and they loved her and learned under her guidance. However, she was teamed, or pitted against, another second-grade teacher whose goals and methods were diametrically opposite. That teacher did not have indoor recess if it rained. Her students remained at their seats in silence. Lunch time was not to be a social time for her students. She assigned seats and did not allow them to talk.

Margaret, on the other hand, often had several group activities going on at the same time and knew well the difference between the sounds of learning and noise. But when evaluation time came around, Margaret’s evaluation was critical and the other teacher flaunted her evaluation which held her up as a paragon of virtue. Margaret had a child in her class who was already far behind others his age. Teachers found him appalling and repulsive, but Margaret treated him exactly as the others. When a music program was scheduled at night, he told her he wished he could come, but he had no way to get there. She went after him, brought him and took him home afterwards. Other teachers asked, “What is HE doing here? Well, how did he get here? You what? Whatever did you do that for?”

And one morning he stood wide-eyed beside her desk waiting to talk to her before class. She had her arm around him as he told her, “She tried to kill herself last night. It was really something. There were cops and firemen and an ambulance and everything.” Of course, it was obvious that he referred to his mother. The two of them lived alone, and he had gotten himself to school that day.

Years later, when Margaret was no longer a teacher, the Bahá’ís gave us a hard assignment on behalf of a mentally impaired man in our community. After his father had passed away, two women and a boy had moved into his small garage apartment. They were on welfare and taking advantage of him. We were to tell them they would have to move. When the door opened, there stood a young man of perhaps fifteen. His eyes widened and he grinned as he recognized his second-grade teacher. “Mom!” he called, “Mrs. Rhoades is here. You remember about Mrs. Rhoades. She’s the one.” And there was the thought conveyed in the statement that in all his years of education, she was the only one.

*        *        *

Soon after we moved into the historical home, two things happened that changed our plans about London—a recession and Margaret’s personal illness. We had the grand opening of our interior decorating studio and no one came. We went two months without a single sale. And just about the time, two years later, when we could have begun to see our way to carry out the London plans, we learned that Margaret had multiple sclerosis. I abandoned those plans, and we continued to reside in the Victorian home in historic downtown Greenfield. By then I was enjoying an unusually happy “honeymoon period” with students and audiences at that small school in the next county to the south—Southwestern..

In early October after watching our savings dissipate, I had filed an application with the teachers’ employment agency in Indianapolis where I was told not to despair. “With your credentials you will find a job.” Then I went to Indianapolis Public Schools where l knew there were still many openings and was told they would never hire me—I had too much education and too much experience. They could hire two teachers for what they would have to pay me.

At the regular employment bureau, I was told that there were only jobs at minimum wage. "Well," I sighed, "I can make more than that hanging wallpaper!"

"Can you hang wallpaper?" she asked, now interested, I thought. Maybe that was a job opportunity.

"Yes, it was sometimes my summer occupation."

"Well, You’d better hang wallpaper!"  And I was dismissed.

There is a serious flaw in the state-controlled education system that gives teachers only two ways to overcome the snail-paced increments in salaries—they can go into administration (especially if they find the classroom hard to deal with or coaching too demanding), or they can change school corporations. However, the very fact of having a resume that displays an inability to stay in one location is a deterrent to moving often, and once one has a master’s degree and fifteen years experience, he has difficulty landing a position in a higher-paying corporation. Students, of course, have been indoctrinated with the concept that success is determined by salary, which labels nearly every teacher a failure—someone to look down upon.

A student told me during my first difficult year that he didn’t need an education. He would enter a military career at age seventeen, and retire after twenty years with a higher annual salary than I could ever hope to have by that time. I had signed that contract for $3,900 that year.

It is difficult to explain how emasculated I felt when my body began to rebel at the hours on a ladder and working on ceilings. I was papering in a home damaged by the close swipe of a tornado that had destroyed several homes nearby. My first incredibly tedious assignment was papering a downstairs hallway, staircase, landing and upstairs hallway in a continuous floral vine pattern that went onto ceilings as well as walls. Next I patched the badly cracked plaster on the ceiling of a large upstairs bedroom and recommended using vinyl wall covering as reinforcement.

I was on the second strip when the ax fell. It absolutely must not be overlapped. (I had overlapped mine on twelve-foot ceilings in order to use vinyl, which would be impossible to butt while working over your head from a scaffold.  Mine, done in early ‘70’s, is still looking good.) When the kind lady who had hired me left to ask the advice of her best friend, I actually went so far as attaching the rope to her staircase by which I would hang myself.

I am sure she never realized that my family had to do without some essentials because she did not pay me for the plastering I had already done as the vinyl I had precut could not be returned and another paperhanger would not use the vinyl. When I fled from there, I could never get myself to go back, even to get my ladders.

Soon I developed an ever-present limp and a “dread cloud” that enveloped me and nearly wiped out the personality of the man that I had been. I didn’t know that, like two of my brothers, I had inherited my mother’s “melancholy.” My next job was papering for a neighbor who has enriched my life in many ways. Rosalie Richardson sensed I was in trouble and wrapped me in a warm cocoon. When I arrived to work, there was an opera playing on the stereo. She provided soft drinks and free access to the refrigerator. But mostly she gave me work and privacy. When a call came to ask me to return to the farmhouse, she claimed to be ignorant of my whereabouts. I could return the call if I wished. I did not. I could not.

*        *        *

I desperately needed to find work in my field. Perhaps if I substituted for the Indiana School for the Deaf and learned sign language, they would hire me for the next year. I was in the downstairs bathroom shaving and preparing to drop in at the “Deaf School” without an appointment. I prayed a lot during this time in my life, but I didn’t expect answers or realize that God’s hand can be in the crises too. Suddenly, the phone rang and a voice said, "Hello. May I speak to John Rhoades, please."

"This is John Rhoades."

"Is this the John Rhoades who is looking for a teaching position?" a serious, deep voice asked.

"Yes, sir," I answered without the slightest hesitation.

"Do you think five miles south of Shelbyville is too far to drive every day?"

"No, sir, that wouldn’t be a problem."

"When can you start?"

I’m sure the man on the other end of the line did not comprehend that my pause was because I knew, absolutely knew, that I had not achieved this on my own. With only a slight pause, I said hoarsely, "I could be there for an interview as soon an hour from now."

"How about noon then?"

And that was it. I was once again an employed schoolteacher. And I was as grateful as ever a man could be.

There are probably many factors that dissuade one from committing suicide. I know that one thing that held me back was the memory of a poem I had written for a poetry class at Ball State University under Dr. William Sutton, who was writing a biography of Carl Sandburg while I worked with him on my master’s thesis. I include the poem here:

YOUNG CARPENTER

LAUGHING
As one laughs who knows the joy of making things
And seeing them stand finished,
Proud you left me.

HAMMER
Swinging at your side to tick the seconds
Of the blocks that took you homeward,
Boldly you trod.

SIDEWALK,
Taut as wire, quivered at the careless tread
Of one who knew not
Danger lurked there.

SOMETHING,
Once inside the door, told you all was not well,
And fear gripped your shuddering senses.
Frozen, you listened.

SILENCE
So deep that you could not have heard a cellar moan
Or known it was your father’s throat that made the sound,
Icy, it cut you.

TREMBLING,
You explored the lower depths in haste and found there
Rope from the beam, chair, and him,E
yes glazed, life nearly gone.

SHOULDERING!
And while you held him, grunting, weeping, strong boy of twelve
To rid the noose of awful weight, he died
And left you, a living Atlas.

SOBBING,
You bore the weight that had been his to bear,
Afraid to let him go and run for help until you knew
It was too late and all your pleading, loving words
Fell on deaf ears.

DRAINED,
You climbed the stairs that once were friendly
And knew there was no turning back again into the pit
Where you had left a father and a childhood
And emerged, with eyes of steel, a man.

1967

For certain my having written about the memory of my best friend’s experience when I was twelve caused me to realize the fruitless consequences of his father’s desperate act, and a renewed energy for teaching gave me the best years of my life.

“The more difficulties one sees in the world the more perfect one becomes. The more you plow and dig the ground the more fertile it becomes. The more you cut the branches of a tree the higher and stronger it grows. The more you put the gold in the fire, the purer it becomes. The more you sharpen the steel by grinding the better it cuts. Therefore, the more sorrows one sees the more perfect one becomes. That is why, in all times, the Prophets of God have had tribulations and difficulties to withstand. The more often the captain of a ship is in a tempest and difficult sailing the greater his knowledge becomes. Therefore I am happy that you have had great tribulations and difficulties. For this I am very happy—that you have had many sorrows. Strange it is that I love you and still I am happy that you have had sorrows.” -‘Abdu’l-Baha

During that interview I found it hard to believe that I was being hired so easily. Finally, I brought up the matter that was bugging me so much: “In Indianapolis they told me they would never hire me because I was too expensive.”

He explained thus: “Well, I got your name on Friday, and I saw that you had taught at Eastern Hancock. I have always felt that the best way to get a notion of a teacher’s effectiveness is to go into the community where he has taught and ask casual questions.” He explained that on Saturday night they had played Eastern Hancock in basketball. Then he leaned across his desk and looked deep into my eyes as he said, “Young man, do you know that when the name John Rhoades is mentioned at Eastern, people’s faces light up?” I knew then that I was doubly blessed to have a job to begin the day before Thanksgiving and to work for a man like Robert Wade.

In having a year to teach, believing it would be my last, I had let down many of the barriers which, as a young teacher, I had erected to protect myself and my actors. I felt I had made certain that other students in my classes could in no way discern any partiality toward these actors. If anything, I was harder on them than on others. Sometimes, outstanding freshman students had been accustomed to preferential treatment from teachers who loved their determination and brightness. These scholars found it hard to adjust to the manner of my treatment—I wanted to spare them the jealousy of classmates. A sensitive person can feel the resentment when one person gets too much praise. My praise for the gifted was subtle and personal (as was my criticism or condemnation of the others), whereas praise for the less motivated might have seemed lavish. I recall a situation in which an athletic boy who generally did quite well had a cheat sheet between his legs during a test. After I saw it, I strolled up another aisle and came down from behind, reached over and quietly wrote on his paper, “I can see that.” I waited until I was grading to put the “F” on the paper.

Later, years later, I was to teach for seventeen years with his brother. I never regretted that I had not made a public example of that boy and caused him to suffer humiliation.

I had also determined to avoid deeply personal relationships with students. I’m sure it saved me many hassles. But in 1974, after a summer at a drama workshop program in which we students did all the production work for an established Crawfordsville, Indiana, theater group’s seven plays in seven weeks, I was a changed man. The staff at Wabash College had been at times cruel and very impersonal. It fortifies the opinion that there are often negative change factors.

It was the first summer for this program that was funded by Eli Lilly, and, after seven successful productions from which I learned a great deal, they had a final session in which they asked for feedback. We let them have it, remembering that four participants (we were all teachers who directed high school plays) had exited the first week in disappointment and frustration, and if I was any measure of judgment, most of us were homesick.

On the second day I had been sent above the stage (three stories up a spiral staircase in the stage-right wing, walking precariously on rafters to reach a rope on the other side of the stage. I was to release some needed prop suspended there for storage. As I reached the rope, the professor waiting onstage explained that he had a phone call and left me up there in the staggering heat from the lights below for about twenty minutes. I felt quite faint and really feared falling. On the third day I was sent alone to the experimental theater in which the “house” consisted of bleachers on three sides. This arena was used on alternate weeks for shows such as Butterflies Are Free. Many of the pins used to adjust height were missing from the bleacher legs (I think they could only have been removed on purpose to give me this miserable job.) Again and again I lifted the weight of the bleachers above with my back while I replaced the missing pin. My strained muscles bothered me for a week. Each evening I served as stage manager for the first production, Roar of the Greasepaint, Smell of the Crowd.

Anyway, at the evaluation session they explained their strategy for putting us “in our places.” One of the young profs said they had decided to “make them eat shit.” I, on the other hand, had, after my initiation, been put in a leadership position as the teacher with the most theatrical experience, and I found most of my colleagues eager to work and able to excel. I lavished praise on them.

Before the first mainstage rehearsal for the final show, Carnival, I sensed that the scenery had hit a snag and was at a standstill. At midnight of that rehearsal, I placed myself in the row above the scenery guru, feet at the level of his shoulders. The auditorium had deep stadium seating so that I had a clear view of his clipboard. I could see that the designs were incomplete. That was all I needed. I really wanted to get to the library for children’s books, but there wasn’t time. (No internet yet, alas)  I looked through the West Lafayette Sunday newspaper ads and found a Circus of Values full-page ad. I began to sketch and adapt the circus wagon to “Cirque de Paris” for Carnival. I had made it a point to help the very fine artist who was responsible for producing the great set-ups for the lobby. She worked alone, unheralded, in the basement room below the stage. I knew she would help me if I asked. Then I approached the man-in-charge about where we would start when the cast left the stage. He said something like, “Do you have any ideas?”

I said I thought I had a couple of good ideas for the front circus wagon and the advertising banners. He said, “Be my guest.” That day I worked alone on the front wagon, painting the wheels and laying out the lettering, just getting it started. The next morning I beat the others up and hit the library for lettering styles appropriate to “Siamese Twins,” “the Strong Man,” “Harem Girls,” and “the Sword Swallower.” I showed the choices to Mary, the artist downstairs who said, “Let’s go for it!”  In return, I helped her set up the lobby that week.

I had cut the heavy canvas and penciled in the letters, and in less than ten minutes each, she had figures sketched. I stapled the canvases to the scenery frame that passed through the floor stage left as you moved it up and down.  I mixed the paint and asked for volunteers to paint these while I worked on the wagon. They worked so carefully that even I was surprised at the manner with which they brought the canvases to life. I lavished praise on them, and work began to be fun—often so much fun that we worked until 3a.m. As these things progressed, the second wagon floundered. It was ugly. Then I was approached with, “I think the style of the two wagons really has to match. Could you do the wheels on the other wagon too?”

“Certainly. And what about the figure of Marco, the Magnificent? Wouldn’t it be great to have the face of our Marco there?”

“Go for it!” I got a wallet photo, and Mary went for it—she sketched, I painted. Portraits were easy for her. But she insisted upon doing her sketching when no one else could see that she was the artist because she was stepping beyond her responsibilities. Maintaining secrecy working on the banners had been easy—I had taken them briefly to her basement workroom. This was more difficult; we had to work onstage during a lunch break. But when the face was added to the poorly formed body of Marco, it became recognizable and passable.

The lessons I brought home from this workshop were legion. I had learned that people work best when they know they are really appreciated. I soon discovered that teens would work even more brilliantly when they knew they were loved unconditionally for themselves and with no motive other than to create excellence together as a group. I firmly believe that people do not improve because they are told what they are doing that is wrong (maybe dancers are an exception—they thrive on corrections, if there is praise for improvement). The improvement comes when they are given ownership of their product and are encouraged and praised whenever they embellish the role which has become their own “creation.” And I learned a great deal about scenic construction because the scene builder was a gifted craftsman if not a specialist in set decoration.

So I had been able to teach that last year at Eastern Hancock High School with a fervor of dedication and open affection. And after the initial difficulties, I was also able to approach the drama at Southwestern with a joy that was to “give me wings.” But success did not come overnight.

*        *        *

The Southwestern Senior Class let me know from the start of the project that I was not going to please them. I gave them a list of four plays to choose from. Refusing to consider them, they argued with me. One said, “Why can’t we do the play they were going to do last year?” It was one of those things that are written for high schools, which have never gone through the honing process of a professional performance.

I said, “Don’t ask me to do something that is beneath me.” Ooh, did that ever strike a nerve with many of them. Then someone pointed out that the departed teacher had promised them Cheaper by the Dozen. “That’s a delightful play,” I countered. “Let’s do that.” And we did. They argued about tryout times. I gave in—even came at 6:30am for those who were unable to come other times, yet no one came. In fact, after the first day of tryouts, the popular kids put out the message that no one was to try out. I believe there were eighteen parts and that was exactly the number of people who tried out. By changing Jackie, the youngest boy, to Jackie, the youngest girl, I had enough to cast it without begging or cajoling.

Sometime later while I was working on the set, the Spanish teacher, Marcia Berner, stopped by the small stage at one end of the gym on her way to the parking area. “You’re lucky,” she stated pleasantly.

“I beg your pardon–”

“You’re lucky. When I was directing the senior play three years ago, I asked for permission to paint the scenery, and they said, ‘Certainly not! It has only been three years since that scenery was painted.’”

“I don’t know how much luck was involved.” I grimaced and chuckled, “Honestly, I just didn’t know I was supposed to ask.”

*        *        *

I not only painted that set, but I borrowed pieces I had accumulated at Eastern. I used the most elaborate and colorful stencil design I could come up with. Only two of the cast members were in my classes, none was overly dramatic, and some brought skateboards and Frisbees to the first rehearsal. Since no one had shown up to work on scenery the first session, I made them put up their toys and work on the set. I told them, quoting the Bard,”’The play has to be ‘the thing.’ You will have many chances to throw Frisbees and ride skateboards in the years to come, but for most of you, this will be the last chance to be in a play.” The next evening there were no boys at practice; the girls said they had all quit.

Thus I came to realize that we were not going to have one of my finest productions. What was most important was that we were going to do that play. They felt I was arrogant and told me so. I guess I had been too eager to do things my way. At school the next day, as I saw the boys in the hall, I said, as cheerfully as possible, “See you tonight!”

I had spent three lonely weeks after school and during my prep periods scraping and scrubbing wallpaper off the flats (units of scenery). Jamie, the boy who was assigned to play the father role, was so proud when he told me that his mother had volunteered to wallpaper the set. I may have shrieked at him, but I certainly had hoped never to see wallpaper on a set again. “If I wanted it papered, I’d do it myself. I am a professional paperhanger.” I shouldn’t have turned his offer aside so bluntly. I think I was still offended by their attitude that I had to be taught to do things the way they had always done (or not done) them.

Another boy had said, “You’ll never get the set to stand up.”

“To do what?” I queried, thinking I might have misunderstood.

“It won’t stand up. We tried everything last year. See that pipe up there? We even tried to wire it to that, but it didn’t work.”

“Well,” I explained, “it’s really pretty simple. You just build corners into the scene.”

Then I brought in an antique fireplace and an ornate newel post from a farm house that had been torn down and added a number of showy features, including the eight-color stencil. Once that scenery started to shape up, so did the actors. Robin, a hyperactive skateboard whiz, actually spent one whole evening with a paintbrush in his hand every possible moment when he wasn’t onstage, fascinated with the enlarged wallpaper pattern that was evolving as he worked. I have always maintained that “As the set goes, so goes the show.” Eventually the cast began to experience a feeling of accomplishment, but not before a few senior girls “tore me apart” in my first-period business English class one day.

I had said, “Let’s get your feelings out into the open. My shoulders are broad. I can take it.” But they had more bitterness than I could have imagined, and it went on longer than I should have allowed. Even then I am sure I would have been fine if twins girls, juniors, hadn’t stopped by my desk on the way out of class.

“I hope you noticed that only four people did all of the talking. I’m not going to say any more, but look at my hands. My fingernails have dug into my palms while I attempted to hold myself back.” Then they hurried out. I had, indeed, not noticed and had felt the feelings were universal and perhaps not without a lot of merit. Now, my second-period juniors and my sixth-period speech class were the highlights of my day, and suddenly I was reluctant to face a class. I started English 11 with an apology for my arrogance, and suddenly I had to leave the room. I had no warning that my eyes were going to “tear up,” but they did. I had always felt that if a teacher cried in front of a class, it would be a show of weakness and would imply that the kids had the upper hand. I thought of the lady in my high school study hall. But that moment was the turning point of my days at Southwestern because students rose up to champion my cause without my even knowing it. No one ever challenged my play selection again, and the next play had the best students and the finest athletes in the cast.

I think I explained that incident best much later after a shocking news broadcast that told of an airplane crash in which the entire Evansville College basketball team had lost their lives. I decided I had to write a thank-you note to a former student who had not tried out for the play his senior year but had been in my speech class play. He was a gifted athlete who turned down several college offers to play basketball.

POST-MORTEM TO AN ATHLETE FRIEND

I had long thoughts last night, dark thoughts,
When I heard of the plane that crashed
And took the lives of one whole college team.
It wasn’t fear for you that made me stay
Awake into the night and think
How important your friendship was to me.
No, you didn’t go off to college right away
But disappointed us and took classes
Of specialized study at a school nearby.
When you confided recently
That if you could turn back those years,
You would go to college instead,
I felt confusing guilt for the part I had not played.
I had not pushed for what I felt was right for you.
I chose, rather, to accept you as you had once chosen to accept me…

When you were a senior, I was new here
And not well-liked;
I thought too highly of myself
And made unreasonable demands.
One day my students chose to vent their anger
In class discussion, since I “could take it.”
Suddenly, the next hour,
My voice broke and there were tears;
So people knew I was not happy here.
I guess you heard of it.

Late that afternoon on the stage alone
I was drowning my sorrow in a labor of love–
A complicated, stenciled design for the scenery
Of the play I was directing against the current.
Suddenly I knew that you had been standing,
Watching longer than I knew. Looking up, you said,
“You need a friend!”
“You’re right, I guess.”
“That’s why I’m here (or some such words)–
To be your friend. Those idiots…”

And of all the friends I ever had,
You are, perhaps, the only one I’ve never tried to change.
I think it is either because, in gratitude,
I chose not to see your faults
Or else that you have had none.
Anyway, when you, with your athletic prowess
And physical achievements so much admired,
Chose not to play more ball,
I didn’t prod or question,
But Evansville is where I would have had you go.

Your life was spared;
You were not there
When that promising young team and coaching staff
Were burned alive last night.
I lay the whole night long, almost,
Awake and wondering
How those who’d lost their athlete friends
Could bear that grief
And what they could do to ease their pain.

So I just chose to write these lines to you today
Because I never knew how to say,
“I’m glad you are my friend,”
Even before you chose me,
I loved you in the special way
That teachers love the special few.
And if you ever see the day
When you too “need a friend,”
Just turn around, kid,
And discover someone
Who has been standing here, looking up
…longer than you know.

December 14, 1977, for Jerry Parmer

*        *        *

This play, Cheaper by the Dozen, was the last class play until I left Southwestern. After the last performance, the head maintenance man congratulated me, “I have seen every class play during the eighteen years this school has been in existence, and this was the best one.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Absolutely. Far and away the best.”

“Well,” I countered with a laugh, “that gives me some comfort. Be prepared for them to get better. This was the worst main stage play I ever directed.”

Before I had cast Cheaper by the Dozen I knew that only the few who had come to the first tryout were ever coming. I showed the audition list to several teachers, asking them which ones were leaders. The general consensus was that Jamie had shown leadership potential in eighth grade, but… So I cast Jamie in the most important role—the father. About in the middle of the first act in the first performance, Jamie discovered his character and began to win the audience with a fine performance. Afterwards he told me, “I always thought being in the senior play would be fun, but I never dreamed it would be this much fun.”

I think he had rediscovered the leader in himself. One night at play practice he had just announced, “Cut out the crap. I mean it.” And there was something in his voice and manner that seemed to say, “And if you don’t, I’ll beat the crap out of you.”

When it was time to begin the play in the fall, I went to the head of the English department. She was the senior class sponsor. I had planned to discuss the division of responsibilities. I asked whether I was to turn in the bills to her or to the class treasurer. “There will be no bills!” she snapped, rudely, I thought.

“I don’t understand.”

“How much money did you make on the play last spring?”

“Money was not a consideration. There had not been a play for three years. My instructions were to get one delivered at any cost. But we made a profit of about two hundred dollars.”

“I never directed a play that didn’t make at least three hundred dollars,” she gloated.

“Do you want to direct this play?” I snapped back. And I left her standing there seething at my youthful disrespect. I wanted to form a drama club in order to use the proceeds from the plays on future plays, to build a stock of scenery, props, costumes, etc. The money would be used to develop the talents of kids who cared about drama rather than to subsidize class activities for people who didn’t work on or care about the plays.

I then went to Bob Yoder, our young principal and told him I could not work with Ruby Nay on a senior play.

“Well, Jack, what are you going to do?”

“I’ll tell you what I’d like to do,” the daring promoter inside me said. “I’d like to do away with class plays and start a drama club, using kids from all four classes.”

“Well, do it then. I’ll handle any objections.” And he became a staunch supporter.

By the end of my second year at Southwestern High School, they were doing nearly impossible things on the little stage at the end of the gym. The Southwestern High School Drama Club performed The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, which requires four sets, much of which we had to make flats for. I received a letter of commendation for that play. Those supportive teachers who had rushed backstage with wild enthusiasm after the show told me that no one had ever gotten one before. The quality of the talent and the dedication of these hard-working country kids were inspiring. The speech class that year did the Broadway musical Brigadoon as a class project. They did it well. We were getting large audiences, and the hardest work was over. The attitude which had hit me early on (i.e. “We’re just a little school, and we can’t do those plays. You’re going to have to scale back your thinking.”) was replaced with optimism and an increasingly critical audience that expected perfection.

The Baha’i friend, Bert Harvey, who taught at the Indiana School for the Deaf, was intrigued by the fact that a little school, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, was doing Harvey, and he surprised me by dropping in to a performance.  His contagious laugh rang out throughout the show.  Afterwards, he commented, “Do you have any idea how minimal my expectations were when I walked into that gym with a tarp on the floor and folding chairs?”  He had looked up at the six little lights on a beam where a basketball could reposition them during any gym class and doubted my audacity.  Instead of disappointment, he was treated to one of the biggest thrills that ‘auditorium’ was ever to afford—a stellar cast, every role superbly played by veteran actors from the drama club.

By my fifth year, it was a rare week that went by without someone stopping me in the hallway or dropping by the room or the stage to say, “Do you know what people say about you? They say we are so fortunate to have you here.” (Of course, after twenty years of experience, it would be a rare school corporation that would now take me on.)

After the school board meeting where my tenure was to be discussed, the ag teacher, an old-timer who was a native of that area, stopped by my room to express surprise that I had not been in attendance. He never missed a board meeting. He thought I should know that when my name came up, Mr. Wade had said, “We don’t even have to discuss this one. Mr. Rhoades has far too much talent to remain at this school, but as long as he wants to teach here, we’re gonna hire him.” But facts such as these cannot prevent any begrudging student from convincing others, without having to produce any evidence, that you were fired from that position. And so that was that, except that I was soon to get a phone call that lured me away to a wonderfully inspiring auditorium with catwalks, a lighting console and sound equipment, a thrust stage that was an elevator, a counterweight system, wing space, dressing areas and cushioned theater seats.  Wowee!

But I would surely come to miss the respect and reverence I had nestled into so comfortably in what had come to be for me a hallowed space.

For a farewell, a group of all-star graduates did a summer show, See How They Run, (my farewell gift to that community) in which we used, for the only time ever, I believe,  the stage opening into the band room, supplied with a curtain and all, to achieve an intimacy the gym couldn’t offer.  Later that summer, they closed up that opening permanently.  I am glad we were the somebodies that some folks would remember had used it.  Like the stranger in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Ambitious Guest”, many would never know, and many would forget, that it was ever there.

Vincent Mathews was a challenge both in the English classroom and onstage. He required absolute perfection of himself. When he was Capt. Von Trapp in that school’s production of The Sound of Music, he told me that he had reserved five hours on Sunday to go over his lines. “Vince,” I said, flabbergasted, “You have known all of your lines for three full weeks.”

“I know, Mr. Rhoades, but Marla and I went to Footlight Musicals in Indianapolis on Friday and to Indy Civic Theater’s show on Saturday, and in both shows actors for whom the programs showed many credits backtracked repeatedly on their lines. I am not going to do that.”

And Vincent’s whole person changed as he studied that role. His carriage was military and commanding. Even in class he sat on the edge of his seat with his rigid back never touching the seat, exactly as I had once seen a cadet sit on our living room furniture when he came to visit.

After the show the principal offered this assurance: “Vincent Mathew’s is a professional!”

“No,” I said, “but he’s very good for a high school kid.”

“You’re wrong, Jack. At Ball State University my wife and I attended every professional show that came to Emans Auditorium for four years. The difference between an amateur and a professional is that when a professional is onstage, you know there is no way he is gonna make a mistake.”

“By that definition Vincent is certainly a pro,” I acknowledged.

“You’re dern right.”

*        *        *

When former students reminisce, I hope they will remember how often I said, “Touch him” or “Touch her.” We are rearing a generation of people who only know how to touch in a sexual manner or in violence. My desire for my kids was to have an open avenue to show kindness and express personal affection that is full of respect. It is appalling to ask a group to write or speak about someone they admire and have so many say, “I don’t admire anyone.” Say what?? I also think the sure mark of an amateur onstage is avoiding the touch or cringing to the touch.

To add poignancy to an emotional moment in my first production of Brigadoon at Lapel, I asked Tommy to use his index finger to brush a tear gently from Fiona’s eye (when there wasn’t a tear.) It became a tender moment, indeed in performance there was a tear and he wiped it away with two fingers as he sang “I’ll be yours from this day on.” Margaret leaned over and said, “You told him to do that, didn’t you?”

One night a photographer from the Shelbyville, Indiana, paper came to get a picture for a story. Vincent and Mary Pence were through posing and we went right into their love scene. I always warned actors in advance when it was time to begin the kissing so that when it came time to kiss for the first time, there would be no hesitation, although it would be fine to underplay it. “If you just do it tonight, we will go right on, and there will be no opportunity for harassment.”

But this was not the first time, and I was polishing the technique I wanted them to use. I used my hands to represent the two heads as they came together, parted, turned, came together again and held as the lights faded and she gently laid her head upon his chest and gazed into his eyes. They did it well the first time, but I made a few suggestions and called out, “Let’s try that again. Quiet, please.” And immediately they performed the operation even better than the first time. “Okay,” I said. “I think that’s really good. Now do it once more for the lighting cues, then we’ll go back to the lead-in and finish the scene.” And without hesitation (because they both had a fine-tuned sense of moving an audience and knew how good this had to be to convince), they did that love scene perfectly. The photographer watched all this without moving to leave. As they went back to set the scene, he moved to my side and just said, “You do know this is incredible, don’t you?”

*        *        *

Vincent–I loved that brilliant kid whose life and mind were so important in defining me and what I was myself capable of doing. He was the best I had encountered, and I would be sure to recognize that drive whenever I encountered it thereafter. I was certain he had the capacity to surpass the finest actors of the century. At Depauw University, where he majored in drama his freshman year, he was the only member of the freshman class with a 4.0 at the end of the year, and he was the first student ever to get an “A” in acting from that difficult professor who gave him “B’s” at first because he believed no one was good enough for an “A”.

After his first appearance on the college scene, the director (same guy) took me aside to tell me that Vince was the best-prepared student actor he had ever encountered. They frightened him, I believe, when they asked him why he didn’t go to New York right then. “You will find work,” they said. Vincent was the consummate scholar, and he changed his major, changed colleges and stayed in school. I firmly believe that if a person CAN do anything other than theater, he should. When he told me he had decided to study medicine, I told him that I believed that to be the most praiseworthy of all professions.

Vincent had told me once as we worked on scenery that he had visited Depauw and found everyone studying all weekend. “Every other person I met was a valedictorian. I’m not going there.” He then told me that he had sent a deposit to nearby Franklin College.

I told him I had not felt it was my place to influence his decisions, but I had hoped he would not go there because Rick Culver was there and was partying too much to make good grades. I knew they spent a lot of time together on weekends. Vince assured me he was the designated driver and was not a “bad influence” (ha) on Rick as a certain substitute teacher had said. I asked Vince if he had ever heard of positive peer pressure. “Rick should be getting straight “A’s” over there.”

Imagine my surprise near the end of our second semester when Rick Culver came through the doors at the far end of the gym and hollered, “Hey, Mr. Rhoades, I have something I want you to see.” What he showed me that day was his final grade card with those straight “A’s” I had suggested.

Imagine even more how I must have felt about fifteen years later when I saw that Judge Richard Culver, now living in Greenfield, was passing my door. Then he backed up and blinked his eyes as he looked at my newly set-up little-theater classroom. I could hear him thinking, “Wow, wouldn’t Mr. Rhoades have loved a classroom like this!” Then he discovered me standing at the lectern in front of my class. He came in and shook my hand. Then he put his arm around my shoulder—he was as tall as I was short—and addressed the class: “Kids, I am Judge Culver. Some of you have come before me. (Heads nodded) I wouldn’t normally just walk in and interrupt a class in this way, but this man is the greatest teacher I ever had. I would not be a judge today if it weren’t for him. In fact, I’d probably be in jail. (Another ha!) And just like that, he was gone. I was so taken aback that I just went back and sat at my desk to discretely dab at my eyes.

(As I sit here at my desk/coffee table, I notice a book, Croatoan, by Richard D. Culver.  It was sent to me by my son John, who still lives in Greenfield.  It is inscribed to him, so I imagine he expects me to return it when I have finished reading it.  I should mention that I didn’t teach him to write, I taught him in speech class, and I taught him to act—he did some fine stuff for us—but it was probably Ruby Nay who taught him to write well.)

An assistant basketball coach at Southwestern had played for Indiana University and a bit of pro ball. I once asked him if he had ever coached a kid who was more talented than he was himself. “Never!” was his instantaneous reply. “Never!”

And I felt genuinely sorry for him. I could see in every interested student a potential that went beyond my own talents, and whenever a child’s near perfection became challenging, my spirit soared with gratefulness. I did something with Vince that I was never to do again. It was a very difficult task to add to my busy schedule—and to his. I cast us together in a short British comedy with three characters—he and I and a nosy female boarding house matron who appeared on and off. Box and Cox, a one-act done on Broadway in the thirties, was one I had taken on in college, when I was Cox. Now, heavier, I was Box, and Vince took on the role of Cox. The introduction said the play should last thirty minutes, but even after all lines were memorized (I knew all of his; he knew all of mine.  We got off a few times in rehearsal and ran a couple pages before we realized we had switched roles ), we barely got through it in a fifty-five minute period. It was a matter of honing our timing. On performance night we were clocked at exactly thirty minutes—really rapid-fire stuff. I felt it was the best way I could sharpen his comic timing and stage presence. I believe it endeared me to that school’s growing audience to witness that performance side of me so intimately.

Losing him to college was like severing an umbilical cord. I think I never dared let a student become that important to me again, although many became very vital to my life and happiness. The young lady, ironically named Carol Cox, also turned in a superior performance and took on a nearly-impossibly-challenging role the next year with amazing success. A girl of large proportions, she was convincing and hilarious in the difficult romantic role (over 600 lines) of Cornelia Otis Skinner in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, a play I had appeared in while in high school under Mr. James Lewis Casaday, whose life was full at the time with training the talents of Sidney Pollack. Her comic timing was a thing of beauty as was Debbie Culver’s, who played Emily (also over 600 lines).

*        *        *

This play had been my first success as a director, at Carthage when Bonnie Howard and Barbara Wilson wowed that small-town crowd. For months I had heard over and over about Bayard Baker (just a name to me, but a legend to Carthage). I was told he was the finest teacher that ever taught there, now (in 1959) an elderly gentleman in the community, and he had directed the plays. Martha Trowbridge, wife of Town Marshall Hugh Trowbridge and the custodian of the community center where all plays were done, loved to tell me that I was not doing things right. “When I was in school, we had Bayard Baker, and he put a row of chairs backstage and lined us up. We did not talk unless we were onstage and it was our turn.”

I, on the other hand, had encouraged Margaret to bake pizzas and bring them to us during practice. I had even allowed a few students to leave to go down to Peavey’s Drug Store (actually, his name was Mr. Ledbetter—I believe the nickname came from some television program) a block away. Soon others brought cookies, etc. And play practice was FUN! At the first performance there was a buzz among the kids. “Bayard Baker is here.” “Did you know that Bayard Baker is out there?”

And so I thought I would finally meet the man who had become a legend. But after the show, which was, as Emily in Our Town said, “…like silk off a spool”, he left without speaking to me. I asked Bonnie what he had said to her. He told her that he had never had that much talent to work with. (I took that as a personal compliment, no matter how it was intended.) I felt a little exonerated. At Southport, Mrs. Copsey, the department chair who had visited my classroom every day listened in on the intercom (students would point at the speaker when it clicked on)  and who clearly despised me.  I used her classroom last period, and once I forgot to erase her chalkboard.  (She never erased anything to make room for my use,)  She told me I was NOT a gentleman!  My intense desire was to prove myself with that play after seeing a very mediocre senior play was rendered unconscious when the elderly Mrs. Copsey, not willing to shadow me in the evenings had canceled the junior play, saying, “That young young man could never pull it off.”

Our Hearts not only required handling teenagers, it also required period costumes (the roaring twenties), building some scenery flats, and changing scenes. In thirty-six years of being in charge of a building at night, often with no other adult in the building, I can only remember three incidents that required the attention of an administrator, the worst being when someone who had been pushed bumped into the trophy case with the state champion football trophy in it and broke the glass.  Not the way I wanted to be linked with the school’s highest moment.

*        *        *

In his junior English class I had noticed that Vincent, whose computer-sharp mind raced faster than his pen, sometimes wrote sentences that defied grammatical examination. So I dragged that class through every grammatical construction in the English language and made them diagram them. Is it bad to be so challenged by a student that you “bone up” every night to be worthy of him in the classroom? Soon his writing took on a new discipline. I tested over everything we had studied on the final, and I gave them the option of diagramming a single “sentence” instead of taking the exam. It filled the chalkboard at the front of the room. On Vince’s final there was not one error. No one chose to diagram. In speech class that afternoon, I gave him two pieces of paper taped together and asked him to do me a favor—diagram the sentence on the board. He filled both pages with gerund phrases, nominative absolutes, adjective, adverb, noun clauses and more on frames and lines. Of course, it was done flawlessly. His writing skills became worthy of a man of many perfections aided with this knowledge.

Many students simply refused to allow their minds to dwell on parts of speech and grammatical constructions, and I suspect teachers don’t dwell on them these days.  At Greenfield-Central, I developed a simplified system that didn’t require rewriting the words.  Students still balked, but I will, much later, explain that system, along with some of the classroom “fun” I created to teach, for example, the long list of prepositions.

Vince and Marla were with Margaret and me on their first date when we went to the outdoor Starlight Theater on the Butler University campus in Indianapolis to see Yul Brynner in The King and I. It was almost ten-thirty before that awesome performer finally conceded that the rain was not going to stop. We were all four so wet that we would gladly have stayed to watch the show in the rain. Marla, having just broken up with a boyfriend, had gone reluctantly and only agreed, she said, because we would be there also. We got rain checks to see Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which thereby became their second date. It was not their last, nor was it the last show we saw together or the last time we got wet.

We met them as college students on birthdays and occasional special anniversaries; eventually they married. At the tent show in Hagerstown, Indiana, we saw Carousel performed by a summer troupe from Ball State. We all knew the lines and lyrics from curtain to curtain.  Vincent had been cast as Billy Bigelow and Marla as Julie Jordan, It rained, and the tent leaked. We did, however, get to see the entire show albeit we were all wet and the thunder was so loud they had to stop and wait twice.

Another time I received some complimentary tickets for Indiana Repertory Theater. We went to a fancy restaurant called the Brown Derby in Indy and had to change tables because it started raining and the roof leaked right over our table. We really didn’t “double date” enough to merit this much watering.

Eventually they ended up at Evansville University where Marla was one of the ten students chosen for consideration as the outstanding graduate. Vince, having served as President of the Purple Pride organization, received that honor. Here are some poems I wrote for them and about them during their high school days.

MARLA’S FAREWELL

My child, my child!
From whence will come my day’s delight
When you are gone?
Is there another smile
That can replace the look
I could anticipate
Whene’er we met?
And where you go–
How long before there will be those
Whose steps will lighten,
Whose pain seem less
Because this is a day
When you are near?

MESSAGE FOR A MEMORY BOOK

BOY
Nearly man
Thinking, dreaming, striving,
Brim full of kindness–
YOU

MAN
Not parent
Pushing for perfections,
Guiding, listening, loving you–
ME

FRIENDS
Two persons
Interacting with joy,
Respecting each other’s short-comings–
US

SEPARATION
Inevitable consequence,\\
Constructing meaningful lifetimes,
Retaining shared concerns
APART

AN ANSWERED PRAYER

"O God," I prayed, "make this year better than last!
Send me just one who wants to learn,
One with a capacity to accept love."
And He sent Vincent!
"God," I entreated, "give me one I can call protégé and friend,
And, though he may surpass me with his gifts,
Make him humble and sincere.
And, if it be possible, let him have radiance."
And God gave me Vince.

When I had come to know him–
When I had grown to love him,
When I had felt a union of spirit
And watched him grow from boy to man,
I prayed again.

"O God, I thank You for this year
And for success through efforts blended
Make me more grateful for these days
Than sad that they have ended.
Turn my gaze ahead!
"And if there be, in Thy great plan, such generosity,
Grant me the joy of one next year
Who, though he cannot take his place,
Will ease the pain I feel
Because he’s gone."

from a note to accompany Vincent’s graduation gift,
May, 1977

*        *        *

Before I leave off writing about Vince and Marla, I should touch upon speech class. Marla Lain was a cheerleader, the salutatorian and just a really lovely person.  We were giving a set of demonstration speeches, and I always encouraged preparing food because it relaxed them as a group early in the toughest part of the semester. A very sweet, quiet girl brought an instant Jello pudding recipe and explained that a good dessert need not be complicated. She passed out plastic spoons and sent the bowl up the aisle with instructions that each person only dip in once.

The entire first row passed the bowl without anyone taking a taste. So did the second row.  I was embarrassed for the girl. Vince sat in front of Marla in the middle of the third row, and before it got to them, I knew they would partake of the pudding. When the bowl reached Vince, still untouched, he picked up his spoon, the bowl, and turned around in his seat so that he and Marla sampled at the same time. Instantly people asked if it was good, and both attested to its fine flavor. Then people from the first two rows got up and put their spoons into the pudding, and what looked to me like a miserable experience for the young lady became almost triumphant. How much I appreciated and admired their kind leadership every day.

I’d like to take a day off and just “talk” a bit. My older brothers, having served in World War II under horrible circumstances, and my brother Dick, four years older than I and just back from serving in the army in Korea (he was home a week when the US declared war on North Korea, and he enlisted in the navy to avoid going back there—tank maintenance would be on the front lines, and he was having none of it).  They convinced my parents that they would have to send me to college because “Jackie” was so delicate he would never survive in the real world without an education. Danny, just one grade ahead of me, had paved the way to Indiana Central College, our church school in Indianapolis, with a full-ride scholarship. The college offered my high school, on the strength of Danny’s work, a similar scholarship to anyone they chose to give it to, but the offer required a certain grade-point average. I was the only graduate with intentions of going there, but I had slipped a tenth of a point below that line when I got a “C” in Latin IV, which I never should have signed up for, as I had little interest in it and had not taken Latin III after a weak class under a different teacher in Latin II, but Diane Pollack persuaded me (charmed, even) to take it so that there would be the required 7 minimum students.

For this reason, even with my working two, sometimes three, jobs, my parents had to chip in $300 a semester, which was a big sacrifice for them.

When I met up with the head of the English department at Southport High School, I didn’t realize I had been sent to war without backup. Mrs. Copsey had three prep periods to oversee the department. There were eight freshman English teachers, and only one other man in the whole department. I alone had bottom level freshman classes—it was the fashion to divide according to skill and achievement. But I had lively, often delightful students in those very large classes—45 students in my largest class; 37 in my smallest.

We were told (ordered, even) to follow a schedule of studies set up by the department chair. I got the same daily assignments as the E (top-level) classes. My students were all failing. Then I got called to the principal’s office and told to make plans suitable to their abilities and to use a bell curve—as many A’s as F’s, as many B’s as D’s and a high percentage of C’s. This curve was to be delivered to the office every grading period.  Now every test came from Mrs. Copsey. We were to correct them, but she would put on the grades. Then she would post them on the window outside her classroom, showing that of all the teachers in her department, my students were the worst. Of course, her tests were over materials, including literature, that they hadn’t studied yet.

When report cards came out with final exam grades on them, she could see that my grades were not the grades from the test she had made out. There were even some A’s. So obviously I was a cheat and a liar. She camped out in my room daily, usually 3 classes a day, sitting in the back and muttering, “This’ll never do! This’ll never do!” Then she would stomp out, go to the office and turn on the intercom to listen in. The kids would point to the speaker and freeze up.

I had to pick up and travel, and when I’d get to my next rooom, she’d often be there, so I dared not stay a moment after any class to talk to a student unless the next room was nearby.  One day the junior English teacher, an older lady whose room I used, came to talk to me about my situation. She said she had worked for a few years in a teen penal institution, and that they had an odorless chemical they used to control difficult inmates.

Once you had been exposed to it a bit, you couldn’t fail to recognize its use. She had begun to sense it around her desk when she came in after my class. That class left in the middle of the hour to go to the lunchroom; so at lunchtime, she sat in the room at the back corner where she wouldn’t be noticed to see who was “doing the deed.” It was a cleaning lady from another wing of the school building who just “happened” to be Mrs. Copsey’s next door neighbor. When the teacher said,”Can I help you with something?” The lady jumped, startled, and hurried out.

I know this is sounding fantastic and hardly believable. I, too, was doubtful; but I was experiencing afternoon headaches, and for me headaches were rare. The kind teacher went on to say that she repeated her actions the next day, and the person who came in was our department chairman, who got very rattled and said she was looking for Mr. Rhoades (who obviously was gone to the lunchroom to supervise his class). This had taken place a few days before, and I had noticed that the headaches had stopped.

My pay was stopped in January because my teacher’s license hadn’t come through. One required class was only offered every other year, and my counselor had slipped up, so I took a correspondence course the summer after graduation(not something I would recommend for anyone’s honeymoon).  It was ridiculously demanding, but I completed it—for example, I once wrote five typewritten pages as the answer to One question on one lesson.

That teacher, at Indiana University, was leaving IU for some reason, and just before I took the final, I got a new teacher who gave me my grade on the basis of a true/false final exam. I got a “B” and had completed the course before school began. But the state department of education hadn’t processed my license yet, so for several months. We lived on Margaret’s pay until the license came through.

With the large check that came suddenly, we made a down payment on a small bungalow in a quiet neighborhood. Then I got the word that my contract would not be renewed, and no wonder. Whenever I went to apply for a job, they had heard from Southport that they wouldn’t recommend me for anything. I finally interviewed at the little town of Carthage where more than half the teachers had been “let go.” I asked the township trustee if he might contact the parent of the only gifted student I had taught. He was on the school board and was probably aware of the hassle I had gone through and the rapport I had with my students when she wasn’t around. I got a job! But they insisted that Margaret resign her job and teach first grade there as well and that we must live in the town of Carthage. The next week I got a draft notice, showed my contract and got a deferment. I was about to learn how loving their students endears a couple of teachers to their community. Happy years were ahead of us.

At Carthage, my senior English class prepared the weekly newspaper column—front page center in the local weekly paper. I directed the junior and senior plays, I was the librarian, I sponsored the pep club (Margaret sponsored the cheerleaders—she had been a cheerleader all through high school and her freshman year in college.) I had the honor society. We chaperoned the senior trip to New York and Washington, DC., and I served as senior class sponsor my second year. My speech class learned to debate and debated with themselves for the public three times; they also did a one-act play for assembly, repeated by request for the Alumni banquet with lots of delight. (I marvel at the amount of success that little group has had in the world. Pam Hunt, for example, has a fantastic resumé that includes a lot of Broadway (she wowed New York with her tap dancing in George M); David Ruby was an executive with Thompson Electrics (RCA); Jeannine Terhune has a much honored show choir and directs high school musicals, I lost track of Jimmy Ellis after his career as trumpeter in the military band—just to name four from a graduating class of about 21. There wasn’t a yearbook, so I started one. I took a group of interested students to make up a board and started Teen Canteen, which opened one night a week on the top, ballroom floor of the community center and got Community Chest funds to support the effort. We attended all ballgames, at home or away, and we were the youth leaders at the Methodist Church.

Margaret was pregnant and couldn’t go on the senior trip our second year, so Pam and Jeannine stayed with her that week. A near neighbor, Helen Patton, was to bring Margaret a fresh arrangement of flowers from her delightful garden every day after the birth of our daughter Lori. Helen was changing schools, and I took her place at Charlottesville High School just down the road a piece to avoid having to be the librarian when I had been promised I’d just do that one year.

My teaching career had become firmly established.

Back at Southport I learned that the only remaining male English teacher, a veteran there of ten years, had taken my place as victim/scapegoat. In a very short time, he would have none of it, and it was soon discovered that the elderly matron who had made my life so miserable (had even told me I would never be a teacher until I learned to scowl) was out of touch with reality and was retired midyear. This, I must admit, was learned through reliable hear-say.

When I directed Harvey during my third year at Southwestern, ( 1977)  I was becoming bold enough to retain some of the original language, in part because I thought Vincent should have instruction in the delivery of such lines and experience with a troop that was not overly inhibited. Austin Hamner, Judge Gaffney, was Morman and was excused from saying “those words” in his lines.  The last week we softened all the words but one for performance in the “Bible belt” as I had promised we would. The most offensive word left in was ‘bastard.’ I still feel that the word is necessary in the context of that line. It is bold and shocking, and Vida, who would never use the word, needs to be shocked into abandoning her determined course of action. Elwood is about to receive a severe treatment at the sanitarium to make him forget his invisible rabbit friend, Harvey. She asks the cabby to wait; he says he won’t. Too often he has been the first person to deal with someone who has just had this treatment. He remarks about what a pleasant man Elwood is and how he enjoyed visiting with him on the trip from town but warns that "when he comes out of that room, he will be a perfectly normal human being—and you know what bastards they are."

I couldn’t think of a suitable substitution, so I left it in, but I instructed the actor, Joe, not to emphasize the word. Just the same, the language offended the superintendent, who chose the indirect approach—his manner toward me turned cool. Personally, although I dislike confrontations and always over-react to them, I prefer approaching disagreements directly to stringing them out and holding grudges. I think I was a better teacher over all because I could never hold a grudge, even though, in telling of things now, it may seem to be done grudgingly.

I once had a principal named Charles Orahood who stopped speaking to me on several occasions, once for three months. I had absolutely no idea why on this occasion—usually I was all too aware. I finally ended the impasse when he came to a ballgame in the company of the superintendent of schools, George Glenn, whose wife Nola also taught English in our small department, and who had been my principal until that year. Consolidation had at first placed him at the junior high and Charlie, the principal from the Wilkinson rival school, above him at the high school level. Then Mike Holzhausen, the new superintendent, suddenly took another job, and George was reassigned to become Charlie’s superior. I knew George well. He had a delightful sense of humor, and he lived life with a sparkle in his eye and a joke on the tip of his tongue. I was sure of his friendship. He once told me that I had done the two most difficult things a teacher would ever have to do—leave a school and come back to it, and preach and teach in the same town. His secretary, Carolee Speers once told me that I was the most popular teacher they had ever had at that school (Charlottesville). Mr. Orahood, on the other hand, was a retired military man and was more somber. I remember that he would stand at his window as the buses fell out in formation after school. “I love that.” He would say. And kids in his single algebra class told that he couldn’t resist going to the window to identify every airplane that flew over. As an obsessive/compulsive myself, I respect that affection and the bravery it took to allow a class to have this peek into his private world.

At the ballgame I said, with a bit of over-projection, "Hello, George. I see you’re with my principal. Do you noticed that he doesn’t speak to me? Never does these days! I haven’t the slightest idea why." And the man began to talk to me again. He was never very friendly (Is that any wonder?), but he did acknowledge my presence. I believe I was a threat because I could have had easy access to George’s ear. What he didn’t know was that I didn’t take advantage of that situation, and I did understand my place as a subordinate to him—most of the time.

He had a policy of selecting a student reporter to write a column for the Anderson daily paper, which I had never read. It was a carry-over from Wilkinson High School, which had been nearer to that town. The policy required that all columns be submitted to him before being sent on to be published. I was one of two senior class sponsors. It was not my responsibility to proof it. I never had read it before or after it appeared in print. Mr. Orahood had grown lax about his submission policy when he chose to become dogmatic about the spending of senior class funds, sensing that students were scheming to deplete the fund before selecting a class gift. They felt it was too large an amount to be “expected” to donate.

Instead of calling in the two sponsors and discussing the matter so that we could shape policy, he made a dictatorial pronouncement. I thought it was fortunate that the public outcry came from the “Wilkinson” segment of the consolidation because he could forgive them more readily. The two groups had girls in similar positions of popularity, and they disliked each other enormously. The Charlottesville girl was our neighbor and played the lead in the junior class play the year before the schools had become step-sisters. I had observed an occasion upon which he was leaning across the counter, engaged in a friendly chat with the one he admired when the one I knew and admired walked in. He stood up, distancing himself, glared at her as if she had no right to interrupt, and snapped, “What do you want?”

Unfortunately, I had seen the article for the Anderson Herald being passed around in speech class and had taken it away from someone. I scanned it hastily with no knowledge that its author was assigned to be a reporter or that this paper was to be published. When Charlie had called the girl in to castigate her for airing dirty laundry, a policy I also did not approve of, she looked for a scapegoat and replied that I had read it and approved it. For the first time he confronted me directly.

I listened to him quietly and then informed him that I had no capacity to approve or disapprove, no knowledge that it was to be published, and that I had handed it back to its author with a disapproving shake of the head that must have projected my innocence of the charges to the whole class. Then I said, “I certainly think it is unfortunate that she chose to submit this article. However, I must say that I consider every word of it to be a statement of truth.”

The man stood menacingly and leaned across his desk, “Oh, is that so? Well, I have some opinions about some things too, young man!”

“Good!” I retorted, “I think it’s about time we aired them, finally.”

Immediately, he sank into his chair and snapped, “You’re dismissed!” That was as close to a conversation as I ever had with him, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I learned that he had elected to move into the consolidation in the larger school corporation at the county seat.

*         *         *

After Harvey, I didn’t see Mr. Wade much, but his cool manner really annoyed me, and one day I approached the matter head-on when he came into the teachers’ lounge and I was alone with him. I had guessed correctly. He felt the stage was just another form of classroom, and some words were not allowed in the classroom. “People shouldn’t have to hear anything they wouldn’t want to hear in their own living rooms.” And he had a good point. I tried to state without seeming to argue that I believed those words Shakespeare gave to Hamlet as he addressed the players. The purpose of the theater “was and is to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature."  We were a long way from class plays.

I assured him that all he had to do was give me a directive to that effect, and I would see that all such words were eliminated in the future. He declined to go on record as doing so, but he got a little edgy, and he raised his voice. "I saw Harvey on Broadway (how I wish I had) while I was in the army, and the language offended me then, too. (Even today I find that a little amazing. I was never in the army and never much around anyone who used cursing habitually.) You can use those words if you want to, but I prefer not to." At this point I pulled my shoulders back, looked him straight in the eye and stated in a firm but quiet voice, "Mr. Wade, I don’t use those words."

His voice became calm again, "I know you don’t," and as he turned and left the room, the difference was settled. I continued to use my own judgment without interference, and the word “bastard” just didn’t come up in another play.

Harvey, selected with Vincent in mind, was, of course, a delightful diversion.  One student told me he had never seen Vincent Mathews smile so much.  At DePauw University, Vincent took an acting class from a man who claimed to believe that no one deserved an ‘A’.  Vince had never gotten a ‘B’ and wasn’t satisfied with that explanation.  He called me (perhaps the only time ever) for advice.  My response was that he had to talk to him.  In conference, the man decided that he could redo his sketches if he wanted to improve.  Vince did his Harvey sketches six times before he got the first ‘A’ that man had condescended to give.  He did his next sketches twice, and ended up with the prize he wanted when the course was over.  There was a valedictorian from Greenfield in that class also.  Bob Padgett approached me when I did the very difficult role of Tobias in A Delicate Balance in Greenfield.  My interpretation was that circumstances had pushed me off that balance beam into madness, after a seven minute “aria” that taxed my vocal cords to the limit.  It still surprises me a bit that Bob’s comment to me after the show included nothing but a criticism of my “out of it” demeanor at the end.  He didn’t know I had lived with a mother who, with the burden of seven children, six of them boys, had fallen off the beam a few times and needed shock treatments to bring her back to us sane once again.

*         *         *

Years later in Greenfield, students gave me a list of local businesses with signs that could be used to advertise the play, Hello, Dolly! I thought it was a great idea until I got a call from the owner of the Bible Book Store. It had occurred to her that perhaps she should make sure that the language would not offend any of her patrons. Did anyone say the words “damn” or “hell” in the play?

“Look,” I retaliated, “I really don’t want to put you or anyone else in the position of being responsible for censoring the high school productions, so why don’t you just not put us on your sign.” I not only was allowed to use my judgment about language (Surely by now the reader would concede that this writer is a bit of a prude, and would not be surprised that there are many words I would never have used in a high school production), but I even had the audacity to use a cigarette in a scene where dialogue demanded. It always put the character in a compromising light, and I never felt I was encouraging young people to smoke, as I had the character light it and put it out after holding it briefly as Vince did in Harvey in the scene where everyone is being ingratiating to him for having had him “committed to the asylum in error.” At the student matinee he pretended to light a rolled-up piece of white paper, which he soon “ground” out after they had rushed to get him an ashtray, open a window, etc. Later, actors playing Elwood P. Dowd, Tim Leonard and Dugan Shelby at Greenfield, used the real thing but there were no student matinees. I also felt that the general knowledge that my beliefs were somewhat puritanical and that I neither smoked nor used alcohol gave me a bit of an edge in those matters onstage.

Incidentally, I had always wanted to do Harvey but had held off for the “perfect” cast. With Vince as Elwood and his delightful co-valedictorian, Rita Williams, as Myrtle Mae, the cast grew comparably in stature. They remain etched in my memory for their performances and for the exhilaration they gave those audiences. It contained a major role, Dr. Chumley, for Mike Yonts and a leading role for Glenda Mitchell as well—he was the dedicated performer and beloved, sparkling-witted companion who would step in as president of drama club when Vince was gone.

When the curtain closed on the last performance of Black Comedy, my last show with Southwestern High School, I did not know it would be my last. I am sure I felt that I would be stretching that small stage at the end of the gym until I was sixty-five or so. But the last curtain had closed and the houselights were on when a crisp voice began getting louder backstage, saying, “Open the curtains. I said open those curtains.” I didn’t know who the lady was, but again she ordered my bewildered stage manager. People were just beginning to mill about as she said, “I am the president of the school board, (just recently elected) and I want you to open those curtains immediately.” He opened the curtains. I believe her performance had not been planned very far in advance. She had a handful of artificial flowers which she gave to me, saying, “I believe in giving people flowers while they are living, and this man deserves flowers.” Neither of us recognized it as a farewell gesture. Afterwards, Ron Flater, who played the leading role in that very difficult comedy, in which darkness represents light and light, darkness, asked me (with some glee), “How does it feel to be the director of the best drama club in the state of Indiana.  (Maybe we weren’t actually the best, Ron, but we were sure darn good.)

Since her election to the school board, she had been in the school during rehearsals on two occasions. The first time was to tour the facility. I had made it my practice during that show to use the two cots from the sick room to make a firm bed for Black Comedy, returning them across the hall after each rehearsal. It would save my borrowing and returning a bed somewhere in the community and prevent concern about its being unsupervised during the day. I also knew that help was easy to get before a play but somewhat hard to come by after it was over. Anyway, the new school board tour included the clinic where they discovered that the beds were missing. Mr. Wade found this “humiliating” and said we were not to use them in performance and were never to take them from the clinic again. However, he soon relented upon listening to my reasoning.

Her second visitation, not long after, was during a dress rehearsal, and, as there were no dressing rooms, the boys were using a closet in which I stored costumes and which was near the band room, where the girls made quick changes and where we applied make-up. Both rooms were in a temporary mess. Again, Mr. Wade found the situation appalling and said so. This lady, not yet elected president, and whose name I was never to know, spoke loudly from the gym floor in front of the stage, “I insist we spend some time in here! I like the way this man runs his rehearsals.” And in the end, she gave me flowers—while I was alive yet.

*         *         *

One rehearsal night I sent a student into the main hallway on an errand. We had a new night janitor, an older gentleman who had, unbeknownst to us, been assaulted during his duty on the night shift at another school. The boy frightened him so badly that he put chains on the gym doors. I went to Mr. Wade to say that I resented the implication that there was no trusting my cast, made up of outstanding members of that student body and that if the chains were there the next night, I would dismiss rehearsal and go home. I absolutely would not be chained into the gym.

Mr. Wade said, “There’s something you don’t understand, Mr. Rhoades. I can always get someone to teach English and direct the plays, but where will I find someone who will come in here every night and be willing to scrub the urinals and toilets?” I guess that put me in my place, although I wish to go on record as saying that although they got someone to teach English and direct plays when I left, they were not able to replace me, and the program I had started was lost. I could, upon my leaving, he said, take anything from the stage that I thought I could use at another school. No one would be found who could utilize them.

Now, about that janitor—I talked to him myself after I had a talk with my people. I told them they would have to go out of their way to be friendly. I didn’t care what they were doing when he entered the gym, they were to stop and welcome him. If they were not busy, they were to go over and chat with him, make him feel welcome. And if they went into the hall for any reason, they were to call ahead in a cheerful voice to let him know they were coming near. In a very short time things were back to normal, with this change: when that gentle fellow had a break, he came in to see how the play was going and to talk to these friendly kids. They were able to administer to his loneliness, and he became a very pleasant part of our evenings there. How nice it would have been if I had had the wisdom to suggest this approach before an incident could cause him to become afraid in the place where he and I both spent so many hours.

*         *         *

Planning ahead for behavior that shows consideration brings to mind something that had happened at the United Nations Building on two different senior trips during the Carthage years. The guides there were students, usually of college age, from other countries. When our guide began her speech in one of the rooms, two girls were giggling and whispering, and it must have seemed to her that she was a target for ridicule. She abruptly stopped talking and punished the whole group by announcing, “Since you are not interested in learning about the UN and are more interested in laughing and talking, I will just take your group into the rooms on the tour, let you look, and then move on.” She did this in two areas before she relented and continued her spiel. I was humiliated, the students were embarrassed and contrite.

The next year I instructed the students while they were still on the bus. I explained that they needed to appreciate the fact that these foreign students judged our country by the way its citizens treated them. This guide will ask for questions and be delighted to answer them. I need you to do a few things—smile and nod at her when she (or he) is addressing you as a group, ask questions that show you are thinking about what he/she just said, and engage in friendly talk with the guide about personal things as we go from room to room. Is this the first time she (he) has been away from her homeland? Does she get homesick? Are people in general pretty friendly? Things like that. About halfway through the tour, she questioned them as a group, “Where are you from? Indiana? Are all the people there as friendly as you are?” Then she told them that this was the best group she had ever taken on a tour at the UN. She repeated that at the end of the tour where she addressed a couple of other guides. Now, why had I not thought to prep my students that first year? Kids really love being successful.

One rehearsal night I sent a student into the main hallway on an errand. We had a new night janitor, an older gentleman who had, unbeknownst to us, been assaulted during his duty on the night shift at another school. The boy frightened him so badly that he put chains on the gym doors. I went to Mr. Wade to say that I resented the implication that there was no trusting my cast, made up of outstanding members of that student body and that if the chains were there the next night, I would dismiss rehearsal and go home. I absolutely would not be chained into the gym.

Mr. Wade said, “There’s something you don’t understand, Mr. Rhoades. I can always get someone to teach English and direct the plays, but where will I find someone who will come in here every night and be willing to scrub the urinals and toilets?” I guess that put me in my place, although I wish to go on record as saying that although they got someone to teach English and direct plays when I left, they were not able to replace me, and the program I had started was lost. I could, upon my leaving, he said, take anything from the stage that I thought I could use at another school. No one would be found who could utilize them.  I took the wagons for changing scenery and a lot of props.  There was a truckload, and Mike Yonts helped me load and unload them.

Now, about that janitor—I talked to him myself after I had a talk with my people. I told them they would have to go out of their way to be friendly. I didn’t care what they were doing when he entered the gym, if they were not onstage, they were to stop and welcome him. If they were not busy, they were to go over and chat with him, make him feel welcome. And if they went into the hall for any reason, they were to call ahead in a cheerful voice to let him know they were coming near. In a very short time things were back to normal, with this change: when that gentle fellow had a break, he came in to see how the play was going and to talk to these friendly kids. They were able to administer to his loneliness, and he became a very pleasant part of our evenings there. How nice it would have been if I had had the wisdom to suggest this approach before an incident could cause him to become afraid in the place where he and I both spent so many hours.

*         *         *

Planning ahead for behavior that shows consideration brings to mind something that had happened at the United Nations Building on two different senior trips during the Carthage years. The guides there were students, usually of college age, from other countries. When our guide began her speech in one of the rooms, two girls were giggling and whispering, and it must have seemed to her that she was a target for ridicule. She abruptly stopped talking and punished the whole group by announcing, “Since you are not interested in learning about the UN and are more interested in laughing and talking, I will just take your group into the rooms on the tour, let you look, and then move on.” She did this in two areas before she relented and continued her spiel. I was humiliated, the students were embarrassed and contrite.

The next year I instructed the students, well, they had graduated and it was summer, while they were still on the bus. I explained that they needed to appreciate the fact that these foreign students judged our country by the way its citizens treated them. This guide will ask for questions and be delighted to answer them. I need you to do a few things—smile and nod at her when she (or he) is addressing you as a group, ask questions that show you are thinking about what he/she just said, and engage in friendly talk with the guide about personal things as we go from room to room. Is this the first time she (he) has been away from her homeland? Does she get homesick? Are people in general pretty friendly? Things like that. About halfway through the tour, she questioned them as a group, “Where are you from? Indiana? Are all the people there as friendly as you are?” Then she told them that this was the best group she had ever taken on a tour at the UN. She repeated that at the end of the tour where she addressed a couple of other guides Now, why had I not thought to prep my students that first year? Kids really love being successful.

*         *         *

Once I had received the call asking me to teach at Greenfield-Central, I made contact with some of the former actors/actresses who had approached me with the idea of doing a play in the summer with Southwestern graduates. The play I selected for my farewell to that community, I also offered to Greenfield. We did See How They Run, a fast-paced farce (my most successful plays there had been farces) and set it up in an intimate setting. We performed first in the shelter house of Riley Park in Greenfield and followed up a week later with a performance in the Southwestern band room because they were resealing the gym floor. It worked well. I, myself, took a small role (which I loved), Vince took the lead opposite Karen Gravely, a valedictorian who had played Dolly in The Matchmaker and whom Mr. Wade had said was “professional” in his letter of Commendation. Marla was hysterical in the best comedic role in the show. Rick Culver went to live in a city too far away and had to drop out of the cast; so Ronnie Flater, who had just graduated, and who, conveniently, lived next door to the high school, stepped into that role.

Ronnie has written to me twice. Once when he came across Laura Eagleston, one of my Greenfield actresses, at Brigham Young University in a film class and thought he recognized me in some of her comments. I used to say that you got all your favorite plays back when you moved.

Laura’s grandparents, Bob (Brownie) and Frances, owned the Bradley Hall Furniture store where Margaret held forth for eighteen years. He wrote that Laura had mentioned performing in Harvey and later mentioned Black Comedy. He thought it was too much of a coincidence, as not many high schools do the latter; so he asked her soon after that where she had gone to high school and if her drama teacher might have been named Jack Rhoades.

I had left a box stage at the end of the gym with six cheap spotlights (on a metal support beam) that had to be re-aimed before many rehearsals because basketballs hit them every day. The audience was seated on folding chairs placed on a tarp, and a scaffold had to be erected for the follow spot we were soon able to purchase (no dimmer, sorry). From this I went to an auditorium with cushioned seating for over a thousand, an elevator orchestra pit that doubled as thrust staging, a catwalk full of ellipsoidals and two follow spots with dimmers, three batons of controlled colored lighting onstage, a counterweight system and a store room with many fresnels. All lighting fed into a master dimmer board. I had to give up tenure for the second time and lost the credits of about 130 sick days from the two schools.

There was a great rapport among those fine actors and actresses in See How They Run, and I think the only error that occurred in either performance was when I missed one of Vincent’s legs when he jumped into my arms, which would cause a stupefied look to cross my face. “What happened?” he asked me afterwards. I don’t know, but I guess I was never strong enough for that bit, which was put in at Vince’s suggestion and was really good when it worked. Drat it!

After the audience had filed out of the band room and we were about to put the set to bed, Principal Yoder commented, “I think you could take that show on the road!” That would have been fun, but this was goodbye to a lot of things.

At about midnight college student Victor Smith called me aside. He had been helping tear down the set. “Mr. Rhoades,” he said, “I have to be going now, but when I saw in the paper that this was your farewell, I knew that even though I couldn’t make it to the performance, I had to take this opportunity to tell you how much the plays meant to me. They were the things I enjoyed most about my senior year in high school. And you know how important basketball and track were to me, so you know this is not something I would say lightly.”

Vic was a really modest, quiet kid in high school. He was a starter in basketball and the best miler in the county. He had been Ambrose Kemper in The Matchmaker and Mr. Lundy in Brigadoon.

*         *         *

In speech class I have always encouraged students to talk about things that are important to them, that show their personalities and reveal character. Once Brent Haines (a lawyer in Chicago, last I heard) talked about a paper clip in the most interesting manner after I had said speeches needed to be personalized to be interesting. He proved at least that he could talk about anything and I would remember it. But Vic brought a third-place ribbon from the county cross county competition where his asthma had kicked in and he had fallen just yards short of winning. The distant-second runner felt awkward about passing him, but he was again stumbling to his feet as the next runner went to the finish line. His dad was yelling, “Get up. Get up.” And his mom was yelling, “Stay down.” He told this with modesty, but it said more to me about a champion than if he had told about one of the many races he had won so handily.

Early in the semester of my second year at Southwestern after Jerry Parmer had graduated, he returned during speech class to visit. That room was filled with the greatest kids and all the best athletes in the school—virtually the entire basketball team, all of whom would be in the musical second semester. Besides Vic and Vince, there was Ronnie Hamilton, Gary McClintock, and Rick Culver, just to name a few. As he waved at his buddies inside, he asked, “See those guys? You know why they’re all in there? Because I told them they were nuts if they didn’t take this class. That class did Brigadoon, and Gary, a minister’s son, sang and even kissed the leading lady.  Gary was quiet and the role was a stretch for him.  We had a reel-to-reel videotape machine which I rolled into the boys’ dressing room one afternoon and made the coach watch Gary for about five minutes.  He really hated that his players were in the plays at all.  Later I wrote a poem about Jerry’s visit that day. I doubt if Jerry ever saw it.

AT MY OPEN DOOR
                       1976

What is your smile to me
Upon discovering at an unexpected hour
That you are standing
At my open classroom door?
It is a reminder of the past–
The day you first appeared
As if you owned the world
And were impatient of delays of any kind,
Demanding simply, "Come here!"
I had to laugh out loud–
I think because no other kid on earth
Would stand there and address me in that way–
But mostly as it put me there with you
As equals in a lofty place,
And every student in that room was much in awe of you.
I wonder if our lives have greater joys
Than being held dear by one we see to be
Standing tall above the heads
Of all the rest.
This was not the same respect
Which I had learned to strive for.
With you there was no looking up,
And, though another might not analyze it thus,
It is a moment that will give me warmth for years.
There you are again today,
Pausing by the open classroom door
To nod and grin to let me know
That there is standing just outside
A happy giant of a man.
We visit briefly there, and you pass on,
Leaving a man who will never be your equal
Strangely warmed because he is…
Somehow… your friend.

*         *         *

On a later date near Karen Siebert’s graduation from Butler University, Jerry stopped by during my last-period prep. I think I was the first person he showed the very large solitaire he had purchased for their engagement and was testing me for a reaction before showing his parents and friends. I was certain he had done the right thing, had bought the perfect ring for that wonderful person he was to share his life with.

In 1995 during my last year at Greenfield, Jerry Parmer stopped by the high school when he was in town on some business. The principal’s secretary told him he would not be able to see me until my prep period, which was about forty minute later. He elected to wait. Margaret was at this time the treasurer of Greenfield-Central, and her office was just one door down a little hall. When she came out of her office for something, she saw him there and took him into her office to visit with her while he waited. They were doing remodeling in the auditorium, so I gave Jerry a tour as we caught up with major events in our lives. When he left, Nancy Reason in the office asked, “Jack, who was that man?”

I said, “Well, he’s kind of like you, Nancy—a former student from another high school. Why?”

“It’s just that he has so much more “class” than most people who come in here.” How interesting. Jerry was wearing a uniform appropriate to his work as a landscape artist. He had met with a customer in town and had elected to stop by because he had heard I was retiring.  Many people who drop in there wear business suits and put on airs. I never got a chance to tell Jerry that, but he would have passed it off with a shrug and a grin.

*         *         *

I believe that Vincent Mathews and a Greenfield principal named Bob Albano are two of the most perceptive people I have known. And both of them made comments to me that seemed meaningful enough to share. I don’t brag about it to many people, but I made it a practice to pray for my students. I would say, “This is for So and So, and I would name the students in period one row by row. Then I would recall the students in period two. In this manner I learned their names and developed an affection for each of them. At Southwestern I had a forty-five-minute drive to school, and this gave me all the time I needed. I would put the seating charts on the seat beside me to check when I got stuck on a name. The prayer I said most often, unless I knew a student had a specific need, was a short one by the Báb called “Remover of Difficulties,” which goes like this: “Is there any remover of difficulties save God? Say, praised be God. He is God. All are his servants and all abide by His bidding.”

One day as Vincent stood in my doorway, he asked, “Did you know that there is a different atmosphere in this room than in any other place in this school? I mean, even the air is different in here. I can’t help wondering what it would be like to go to a school where every room was like this.” I think that was his finest compliment to me, other than to accept me as his friend.

Many years later, Bob Albano was going through his post-evaluation with me at Greenfield-Central. Dr. Susan Mullindore, the assistant principal had evaluated me three years before, and I felt that some of his comments indicated that he had looked through her evaluation. She had told me that if she could have her way, every G-C student would take the passage through my classroom before he/she was graduated. “Do you realize what a blessing it is to your students to know every day when they step into your room that you will be in a good mood?”

But Bob said something that bowled me over. He said, “Jack, you carry your classroom on your back. (Whatever that means) There is an atmosphere in your classroom that I can sense. I feel it in the auditorium, too.” Hmmmm.

Bob left to become the principal at nearby Warren Central High School in Indianapolis, he came to an honor society dinner at which each senior identified, spoke about, and presented a plaque to the “teacher who most influenced my life.” Jamie Broom, our valedictorian who was headed for Harvard, had blessed me with the honor, and I got the opportunity to reciprocate with a short speech, as did the other recipients. In my mind I could still see him onstage that June before he entered fourth grade (the only year we accepted children that young) sitting in a line of small children singing “I Won’t Grow Up” in our production of Peter Pan and the picture his mother, Susie, had given me in which I was signing his program while he looked up at me with huge shining black eyes. He was the tin man in Wizard of Ox, Friedrich in Sound of Music, Horace Vandergelder in Dolly! and John Boy in A Walton’s Christmas, and he performed many other roles. Like Dugan Shelby before him, he looked so great in any costume we put on him; it was tough making Jamie look impoverished as Oliver.

I told of the day, slightly more than nine years before, when Linda Quick, director of the Joint Services special education division and mother of Brian whose wonderful voice and precise timing had enhanced the roles of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady and Tevvye in Fiddler on the Roof, had stopped me in the hall (and I pointed to the spot outside the cafeteria windows where we had talked) and enthused, “Jack, there is money out there that I know we can get. Dream the biggest dream you can dream, and we’ll go after it.”

“Linda,” I resisted, “the weight of any dreams I dream will fall right here (and I touched my right shoulder), and I have all the weight I think I can stand right now.”  I turned abruptly and walked away.

I got about fifteen paces down the hall toward my room, turned and called her name. I retraced my steps and took back the words I had spoken in haste. “There is one thing I would be interested in. If we could do something for the children.” And out of that conversation had come the well-funded cultural June-long event which came to be known as Hancock County Children’s Theater.

When I talked to Bob Albano after the program (and I felt the eyes of our new principal upon us), his eyes shone with affection, and (believe it or not) in about three minutes he shook my hand five times. I asked him about the drama people at the really grand facility at Warren Central.  He said that it took three people to do what I had done by myself.  I asked about the highly respected department chair I had observed at speech meets my first year.  He replied, “He is a good man, talented and dedicated, but he’s no Jack Rhoades.”  Small wonder if I intimidated the new guy a little bit. By then I was the “Old Man on the Block.”

I read an article in the paper recently explaining that teacher rewards should not be tied to student achievement, and I would like to comment on that. I have for years listened to Eli Lily employees planning to spend their large bonus checks. In Kentucky, I listened to a husband and wife, both of whom worked for Toyota. Each got a $5,000 bonus per year. Tell me what a teacher might have to do to get a $100 bonus. There is no such thing. Might not some rewards be discretionary for the recognition of a project that involved many students and was very successful. My friends who work at a factory can get their children “on” when they reach an age. What might my children just inherit from my employer? Not even a job as a janitor is available to them. Those jobs go to the children of other custodial help.

Gail Noland, the G-C chorus teacher, who was one of my partners in music-drama productions, received a $1,000 community award as distinguished teacher and a TV good teacher award. I believe she spent it all setting up a program utilizing the music department at Butler University in Indianapolis to benefit her students, even though it made more ongoing work for her.

My friends who receive hourly wages get time and a half for overtime, sometimes double pay. For overtime labor done after the school day ended, my lifetime wage averages about ten cents an hour. Maybe less. And I gave up vacation after vacation to get the scenery work done ahead of time.  When I created a yearbook at Carthage, the trustee promised I’d be paid for that job the next year.  Sure enough, my contract included $25 for yearbook.  The reward I got was paid out in love.

*         *         *

Know thou of a certainty that Love is the secret of God’s holy Dispensation, the manifestation of the All-Merciful, the fountain of spiritual outpourings. Love is heaven’s kindly light, the Holy Spirit’s eternal breath that vivifieth the human soul. Love is the cause of God’s revelation unto man, the vital bond inherent in accordance with the divine creation, in the realities of things. Love is the one means that ensureth true felicity both in this world and the next, Love is the light that guideth in darkness, the living link that uniteth God with man, that assureth the progress of every illumined soul. Love is the most great law that ruleth this mighty and heavenly cycle, the unique power that bindeth together the divers elements of this material world, the supreme magnetic force that directeth the movements of the spheres in the celestial realms. Love revealeth with unfailing and limitless power the mysteries latent in the universe. Love is the spirit of life unto the adorned body of mankind, the establisher of true civilization in this mortal world, and the shedder of imperishable glory upon every high-aiming race and nation.                                                            –from Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

*         *         *

I always had my students join hands in a circle before each performance (the make-up kids and parents who were there, too) and I gave a few brief introductory remarks. I thanked them. I told them (without noting that these were concepts from the Bahá’í writings) that unity was the strongest force in the universe and that love was the force that holds the atoms together. “We don’t really know much about love in our world except that nearly everyone on the planet is semi-starved of this vital food and every soul leaps with joy when it confronts him. “If we do this performance in a way that displays our unity and affection for each other and the degree to which we love what we are doing, if we reach out with love to those out there who came just for us, they won’t know what it is, but they will feel that they have encountered a powerful force. That alone will make this play a memorable event in their lives.”

Then they got a chance to talk—officers and leads, if they wanted to; then anyone who had a thought to share did so. I could fill pages with what I feel are wonderful stories that have become obvious during the circle. And on the few occasions when I felt I couldn’t interrupt, and we had to hold the curtain briefly, we had built an audience that would know that whatever was going on “back there” was significant, important enough to warrant a slight delay, and that the play, once it began would be abundantly worth waiting for.

Once when I was serving on a North Central evaluating team,
I showed the portion of the video of Hello, Dolly! that presented
the title song. The audience had interrupted the song sixteen
times and stood at the point where the waiters were just about
to back up the ramp and do an encore. “Well, what I want to know
is where did you get that audience. We did Li’l Abner last season
and the audience didn’t applaud for a single song.”

“I guess that’s where we’re different, because I would never have
allowed my audience to get by with that. After the second number
with no applause, I would have been out there in a spotlight,
explaining to the audience that applause is immediate feedback
that tells student actors whether they have been successful or not.
A sparse applause tells them the song was not too good. No applause
tells them nothing and leaves them inert. These are your kids as
much as they are mine. I have trained them for six weeks or so as
well as I know how. Now it’s your turn.”

I had recently seen Carol Channing in Dolly and realized that the
audience was waiting for her to appear.  She rode in on a horse car,
as did our Andrea Clark, and I just wished that when Andrea lowered
the newspaper to show her face, she too would hear applause.  So a half
hour before curtain, I went out to talk to the audience.  “You who are
here this early are the backbone of this organization,” I said.  And I asked
them to watch for that wonderful senior girl who was in her last show and
surprise her with applause.  And they did, as well as other actors/
actresses who were giving their last performance that closing night.
And for the waiters gallop, they stood and cheered.  What a hoot!

After one really fine show during my early days at Greenfield when there had not been a single missed line, a single pause, a single prop missing, nor a light or sound cue flubbed, the audience didn’t stand. Now, I never hoped they would do this habitually for just any mediocre performance, but when they witnessed excellence, I felt that they should reward it. I felt that they would have jumped up for their children but refrained because I had failed to win their hearts. How much this audience had loved Doc Barrett, who preceded me. I had put up the most beautiful, professional set possible with its sliding doors, circular stairway and beautiful bay window.  They had entered to the smell of frying bacon.  We served three meals in that show  and a kitchen area with cookware and dish washing supplies.  What a crew!  Larry Andrick, Lori Corbin and David Arland were in that show, and they had worked so hard. “Folks,” I said, “these kids went far beyond my expectations tonight. This very difficult show was flawless. Do you realize how much it lifts their spirits when the audience acknowledges that excellence—that it makes them work even harder the next time? Awards and trophies cost money and go to a few leaders. Standing costs you nothing and leaves no one out. Now, let’s go back and do the bows again so we can get it right.”

Do you think they thought I was arrogant and egocentric? Maybe some did, but I believe most people in the audience felt a thrill as the lights dimmed and area spots began to pick up a few cast members in frozen poses, fading and rising on another spot as if photos were being taken by an old fashioned camera. It is in the script of Life with Father to do the curtain call just this way. Sometimes an audience resists standing because everyone is just waiting to see what others will do. This was the only show of mine that my brother Dan was to see.  He was home from California for my father’s funeral, and brother Chuck had said, “Jack has a show this weekend, and we are going to see it!”  Dan told me afterward that he taught at a college where the ad building of two universities faced each other two blocks apart, and that he felt neither of those schools could have equaled that performance.  High praise from him meant more that a standing ovation.

My very first standing ovation was in the gym at Eastern Hancock when Jerry Davis and Darlene Speers performed in Oliver.  A handsome wrestler named Steve Harding died so beautifully as police shot him on the top row of bleachers and he propelled himself down to the gym floor.  A boy named Stan Willen played Mr. Bumble and his huge tenor voice and rotund height added wonderfully to the role.  Stan died in the worst crash in the nation on July 4th the next summer.  A car came across the median on the divided highway and the head-on collision killed everyone in both vehicles.  As senior sponsor I was to take the whole class to the funeral home, and as I had worked in the funeral home at Carthage with my dear friend Frank Hampton, I was appalled to see open caskets, Stan with black stitches descending from his red hairline and his face swollen badly.  I insisted that the caskets be closed.  As the whole family had gone together to their rewards, and as his father was also the minister who had objected to his son’s participation in theater, there was no one to take charge of that room with four caskets—mother, father, sister, and Stan.  A grandparent (maybe two) had died there as well, but they weren’t at this funeral home.

When a few relatives arrived, they wouldn’t let them see into the caskets, and they came to me.  One of the women was very pregnant.  I told the undertaker that, of course they should have a private viewing where no one could observe their grieving and the caskets could be opened one at a time.  When I had seen them, there was loud weeping and wailing as is considered normal in their religious persuasion, but it had torn me apart.  But I digress….

The show, Oliver, was good enough for that huge audience (the cars had spilled past the parking lot into every nearby street for several blocks in the little town of Charlottesville) to have stood to show their pleasure at such hard work from so many.  But they didn’t stand.  I was sitting near the front in the audience, as was always my practice, and I clearly heard a woman say, after the moment of possibility had, I thought, passed, “This is ridiculous!  At our school we would stand up.”  And when she stood,  that large body of parents and friends leaped instantly to their feet, as if they had been just waiting for a signal.  What a thrill that moment was.  It was a first for me, I think.

Every audience is a different crowd, and all our crowds at Greenfield began to show the kids the kind of respect they deserved after a job well-done. And I’d say we got what the kids called “standing ovations” about half the time. But never did I see a crowd so excited that they would stand in the middle of a show—except this once for that high-stepping chorus line of twenty-four athletic males portraying the waiters in Hello, Dolly! on that red-carpeted runway with its flashing running lights. I was certain that there were few schools (in Indiana, anyway) that could get that many men who would get up there in the first place, let alone work so many extra hours before school and late at night to get Gail’s superb choreography precisely right.

I had, early on, subscribed to the “noble failure” theory in selecting plays that perhaps seemed impossible to do in the present circumstance, so it is consistent with my practices at small schools to allow waitresses in that line if boys are not available. I remember being surprised when one first-string basketball player had told me at auditions, “Mr. Rhoades, I don’t want a part. What I really want to do is be one of those waiters!” And Aaron Smith led in that kick line that brought the audience to its feet. Jon Gabrielsen, our Cornelius, played college basketball at Taylor University. He was six-three at tryouts and growing so fast we had to redo costumes twice. Barnaby was a six-three tennis stand-out, Rich Wood, who went to Notre Dame.

I apologize to readers who don’t know us for using names, but the pleasure that comes from remembering these folks, just makes it necessary.  I apologize to the great co-workers whose names I forget to mention because I feel it becomes cumbersome to fill pages with names people don’t know.  Perhaps if a show recalls to a reader someone they felt should be named, they could comment to me.

I don’t think the athletes came because of me—I know they loved and admired Gail Powell, our superb young chorus teacher, but I also know they would not have come had they not known there would be excellence and a large audience that would appreciate that excellence—a great combination.  There have always been in my life supporting colleagues who blessed and inspired me.  None more so than Gail.  One year we had the same prep period and we always saw each other briefly in the office, and I looked forward to it.  One day she didn’t speak, and I was certain something I had done had offended her.  I was in my classroom mulling this over when she bubbled in.  “I missed seeing you in the office today,” she offered.  I said that I had been there and admitted that I thought she was mad at me.  She came to the stage end of the room where I was, and as she hugged me, she was saying, “Mr. Rhoades, how could I ever be angry with you?”  She was for all of us a brilliant star.

Andrew Kelley from children’s theater (Linda Quick found him and worked with him as Captain Hook, his first role in the first Children’s Theater production) was in that line of men. He was a freshman with so much drive that it was not in his mind to stand out by overacting, he just did everything “full out,” as dancers say. Seniors came to me to say, “Mr. Rhoades, (this in a whiney voice) would you please say something to Andrew? He doesn’t listen to us.”

“Kids,” I would say, “when you get this learned perfectly and get a feeling for the farce, you will all look just like Andrew Kelley—and they did!” What a powerhouse onstage that young man turned out to be. But he comes later.

Drama club at Greenfield-Central came to have a support group, a parent organization called WABAC, standing for “We act better around crowds.” Initiated by Carolyn Cash, WABAC was reinforced by dedicated activist parents such as Sarah Davis, Susie Broome and Barb Padgett (super seamstress), all moms whose kids graduated from Hancock County Children’s Theater, where, for three years I had taken on costuming as they took on pageantry.  My large room had become the costume room.  Ladies brought in sewing machines, ironing boards; I added glue guns and tools, costume racks and turned student desks into work tables.  We went up into the costume lofts and, looking at many costumes as simply material, pulled anything that might fit into that show’s style.  One by one, we brought the ninety-plus children to the room, found suitable attire and made it fit.  A few kids, like Robby Soloway from the Mt. Vernon area, had grandmothers or moms that made their memorable costumes (cowardly lion, etc.)from scratch.  But drama club had no such parent input then.  Add such wonderful people as Jim Padgett, the finest carpenter around, Carolyn Haas, Dean and Jo Felker and a host of others and strength begins to develop perfections. These parents came because they loved their kids and stayed because the kids welcomed them so warmly that they had great fun.

*         *         *

I have to relate here one incident from that version of Dolly that exemplifies the workings of the team. Things were at a standstill onstage because we reached a period when the athletic department and National Honor Society needed the facility; so we moved to the gym floor to work on choreography, which was in the capable hands of Gail Noland Powell. One of her gifts was perfect pitch. One of mine was the ability to see the total picture in the beginning. One night she had put a kick line in the one spot it could not happen—the moment when the waiters needed to start down the runway ramp. When I took those steps out, Gail cried and the students argued with me.  I had taken the score before rehearsals started and showed Gail this spot and the kick it would take to bring the waiters down the runway.  But she loved the kick line in that spot, as did the kids.

They had no idea where the runway would be or that it would be sloping and specialty- lighted, so I seemed to them to be tyrannical. Although I took Gail to the stage and walked through the runway, she couldn’t imagine it and went home in tears, but she found another place for that bit, and when the runway was in place, viewed the results with pride. She sat on the piano bench with Margaret, sharing the songs as they turned pages for each other. Margaret was our live rehearsal pianist. Neither Gail nor I could abide working with tapes, but when Gail was pregnant with twin boys and left us to be a mother (lucky beautiful boys). David Alewine choreographed his sophomore and junior years with an incredible schedule that required him to work at times with tapes, and we came to love that as a way to get runthroughs onstage sooner.

So when the leads came to me to work on punching up “Dancing” at one end of the gym, Gail worked with the chorus at the other. The choreography for “Dancing” was lovely, and I knew it would be excitingly funny when the farcical moves were put in. I had reached the point at which Barnaby begins to learn to dance when I saw Gail had stopped working and was watching with tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, kids, but I just can’t do this to Gail. I sent her home in tears last night, and I’m not going to do that to her tonight. She works far too hard for me to treat her that way.” Jon and Andrea Clark Dolly) had begun to capture the fun of the farce, and although they were both as close to Gail as I, Andrea said with vehemence, “Mr. Rhoades, we need this. JUST DO IT!!” And so we did. Once things were in place, Gail could enjoy as I did the way her beautiful movements flowed in and out of the humor.  It was a rare piece of perfection, and I treasure the memory of it.

*         *         *

David Alewine was the president of drama club my last year. My daughter Tammy was the only other student elected president during the sophomore year to serve the junior year. When I announced I was to retire, David set about beginning his career. He was again to be drum major and co-president of drama club with Dustin Davis, but he elected to take his senior year at Idlewild School of the Performing Arts in California, which offered him a scholarship. He earned two awards that year—best dancer and “Spirit of Idlewild.” At his audition there, he showed that he was not adequately trained as most of their dancers had been.  With his Childlren’s Theater money, he had taken a class at Butler University, but band camp had interrupted, and he attended only two classes.  He showed them the moves from the class he took.  One of the dance teachers said, “Now, could you reverse that?”  And he did everything exactly backwards.  “David,” she responded, “No one can do that!”  And they recognized a rare gift.  He is dancing professionally—I hope he is doing some choreography! What a natural! What a leader!  His skills learned on the field with the band blended with his choreography. 

I once was told by a quiet little girl in a freshman English class that she was enjoying being in the chorus, but that David didn’t know her.  So at rehearsal that night I took her where he was working with a small group, and I said, “David, this is _______.  Do you know her?”  He glanced up and replied, “Oh, yes, Number 37 (or whatever it was).”  And she nodded agreement.  He had their placement by numbers on sheets of paper he worked tirelessly with.  I often paired David with Ryan Anthony, also a children’s theater sensation.  I told Ryan’s parents after his first play, “If that kid was mine, I’d take him to Hollywood.”  But I got to enjoy his grace and talent for several years. David also did a fine job onstage, singing and acting. His little brother, Jeff, who was a stand-out in Children’s Theater, began high school the year I left as did Catherine Davis, who later was to major in theater at Yale.

We had wonderful cast parties.  At my first cast party at Greenfield-Central, there were former students who monopolized the event.  They were advocates of a former teacher.  I had started the year $200 thanks to them and had spent six weeks tearing apart cardboard scenery to rescue a bit of lumber.  There was not one piece of usable scenery, and it had taken many, many extra hours to build a huge set that was the pride of my life at the time.  Tim Leonard, the drama club president had ridiculed it as we built it, often during rehearsals, although I built it to be his showcase—he had the lead.  I didn’t often state my belief that I could tell in a stellar performance that, more than anything else, it was performed with pleasing me in mind.  Tim stood out in that it was obvious his intention was to outdo me.  I was proud of the show, but felt anyone could tell that I hadn’t had much input into his character.  His fan club was at that party, and one girl, who had worked on costumes at DePauw criticized costumes, especially one of Martha Schwer’s dresses.  (Actually, her costume was missing suddenly—no doubt taken as a prank—and she was wearing the light weight black coat she was to have carried over her arm.  No mention of the set the art teacher had called “a Broadway set.”

Our cast parties became events at which parents were welcome, but they didn’t involve alumni.  The highlight of the evening was when one of the actors would take the chair position and call upon people to recollect special moments from the show or the rehearsal period.  We adults stood in the doorways and grinned from ear to ear until the moment I blinked the lights and announced, “Folks, this party is over.”  And they dispersed.  Perhaps to spend the night with a friend or group of friends, but not under my jurisdiction.  Any negativity, if there was some, diidn’t get back to me.

When I left the Greenfield-Central schools, they hired first-year teachers to replace me, both in the speech department and with the drama. Neither of these great kids ever got a rewarding role in my absence, although Jeff made state finals in diving several years and was drum major in the band. Catherine put her energy into sports and publications.  Sometimes, as in the case of Rodney Coe, I heard criticism about one actor getting many fine roles. My counter was that they didn’t make the most gifted ball player sit on the bench because they wanted to give others a chance to shine. You put leaders in leadership roles, and everyone benefits. After my retirement, the parents’ organization was abandoned and the program I believed anyone could run collapsed.

While I was technical director with the Lexington (KY) Ballet, they performed The Wall based upon Pink Floyd.  I needed bizarre costumes (only a few) and I knew where I could get them, so I returned to Greenfield and talked to my latest replacement (the third in three years), then went into the maze of costumes that only I knew how to find things in and borrowed about ten really obsolete pieces.  The moms of WABAC had gone through the costumes and filled several bags of throw-aways that I was instructed not to look into.  When I went through the bags, I found they were about to discard everything I would need for the peasantry in my next show, My Fair Lady, so I taught them how to distress clothing.  What I borrowed, they would have thrown away.

A few minutes later the English department chairperson met me in the hallway, saying, “Jack, those are not your costumes.  Miss _______ came to me and said she felt like she had been shit upon.”  My hackles rose.  Had I not searched on weekends for years to amass those things I saw possibilities for?  “Mary,” I replied, “in sixteen years, I never refused to lend any costume to anyone associated with theater.  Indiana Central borrowed everything for Guys and Dolls, Anderson borrowed lots of stuff for Sound of Music, Tim Leonard borrowed costumes for Mt. Vernon’s Harvey.  Often some things were not returned—In Tim’s case, not one thing.  I intended to be generous.  Is some new policy to begin with me?  And I was allowed to take the things I needed.  I only went back one other time for a few props I knew were there.  They had finally searched and found a deserving man to rebuild their program.  This man, I realized was more talented than I, although I looked at his wonderful set for The Diary of Anne Frank, and just felt in my gut that mine, adapted from a model by Gail Sturm, had been as good or better.

When I returned those props I’d used in a Winchester, Kentucky, production of Oliver, I thought he, under the pressure of scenery work, a massive staircase I wouldn’t have had the nerve to attempt, I thought he seemed imposed upon, but he showed me how the department had been upgraded, and I was awed.  Finally, in what had been my space, I saw growth.  Mary Parido, in telling me about my immediate replacement (I was not involved in the decision) seemed to me to gloat a bit as she said, “It’s a woman.  She’s been in law school.  I think she’ll be alright.  After a difficult year, that teacher was gone.  I wondered what I had missed by not attending law school.

After five years, I dropped in for a visit.  I always said that no one remembers you after five years.  I shouldn’t have said that, I guess.  When Margaret and I went into the offices at a new end of the building to visit with cohorts (remember, Margaret was the treasurer and had trained the current treasurer), the French teacher introduced us to the new principal, who said, “So this is Mr. Rhoades!”  My surprised response was, “You’ve heard the name?”  Anyway, life goes on, and life is good.

The same year that I started at Greenfield-Central, 1979-80, I had dropped in at Eastern Hancock during the summer, as one of the Southwestern teachers told me he had run into the band director from Eastern on the golf course, and they had spoken of me.  There was the implication that I could return to Eastern anytime.  What the new (to me) superintendent of five years told me was that my position didn’t exist any more.  I had worked rather tirelessly on the introduction of “phase-elective” English curriculum, and the weight of that program fell heavily on my shoulders.  I taught poetry (6 week courses), folklore, drama, speech, Roberts’ Rules of Order, and all English 9 classes.  We found that students relinquished study halls to take several English department offerings.  The superintendent said, “So you’re Jack Rhoades.  I’m glad to meet you.  Do you realize that in five year of curriculum meetings with parents and teachers, there has never been a meeting where your name did not come up.”  I was hoping that meant they spoke well of me!

*         *         *

I once grew tired of hearing two teachers in the teachers’ lounge complain about their “remedial” English classes. These classes were peopled with students with special problems and difficulties, but they were limited to fifteen students in size. They carried a stigma. When I offered to teach them, I was honest. I felt like these students deserved to have a teacher who could love them. I also felt that anyone with my load of night work should have a few classes that would require little overtime grading.

I was successful with these kids whose names appeared on the absence list under detention so often that I knew some of them made it a point to be tossed out of some class nearly every day. I tried to learn where all these students were coming from. I decided, after a long setting-in period of time, to have an informal day when we went to the “Cougar Meeting Room” so we would be in a room with tables and windows to look out while we talked and in which we could have refreshments. One student said to me, “Mr. Rhoades, why are you doing this? Don’t you know teachers hate us?” The sad part is that I did know it—first hand.

When some members of that class did reach graduation, Eli Lily, our Partner in Education, had a special day for the leaders. They wanted the leaders of every group of any description. One of these boys was there. Mr. Albano relayed the message that when the boy was asked what he attributed his success in school to when so many of his friends had “fallen through the cracks,” he said, “Teachers like Mr. Rhoades.“ Now, I know that no system of rewards that any educational body might set up would include a teacher whose students rapidly forgot most of the subject matter he presented unless he somehow tied it to practicalities such as getting along with others, respecting yourself, and living with manners; who taught primarily by getting along with all of them, showing respect for their differences, and being mannerly with them.

I had asked that class that day, because some of them had abilities they wouldn’t use, “What grade were you in when you started to cheat on things.” I didn’t use any kind of test or quiz that they could cheat on because they did it so skillfully and outrageously, and I found it demeaning for them and me and felt it tested me more on my ability to catch them than it tested any of them on anything.

If caught red-handed, they had learned, they said, to become loud and angry. “Are you calling me a cheater?” they would shout. They made it bad enough that few teachers bothered to catch them more than once. They told me that the cheating had started in first grade. “Why?” I asked. “I know you could do the work.”

“Why not?” was their retort. They had played their teachers like a musical instrument and had come to enjoy the tune.

I had them sit in groups of three or four during a period of time when we concentrated on writing every day.  I think students are only willing to share things with a teacher if they think he/she likes them, but they are not hesitant to share with each other in a group of their cronies.  The goal was for each of them to identify five mistakes that they made most often and stop making them.  They had to read and sign each other’s work, and I allowed them to go to the “machines” for refreshments.  I had gotten permission through guidance where they said, “If you are getting anything out of these kids, you are the only teacher who is.  Go for it.”  Mr. Cline hated the intrusion in the cafeteria where he held a study hall that period and went to the office to try to put a stop to it.  Dean of Students, Don Jackson said, “I just wish you could be a mouse and sit in the room when they talk about you.”  They were in his office whenever they got kicked out of class, and he referred to them as “his rummies.”  They loved that guy in a special way.  He once had said of my classes, “You’re doing something right.  I never see them (meaning they didn’t want to miss my classes, I think).”

After two or three years, the department chair felt they were not getting the essentials under my tutelage, so they were taken from me and given to her.  After one year there were no more classes of remedial English.

My last few years I taught only speech and Drama classes, and there was a tremendous feeling that a weight had been lifted. I believe that special ed teachers deserve to have stars in their crowns. As a substitute teacher in Lexington after my retirement, I taught everything but English at first—even taught in a Montessori first-through-third-grade class. I had no equipment for that, no training. Children were so foxy with subs, and blatant. Then I began to accept only high school and middle school assignments. High school English teachers began to ask for me, and finally, I began to feel I really was in my element. One day I accepted a special-education assignment. The sub-finder was desperate. There would be two aides in the room. So I accepted, and very soon I got only calls for special ed. I had no training, and felt that I was a failure. I had to call for reinforcements, for the principal. Only when I began to refuse those assignments did I again get to teach in my field.  When a highly respected English teacher was dealing with her mother’s fatal illness, I took her classes before and after her mother’s death.  Initially, she told me how she would prepare assignments and pick up the paper to be graded.  After two days, I could see that we would be building up a mountain of work that called for little or no knowledge on the part of the sub.  “I have taught this material many times, and I would love the opportunity to teach your classes.  The students and I could keep the grading up-to-date almost daily, and you could concentrate on your life away from school.”

After that, I got requests for service in the English department at that school almost every day, and my life became much more pleasant..  I went into that teacher’s room about two months later to ask her a question, as she was department chairperson.  One of the boys in the room announced, “Hi, Mr. Rhoades.  Do you know you are my favorite substitute teacher since I’ve been in high school.  Well, actually, you’re my favorite of all the subs I’ve ever had.”  I wasn’t running a popularity contest, but I don’t think his comment did any harm to my subbing assignments, and not long after that, I was hired by that school to teach reading to students who were failing in all subjects.  I’ll get to that sometime later.

*         *         *

After an English departmental meeting in which Mr. Albano pressed for higher SAT scores in English, I followed him to his office to make this statement: “When English gets to be important enough that the administration stops treating it as a step-child, things will improve.”

“I have no idea what you mean, Mr. Rhoades.”

“Do you realize that (and here I named four English teachers) teachers who were hired with majors in other fields (and I named a former guidance counselor and a former phys ed teacher) were moved into the English department for one reason or another?” I went on with the list. “I don’t mean to imply that these people are not good teachers—they are personable and conscientious, but you would not hire math teachers in this manner. I have taught difficult students with low abilities because I had tolerance for them, but I have never taught a gifted class that uses the skills I learned from editing a college newspaper or a junior literature class that would benefit from my master’s specialization in American lit. Perhaps there are other things that are of greater importance than SAT scores.” He asked that I write it up. I believe that every teacher hired in the English department since that day has been an English major and some of the non-majors have retired or gone on to other posts. (This paragraph was composed in 1996; I have no concept of hiring practices, etc., since that time.)

For my first three years at Greenfield-Central, I taught the most challenging general English classes.  These classes were much larger than any gifted English class.  This does not make great sense to me.  The needy students would progress much more rapidly with more individual attention from the teacher.  Many times gifted classes spent a lot of time on group projects that put little or no pressure on the teacher, either for maintaining order or grading papers.

Chapter 3

Back to the Beginning

I began my teaching at Southport High School near Indianapolis in 1958, and I found few rewards that first year. Students were grouped according to ability and I got only classes with low expectations. I caught every germ the kids brought in, and I had no support group outside of a few remarkable kids, one lovely elderly English teacher and one young math teacher who shared my prep period. I saw the principal only three times during the year–all negative encounters.

He first confronted me just after Thanksgiving vacation in 1958. Margaret and I had returned from South Bend violently ill. My head throbbed and pounded and I gagged as I cleaned up her vomit. It was, I think, the only day I missed all year. Somehow Mr. Leedy learned that she was absent from her elementary school on Monday after vacation also, and he was quick to assume that we had committed what I didn’t even realize was an unforgivable sin—extending the vacation period. The landlady had called a doctor who made a house call for someone in her family, (doctors did that in 1958, even to see some young teachers who were not their patients) and she sent him out to our garage cottage to see us as well. She could have verified that we were in no condition to attend school had I realized he doubted my integrity. No one advised me to get a note from the doctor.

*         *         *

The second time he spoke to me was the day I was asked to cover a junior homeroom for someone I didn’t know. I taught no juniors. The class was orderly and all were studying except for a boy at the back who was amusing himself and those around him with a wooden dog of bead-like parts strung together on elastic strings attached to a moveable disk on the bottom of the base. I took it away from him and said he could get it off the teacher’s desk after class. I thought no one was looking; I casually picked it up and inspected it to see how it worked. I had barely touched the disk, but the dog buckled his hind legs two or three times in quick succession. I looked up to see that every eye was on me, and when my face turned red, the class burst into raucous laughter. Instantly, Mr. Leedy was in the room shouting over the noise, "Mr. Rhoades, can’t you control this class?”

Just as instantly, he was gone. My delight turned to humiliation. Tears formed in my eyes. I suddenly had the loyalty of about fifty kids whose names I didn’t even know. They tried to assure me that this was not unusual behavior–their class was near the office, and he had been there before. His actions were important to me because I became determined never again to allow the humiliation of anyone within the confines of my classroom.

Two years later when another principal in another school, Carthage, without meaning to catch me in particular, put me in an embarrassing situation during a teachers’ meeting, I just got up and walked out. That was a school where teacher dedication was rather scarce that year, and I was compelled to be the librarian, teach English, sponsor the newspaper, direct the plays, sponsor National Honor Society and the senior class, and chaperone the class trip to Washington and New York. I also began a Teen Canteen to give the youth of that small town something to do almost every Tuesday and Thursday, got Community Chest to fund it and held dances and a talent/beauty contest. I had convinced the students to meet in our homes to put together the very first yearbook the school had ever had. The circumstance implied that I had been shirking hall duty, when in reality I had never missed my assigned duty until that day when I had received permission to leave the building at lunch time.

“Teachers are not doing their hall duty,” he exclaimed. “This is not an option. I would be willing to bet that you don’t even know who is on hall duty this week.” At this point Mr. Gardner, the senior member of the faculty raised his hand and was recognized.

“It’s John Rhoades,” he replied. At that precise moment I rose and exited the room, obviously angry. The principal hurriedly closed the meeting and came to find me. His apologies were kind and profuse, and my anger quickly subsided.

*         *         *

This is an early version—when it was clearer in my mind—of a situation I have mentioned before.  The third encounter with my first principal took place in his office discussing grades. I was very youthful in appearance, and my class size averaged forty-seven. I had one small class of thirty-seven, and one of forty-nine. The others were larger. English classes were divided into three ability groups. Each English teacher got at least one E class, except me. Those E classes were, of course, much smaller than mine. I had all of the bottom level grade nine classes. I have never understood the logic behind small classes for the well-motivated students and large classes with discipline problems galore for poor students.  I believe he was not aware of this.

My department chairwoman was elderly and impossible for me to deal with because of her obvious and blatant loathing for me. I later learned she was asked to retire in the early months of the following school year when her eccentricities began to focus on the only remaining male English teacher, a man who had been around awhile and was respected. She had been allotted three class periods a day for supervision. She often spent most of each in my classroom. It was her decision that all freshman teachers were to follow the same schedule. We were, that is, to be on the same page of our textbooks as the E classes so that we could all take departmental exams and they could be put into one gigantic curve. She then made charts which she placed on the wall outside her room with teachers’ names affixed to it to prove to all that I was an ineffectual teacher, as my classes scored lowest, of course. After the first grading period, I received a lecture from the principal on lowering my standards. I explained that I didn’t test them or give them the failing grades—I really had no opportunity to teach them. I asked to be allowed to instruct them on their skill level. "I don’t care what you do, just don’t give so many F’s," was his plea. He decided to require that my grades in each class form a bell curve which I was to put in his mailbox. Evidently my department chairperson was not informed of this.

I took that as a mandate for me to ignore her schedule and teach my classes at their own speed. They took her departmental tests over material we hadn’t studied yet. I used them as diagnostic tools at most, and put grades from my own tests into my gradebook for averaging. She was furious. At the end of the first semester, exam grades were on the report cards. She inspected my grade cards, the distribution of which she handled, and saw the discrepancy between her grades on my departmental finals and the exam grades I had placed on their cards in the final exam square. She had given nearly all of them F’s, whereas I had given as many A’s as F’s, as many B’s as D’s, and a majority of C’s. (How’s that for justice in education?)

*         *         *

From that point on I was the object of her daily target practice. When she began to listen in on my classes over the intercom, my students knew it was she.

This was the first time I recognized openly what I came to acknowledge as “silent noise”—anything which commands any student’s attention away from the subject at hand. Inevitably, a few of them would point at the speaker, intending to let me know that the “enemy” was present. That she was the enemy had become obvious to them in the three classes she had visited so often. Never once did she offer a constructive criticism, and her voice when she spoke to me was disrespectful and full of loathing. Also, one period a day I used her classroom. She rarely left any room on her chalkboard for me to utilize, although it was last period and her classes were over, but on one occasion I neglected to erase what I had placed in the small place that was left, and she gave me a lecture on my inconsiderate bad manners. Her only advice to me was that I would never make a teacher until I learned to scowl. By that measure alone, I could tell she was a wonderful example to hold up to a fledgling teacher.

Ethel Harlan, at Eastern Hancock years later, would tell me that the finest approach to a new class was to give them an assignment on the first day and stand at the front of each row and stare them down. I think that was probably good advice; it reminded me of my father’s saying he wrestled a young bull calf every day when it was small enough for him to handle. The first day he had any difficulty was the last day he did this. His reasoning was that the bull would never attack him because it believed that Dad would still be able to take him down. Interesting.  I think Ethel Harlan was a wonderful teacher and a superb example of integrity to the whole school.  She was also the librarian—taught only senior English—and, therefore, was available for advice and instruction nearly all day.  I learned the finer points of English grammar from her one on one, and I found her to be nearly infallible.

On one occasion a new student was enrolled in my class because he had punched out his history teacher during class—one punch that had laid him out. So they had taken him out of history and put him into my class in the middle of the year. He already had one English 9 class, which he was failing. A vice-principal told him in my presence that if he got into any trouble he would be going to The Indiana Boys’ School. I believe he got this break because his prospects in football were so good. I seated him in front of the only other football player in that class, which proved to be a foolish move. One day their tempers flared. I got between them and ordered the one I knew would obey, George, to the hallway. I was putting the class to work independently so that I could explain to George that I hoped not to send them to the office because of the dire consequences in store for the other young man, and I intended to offer to separate them on the seating chart permanently.

Suddenly, the door opened, and my nemesis came dragging George back into the room, because “He can’t learn anything in the hall. Now, Mr. Rhoades has the right to send you to the hall if he thinks he needs to, but if he does, I’m going to bring you right back in here because you can’t learn anything in the hall. Go on with class.” And she sat down in an empty seat near the door to make certain I was paying proper attention to subject matter, muttering, of course, so that my students and I could hear, “This’ll never do! This’ll never do.”

*         *         *

On one occasion I was returning a book of spelling lists that I had borrowed from the teacher across the hall. As I had come from study hall in a different wing and on another floor, I hadn’t gotten there on time. As I crossed the hall, I realized my students were absolutely quiet. There could be only one explanation—she was there.

There she stood, looking with that scowl at the front desk in the middle row which had been turned over as a prank. No one was assigned to that seat. Mrs. Copsey began to shriek as if I had instigated the deed, “You will find out who has done this, and you will report to me before the hour is over—or else!”

When she was gone, I announced casually to the class, “Mrs. Copsey is my immediate superior, and I try to abide by her rulings, but this is my classroom, and I have no intention of reporting anyone over this matter. However, I would appreciate it if the person who did this would now turn it over so we can get on with class.”

Two boys got up apologetically and turned the chair upright. They never meant to get me in trouble. “I know that. Thank you for setting it right.” Then I turned to the assignment. Someone pointed at the intercom as we continued as if nothing had happened. I once thought that I lost my job that day. I now know that I was doomed from day one. But I have learned that without trials we can never grow, and I was beginning to grow. She was the greatest example of negative peer pressure I was to have the pleasure of experiencing in my lifetime.

To the sincere ones, tests are as a gift from God… an expert student prepareth and memorizeth his lessons and exercises with the utmost effort, and in the day of examination he appeareth with infinite joy before the master. Likewise the pure gold shineth radiantly in the fire of test… it (the test) removeth the rust of egotism from the mirror of the heart until the Sun of Truth may shine therein.                                                       –Bahá’u’lláh

There was a handsome, likeable athlete in that class whom I remember only as Joe.  He sat in a front seat near the windows, and he smiled a great deal.  One day, as I arrived, rushing from another wing, he met me outside the classroom to give me some advice..  “Mr. Rhoades, they are planning to pull a joke on you.  At exactly 11:00, everyone is going to cough.  I think it would be neat if you coughed too.”  So, as kids began to keep a close eye on the wall clock, I was prepared.  And at exactly 11:00, I coughed with them, we all laughed, and the fuse was diffused.  I was touched by his loyalty and chose to follow his advice. It was a great moment of surprise as I stopped talking, looked quizzically at them and then at the clock so many had been watching, and coughed with a twinkle in my eye. Then, I went right back to business as usual.

In my last-period freshman English class first semester, I had a student named Vinous Barnes (funny that his name should stay with me all these years). He was a senior, and this was his last chance at English 9. On the first day he raised his hand, and when I called on him, he said, “Mr. Rhoades, you wouldn’t fail a student if he really tried, would you?”

I said, “Believe me, Vinous, if you really try, I’ll get you through this with a passing grade.”

But Vinous didn’t try. He tried me. He tried sleeping in class. He missed a lot, and he didn’t pass English 9–again.

A few days into the second semester, when I no longer had this boy in class, I was driving to school behind a school bus when I realized that Vinous Barnes was displaying the middle finger of his right hand at the back window of that bus. I followed that finger for about three blocks, getting more angry by the block. Then, I turned off, took a shortcut and sped to the bus loading zone where I awaited that bus’ arrival. Imagine my surprise when the bus pulled in and he did not get off. If he was still on the bus, he was hiding, but I think someone would have pointed to the spot if that were the case. My anger began to dissipate and I began to see the humor in the whole situation before I got to my first-period study hall. I never saw Vinous Barnes again.

At one Southwestern play rehearsal students from nearby Shelbyville (my students claimed) stopped by and soaped all the windows of all the parked cars so completely that one could not see out. When I was informed of this Halloween prank, I allowed a few students at a time to clean their windows. I was too busy, so after all students were gone and I had locked up, I went out with dread to assess the damages to my car. Imagine my surprise to see my car sparkling clean with no soap remaining on the windows.

I have had many pranks to deal with over the years, mostly at play practice where they loved to hide my Volkswagen bug or set it up on the sidewalk where there was a high curb. Once when I forgot to lock it, they pushed it down a hill to the track and piled track hurdles around it until they had used them all. When I had discovered that the deed was done, they came running from all directions to set it back and share in my delight at learning they weren’t really going to leave me stranded. These things usually happened near performance day when spirits were getting high. The pranks stopped when I got older—I don’t think they do these things to old men they respect, and maybe that’s a blessing. They show their affection in more direct ways.

*         *         *

The meanest tricks I can remember were cruel and inspired by the perpetrators’ exaggerated sense of anger. The first teacher-victim was an attractive young divorcee—sexy. Her room was next to mine and our doors were side by side. Several students must have been in cahoots to carry off such a plan, one standing at the end of the hallway during the noon hour as class time grew near, the other having adjusted his Bic lighter to make a torch to be held to her doorknob. At the signal that she was approaching, he could withdraw. Many watched, I was told, as she put her key in the lock, turned it and grasped the doorknob without a thought. “Yeoooow!!” she yelled, throwing her keys into the air, dropping her purse and books, and shaking her burnt palm and fingers as some snickered and others laughed out loud.

The trickster’s identity was not hard to discern. He was identified and called to the office where he confessed the deed. He had asked repeatedly to be taken out of her class and put into mine, but always to no avail. Now she would refuse to allow him in her room ever. So, after he spent a few days in the behavior clinic, I had a new personage in my fourth period English class. He was nobody’s hero in there, but I thought it was too much like rewarding him for a vile act by giving in to his demands.

This misdeed reminded me of another one ten years earlier, two schools back. Down the hall from me at Eastern in the new building, an inexperienced young teacher had taken up residence. I only knew that he often used videotapes of television programs to keep his history class busy and that his classes were often rowdy. One day as he was lecturing at the chalkboard, a student was applying his Bic to a penny held by a pair of tweezers. While students watched as the teacher was writing on the board, the Bic was shut off, the tweezers made a big arc as students in two rows leaned away. The “hot” penny rolled down the aisle and clattered against the front baseboard.
“All right now, you guys, just stop that before you begin. Who threw this (here he stooped to pick it up as he spoke) p-e-e-e-n-n-e-e-y?” as he threw the coin clear across the room and put the two or three offended fingers into his mouth. His blisters only lasted a couple of days, and none of us ever knew who the culprit was.

Fortunately, none of these tricks ever happened to me. I guess the worst prank was one I perpetuated after Tammy, in third grade at the time, gave me a glass bell to keep on my desk. Her teacher used one, and Tammy thought all teachers should have a bell to ring for quiet. The students acted as though they hated the sound of that bell, and soon whenever I came in from hall duty at the beginning of each class, the bell would be gone. As I began class, I would pretend they didn’t know what I was looking for as I talked about the assignment and moved about the room, casually searching in an obvious, subverted manner. If I didn’t locate it, it would suddenly reappear in its place near the end of the hour. If I did find it and rang it to see if it was still working, they would groan.

One day when I was absent, students in the first-period class hid the bell in the waste basket. No one thought any more about the bell after they realized there was a substitute teacher for the day. So the janitor must have thrown it away at the end of the day. I asked about my priceless little bell, and they realized what they had done. The following school day I had three bells—one metal dome that one hits with the palm, one metal schoolroom bell shaped like the missing one, and one decorative bell. I put them all away. Permanently. But after the musical that year, the cast presented me with a fancy brass engraved dinner bell to be hung on the wall. I gave it a prominent place on the wall, all right—at home.

But the the meanest prank of which I was victim was played by students in my last-period class my first year at Greenfield. They were, by and large, males—you guessed it, football players. How I struggled to get them to work. I went home many a night wondering whatever had made me think I wanted to be a teacher. On our last day together, as each student turned in his exam, he asked to use the restroom.  As no one was gone very long and they drifted up one at a time, I continued to let them go. (The restroom was nearby.)

When the final bell of the school year sounded, ending that class period, all filed out jubilantly, calling out, “Goodbye, Mr. Rhoades. I bet you’ll miss us.” Things along that line. And I followed them into the hall saying farewells. When I went through the door, it was as if the whole hallway of people was in on the joke. I was the only person to be soaked by those water balloons they had been filling in readiness. I don’t know how I managed to think the affair was funny. I’m not sure how I let my laughter fill that hall. Maybe it was because I was so glad that year was over!

A few years later Margaret and I stopped at a garage sale, and one of the boys from that class, a good student, and by then a recent Purdue graduate, came into the garage. “Well, hello, Eric.” And I congratulated him. His aunt was there, and I had taught her at Eastern a number of years before when she was Jama Johnson and her father owned a tavern in Greenfield called the Lincoln Inn, which has been gone a long time. As we were leaving, I heard Eric say to his mother and aunt, “That is the kindest man I ever knew.” Boy, I could have told you a lot of things I would have thought he might say about me, but never in a thousand years could I have anticipated that a student in that class would have seen kindness through my impatience, my persistence, and even, at times, my anger.

One day at Southport, I asked the lovely white-haired lady in the room I used during my split-lunch period what she did when ‘they’ offered her something. “I always take it,” she said, “even if I don’t want it.” And that became my policy too. She always put it in her desk for later, but I preferred to let them watch me enjoy a bite or two first if it was edible stuff. If it wasn’t, I displayed it prominently on the desk.

Once, I received the gift of Life’s Little Instruction Book. I read a few pages to the class and stood it on top of a row of books on my desktop. After class it was gone. An hour later a girl dropped by between classes to tell me the name of the very troubled student who had taken it. I reacted by saying, “You know what? Maybe she really needed it more than I did.” And we both laughed and dismissed the matter. Soon the young lady dropped out of school, and all hope of my book’s return was gone.

I never did learn to scowl. When I related that line to my senior English class of seventeen great kids at Carthage the following year, Joe Foust, whose twinkling blue eyes I still remember vividly after fifty years, offered, “Who is this lady?  I’m gonna go over there and beat her up.”  Joe was one of the two boys who lived on the farm I drove by every day when I taught in Charlottesville but lived in Carthage. The yard was strewn with broken, rusty machinery.  I told him often that he really needed to learn to spell before he set off for college.  “Mr. Rhoades,” he would reply, “I am never gonna go to college.”  A year later, he came up to me in church and said, “Mr. Rhoades, I can spell anything.  I’m in pre-med at Tri-State, and you wouldn’t believe the words I have learned to spell.”

But back at Southport, Mr. Leedy could only choose to back her up when she had said, “I will not have this young man in my department another year.” And because he blackballed me to every principal who considered hiring me, I took the job in Carthage, where they had many teachers to hire and little to offer other than the best kids on the planet in small classes and a second chance–a chance to shine. My gratitude to those men and women far exceeds theirs to me, although one of them, David Ruby, a most successful business executive, said to me at my retirement party, “All I hear from these people is about the plays. I enjoyed those plays too. I got to deliver the most-practiced kiss in history onstage to the woman who has been my wife all these years. But what I want you to know is how much I learned in your classroom. I would never have made it through college without that class!” Gosh, David and Ann, can you even guess how much that meant to me. Even more than the offer to use your vacation home in Alabama, which was so kind of you. And Ann was in the AV room, always close to mine for sixteen years. If I realized I was sick or injured, I made a bee line for that library where I knew Ann Ruby and Betty Donceal would patch me up or give me tea or coffee and sometimes insist that I be taken home. I hated missing school.

Ann once looked at a copy I was printing out on the library copy machine and quizzed, “Did you write this on a typewriter?  Do you have a typewriter in your room?”

“Yes,” I said, proud of the little portable that had gotten suddenly cheap enough for me to get one.

“Throw it away!”  And she took me to one of the three computers in the reading room, and my introduction to a new age of literacy began.  No strikeovers, no erasures—possible perfection.

*         *         *

Mr. Skinner, the elected township trustee, who did the hiring and firing of teachers in 1959, had said he knew someone on the board of trustees at Southport. When he told me it was a Mr. Davis, I realized he was the father of the brightest girl I had taught. I had tried to get her moved into an E class, but she was determined to stay, and the same system that required us to stay on the same page as those E classes for this very reason explained that the E classes were overcrowded that period, although none of those classes were the size of mine.

In December the school newspaper had had a writing contest. A winner from each class (class of 1959, 1960, etc.) would have his writing printed in the Christmas edition of the school paper. That would only allow for one freshman winner. However, from the freshman entries they chose two winners—one comical and one a serious poem. No one but me seemed even to notice the fact that with eight freshman English teachers, all veterans except me, both winners were from my low-ability classes. The comic entry was a letter to Santa, written by a football player who got a ‘D’ in the course. The poem was written by a little girl whose father happened to be on the school board. She, of course, would have gotten an ‘A’ even without a bell curve.

I asked Mr. Skinner to contact her father for a recommendation. He did but he agreed to hire me only if Margaret came to teach first grade, which meant we must leave the bungalow we had purchased in May to reside in Carthage. I doubt if she would have moved otherwise—her contract at Bluff Avenue Elementary School had been renewed, and our little home was near her school. However, we were to love living in the town of Carthage where neighbors were neighborly and students became lifelong friends. Isn’t it interesting that with two yearly salaries of $4,090, we had been able to save enough money to make a $1,000 down payment on a $10,500 bungalow? In those days teachers got no paychecks in the summer, and we learned that if we saved a thousand dollars during the school year, we could take a vacation and still make it through to the first fall paycheck.

Actually, though, the reason we had saved so much was that no one had informed me at the beginning of my junior year of college when I was transferring back to ICU that Teaching of High School English was only offered in alternate years, and if I didn’t take it then, it would not be available my senior year. Margaret Goldsmith and I were married on graduation day. I worked all summer to complete a correspondence course. I remember that one question on one lesson asked me to compare five English textbooks and state the weaknesses and strengths of each. I had finished the course in September, but had to wait for my grade. As soon as I received it, I sent it to the State of Indiana Department of Education, and requested that they rush my teacher’s license to Southport High School. When my license was still not there in January, my paychecks stopped. This was, I presume, to prod me into finishing the correspondence course post haste. There was no convincing that school corporation to do otherwise. I felt I was a pawn. This makes me wonder how many potentially gifted teachers have been pushed out of the profession by circumstance “beyond anyone’s control.”

We still lived in Carthage when our first child, Lorinda Lee (Lori) was born. This small rural box-factory town had seemed to welcome us with open arms. It was a two-class society, and teachers, unless they were natives, were usually on the outside of both classes. I wish I had worked harder to reach and understand the poor. No one had given a shower for Margaret, everyone supposing that someone else would; but when they realized the oversight, we had a parade of gift-giving visitors for several weeks, and Lori became the best-dressed baby for miles around. Both of our families were far away and oriented to letting kids stand on their own two feet once they were married.

When Lorinda was ten days old, we had suddenly decided to dash off to Harlem, Montana, to share her with our family and friends there before school started in Indiana. We were really not prepared for the generosity of our little town upon our return. I came to realize that it was much the same in times of grieving. One neighbor, Helen Patton, who did floral arranging and had lovely gardens, had brought flowers the day Margaret was to come home from the hospital, and she brought a fresh arrangement as a replacement every day until we left for Montana.

She was such an artist! On the first day I took the flowers from her and placed them on Margaret’s dresser. Helen said kindly, "That’s very nice if you prefer it, but I arranged the flowers to go here," and she moved them to a spot on the chest. I was startled at the difference in the beauty of that bouquet in the new location. I learned two things that day–let the artist have his/her say with his creation–it will give him greater fulfillment–and onstage, try placing things in several places before making final decisions. A small change can sometimes make a great difference in the total effect. I always took great care in dressing the set.

Other neighbors brought food, and the older ones looked in on us every day to make sure we were all right and the baby was doing well. I am always awed and overwhelmed by those who take the time to be caring. Sometimes I have felt oppressed when I myself have had neither the time nor the means to show how greatly I cared. I find in searching my memory that I seem to have some bizarre association with everyone. Who could have guessed that Guy and Chloe Ewing, across the street, had a daughter, Jule Ging, who would become important as members of my church and whose grandson, Norman, would be in my sophomore English class at Charlottesville. Chloe caught her arm in the ringer of her old fashioned washing machine (just like the one Margaret’s mother used in her basement) and was badly hurt. They introduced us to our favorite kind of squash with a crook neck and kept us in supply that summer.

Another neighbor whose name I have forgotten had a porch swing where we sat and talked and she held the baby. Bees had made a hive in the south wall of her house, and when they tore off the siding, there was a mountain of honey.

Another neighbor had stopped over when we lived at Bud and Gladys Smith’s house—four houses north on Main Street—to tell us that she could foretell the sex of a baby by watching the mother walk from behind. We, she announced, were to have a boy. “And relax about this.” she sent on. “This baby is not going to be born for three more months.”

We didn’t tell her that Margaret was in labor and we had gone shopping to make sure it didn’t stop. Our daughter was born later that same day.

Jim and Katy Ellis, who ran a garage in town and whose three children were bright spots in our lives, would stop by and say, "We’re running over to Knightstown (about five miles down the road) to see Grandma. Can we borrow Lori for an hour or so." And off they’d go. When Lori was three, "Grandma’s" was to be her first funeral. Katy was a wonderful person to help a child understand mortality.

Lori was born in the summer after Margaret and I had signed contracts in the nearby town of Charlottesville. Margaret was reluctant to change schools, although the building was newer and her room had a private bathroom for the children to share with the other first grade class.  When Bill Skinner released her from her contract because she was pregnant and “We need to be sure our teachers are able to start school on the first day.”  Margaret had already signed a contract, but Bill had not given her a copy.  The county superintendent said he did know that he had received her contract but wouldn’t swear to it in a court of law.  When I went to Indiana State Teachers’ Association, and they wouldn’t look into it, we never sent another dime to that organization.  We soon learned that Mr. Skinner had been named by the new governor as the state personnel director, we understood politics a bit better. 

We drove back and forth that first year. Helen Patton, the flower lady who was our new nearest neighbor across the street to the south, was the teacher I replaced. I composed the following poem that year from the happiness that bubbled in my heart. The world seemed a kind place in 1961 in Carthage, Indiana.

OUR NEWBORN LORI

I caught a glimpse of God today.
Her tiny face was round and red.
Chubby fingers tugged about my heart
As they encircled my thumb.
Those blue eyes couldn’t see,
But I saw her,
And deep within those eyes
I know that I saw God today.

As a member of the Bahá’í Faith, I have learned that God is, of course, not to be seen or understood. He is that unknowable essence that is seen only as we see His attributes reflected in the virtues of human beings and in the perfections and writings of His divine messengers.

I had worked a long time on debating with my first speech class at Carthage—a wonderful group, though small. We had great rapport. They prepared a debate on “Capital Punishment,” which we debated publicly four times. No one knew in advance whether they were to argue pro or con, and each was prepared equally for both sides. Because I was hearing a lot of uh’s, for awhile, we clapped whenever we heard one.  Once when the class was assembled for debating, we were introduced by township trustee Bill Skinner.  Imagine my chagrin when the kids feigned clapping for his many uh’s.  I shook my head a bit vigorously, and they stopped.  In addition to giving many speeches, we prepared a one-act play to present to the student body called “The City Slicker and Our Nell.” From having played the villain in a college melodrama, I was well-prepared to teach them the melodramatic posturing that makes the show work. The major problem in casting was that there were more boys in the class than in the cast. One boy, I remember, was quite eager to play one of the women, and no doubt would have been good, but the two “mature” women needed balance. I cast the two least-likely candidates—two tough, tall, wiry ballplayers. Glenn Smith sat on one end of the sofa with his knees spread wide apart as if holding a dress full of apples, and his brother Jon sat on the other end with his knees together and his feet spread wide, heels outward. Now and again, they’d alternate those poses. Their old house dresses and aprons were authentic and ill-fitting, Jon tore the hem of Margaret’s slip we had borrowed, to make sure it would show, I think. Their effect produced continued hilarity.

I had told Leo Foust, as Pa, that he could chew licorice and pretend to spit into a can. Without telling me, he brought some really strong chewing tobacco and began to strut his stuff before the students (who obviously knew he had the real thing, though I had no clue). When he began to spit into a small coffee can he carried around, his head began to spin—he was not quite the tough guy he envisioned himself to be. Behind the set, I was told, he was quite ill. On stage, i noticed that he looked a bit green and supposed he was ill.

Jeannine Terhune was Little Nell and Pam Hunt was Clarabel Worth, the villainess. Clara Jo Henley was Minnie and Jimmy Ellis was her beau, who hadn’t much sense but saved the day anyway.  They were a great team.  David Ruby played the title role with finesse. It was a smashing success, and we were asked to repeat it for the alumni banquet, where folks agreed that no entertainment they’d ever had compared to it.

Jeannine later turned the little play into a full scale, three-act musical with vaudeville acts and a song leader warming up the audience and setting the tone. Of course, we had used a musical interlude to introduce each character, and the music played throughout under the dialog. I was invited to one rehearsal to add melodramatic poses.  Jeannine and her cast added another touch. For the third act, they darkened the room, turned on strobe lights to simulate a silent movie, and with the piano playing themes at high speed (the Carthage kids had called Jeannine “Fingers” for good reason) as the cast moved from pose to pose throughout the plot, taking about three minutes to complete it without dialog. Jeannine once told me that (maybe because there was little in the way of royalties compared to such musicals as Man of LaMancha, which she also did) this melodrama made the most money of any musical she ever undertook.  This probably has changed in a new, large auditorium.

*         *         *

I probably shouldn’t mention that I discovered that Jimmy and David, among others, had used a hypodermic needle to lace oranges with vodka to use on the bench at the intramural basketball tournament. Weren’t they clever—no odor to detect, right? They thought it was a sure thing, but although I had seen many ballgames, I’d never seen players eager to suck on fruit of any kind and  quickly confiscated the wasted citrus.  I wonder how many times they’ve told that to their kids and laughed about it.  I always imagined  for my students an innocent purity, and they were often amazed at my naiveté.

There were both juniors and seniors in that speech class. I chaperoned two classes on their senior trips, and Margaret went along to chaperon the girls of the first group. That year (man, was I ever naïve), I told the boys, tongue in cheek, that I didn’t care what they did as long as they took me along. (I thought, “That should tie them down pretty well.”) The first night in Pittsburgh they ditched me and went en masse to the burlesque show. I had never seen one in my life and had to wait till the next year with these kids for Pittsburgh’s own “lovelies,” who had been a part of the ‘senior-trip legend’ for years.  I sat alone in a box and mostly watched their reactions to the bawdy stuff, and they later laughed, saying they were watching me watch the show. 

Later that night in Dahl Petry’s room, I saw a few cigars on the chest of drawers and picked one up as if to smoke it. “You want to try one?” someone challenged.

“Oh, yes, I really am craving a smoke. Give me a light.” Someone did, and I stood there thinking they’d think I looked really cool, smoking that big stogie.

After a few puffs, Dahl said, “Mr. Rhoades, I don’t think I ever saw anything so out-of-place as that cigar in your mouth.”

I took that as a cue to put it out. “I guess that’s what I figured out in college when I tried a few times to smoke. It just didn’t suit me.”

*         *         *

One of the girls in that class was Margaret Henderson. When Mrs. Rhoades knocked on the door of the room where the girls were congregating, they called, “Who’s there?”

“Margaret.” (Not imagining they would think it was one of their own.)

Someone opened the door, screamed shrilly and slammed the door in her face. Then came the sounds of windows opening and drawers opening and closing before someone called out sweetly, “Come in, Mrs. Rhoades.” From the aroma, she surmised that they, too, had been smoking cigars.

Bonnie Howard, class comic, called down to the boys’ room after Margaret left. When her comedy routine was in full swing, the boy she was talking to handed me the phone. I didn’t let her say much before I offered, “Bonnie, do you know who you’re talking to?”

“Oh, my G… it’s Mr. Rhoades,” she announced to the girls she had been entertaining. Then click, buzzzzzzz.

I’ll only touch on the story of the elderly prostitute, old beyond her years, in one of the hotels who assumed I was one of the kids and got herself bounced from the hotel, the issue of bedbugs, or details of the nude, drunken boy from one of the southern states who got pushed off the elevator on our girls’ floor as I was standing there. Back on that boy’s floor there was no chaperone to be found. Their coach had left the number of a bar where he could be reached. Senior trips were educational in many ways. I think I wouldn’t care for the responsibility and danger such a trip would entail today, but we actually believed that most of them would never see New York or Washington, D.C., if we didn’t take them. Twenty-fived years later these kids careers had taken them to many far places, one in his own jet plane.  When my brother Danny was at Yale, he had taken our parents to see the Statue of Liberty. When he realized Mom’s tears were flowing, he asked her why. She replied, “I just never thought I would get to see it with my own eyes.” 

Born in 1901, Mom had an eighth-grade education, was the seventh of eight children in what was perhaps the poorest family in town.  My father’s family was the richest before the depression hit and all four farms were lost.  But no wonder she had forbidden me to go to the Royal Academy in London when the opportunity was given to me.  “The times they were a-changing” even then.  Now, a book I wrote fifteen years ago, thinking no one would ever read it (my wife and kids didn’t read it) has at least had some exposure in twelve different countries.

*         *         *

I tried to be myself with students, but I avoided familiarity. I would recommend that to young teachers. I insisted upon the right to maintain my own personality in the room in which I would spend so much of my life. I laughed hard and often.  I recall a boy saying, as I laughed thus, “Look at him!  Look at him!”  Margaret’s Aunt Anna Sleger, a county superintendent of schools whom we visited in Highmore, South Dakota, advised us thus, “Be your own natural selves.” It was good advice. I would add this: “Don’t let the situation become ‘you alone against a room full of teenagers.’ Select turf where you’ll be safe and the outcome more secure.”

I never worked at popularity; I just worked. I have seen many teachers reach out to students for friendships and get stung, and none of the teachers who worked ever so hard at achieving popularity won the kind of acceptance that has characterized my career. I believe that only once did I overstep that mark, and that was with a student who was living with a great deal of success, but who was also experiencing an enormous amount of physical pain. He said one day, “I just lay awake a long time last night and thought about how easy it would be to go into the garage, turn on the motor, and go to sleep.” I suppose today, with all the student support groups, I might have asked the guidance department for help, but I didn’t tell anyone because it was a confidence and he was a proud lad with a lot to be proud of. And although I doubted that he would act it out because I thought he had it all together, I felt that he was crying for help and that was all the reaching out he was going to do, so my approach to this young leader whose assistance I relied on daily was quite uncharacteristic of me. His body pain subsided, and he has lived an incredibly successful professional life.

I believe I could have waited. I sensed that, like many an only child, he shied away from touching others. I made other actors on the stage touch him. I made him touch them. I believe amateur theater rises and falls with how they touch or avoid touching. He was always the last student to leave the theater due to tech responsibilities, and I always hugged him when he left. I felt I could tell in his openness or reluctance whether or not he was depressed. I felt that the group of leaders in the troupe at this time was aggressive, selfish, very self-assured, and set in their ways, and they punished him for accepting me. They tried to work around my way of doing things. These were the hardest years of my teaching, other than the first. Nothing I provided, even excellence—absolutely the best scenery I ever designed or produced and quality performances—took away their resentment of me. I wonder how they all are and where they are and if they still feel this estrangement. Only David Arland has contacted me with warmth and gratitude. I both loved them and feared them and felt they were somewhat ruthless at times. And that courageous young man became my refuge as I had hoped to be his.  I don’t think he has forgiven me for stepping across my imaginary line, and I hope he knows that this is the one and only time I made that mistake.

*         *         *

This was my first year at a new, much larger school, and in the midst of finishing up the speech team’s successful year, I made a mistake that folks didn’t understand came from my having spent years teaching at country schools and getting snowed in, once being stranded with two small babies and my wife facing fifty degrees below zero winds and blinding snow on a country road near there.

On the day of the sectional speech meet, there was a violent storm and many roads were closed. The year before, the teacher, who had left in part because of it, took such a chance on a speech trip and there was a wreck involving G-C students. My report of the details were that she had wanted to go so badly that she had gone into the school building pretending to call a parent about a child providing transportation for some of the group.  She didn’t make the call, assured the teen that the parent had approved, and was off to the important speech meet.  It was that car that was involved in a wreck.  Two of my members were from the country. The principal, Mr. Tidrow agreed that we should not make this danger trip school-sanctioned.

However, the town students went without their sponsor. They could make it to highway 9, which was open, to highway 40, which was open, and easily reach their destination in Indianapolis. Brent Haines, at least, went on to the state meet. It would have been a travesty if he had not gone, I suppose. While they were gone, I got a call from a parent calling my decision an absurd and stupid one. I went to the home of one of my officers and talked to the parents—I always much preferred face-to-face confrontations to phone conversations. In the conversation I mentioned that they never allowed their daughter, a dynamic leader, to go to cast parties after the plays. Now, this is what I said: “There is no reason to think that these parties are reckless. They are chaperoned now by parents, and you are welcome as well. And I can assure you that there are no drugs or alcohol at these events. I would not go so far as to say that no one in drama club would use alcohol or smoke marijuana. You probably know from the newspapers that we have had a pot problem with our son, who is a junior, so I know the danger is out there. But there is no danger from our celebrations.” (That’s a careful paraphrasing.)

When their daughter came home, they must have asked her specifically if the boy leader of the group of friends she ran with used alcohol or smoked pot. She in turn told him that I had told her parents that he did. (I must have said that to her parents, right?) The first I heard of it was on Monday when I was called out of class to face an angry father, a former teacher, who was threatening, accusing and implacable. When he said that unless his son received an apology from me in front of an administrator within a week they would sue me for slander, Mr. Tidrow offered, “That can be arranged.”  I was furious with both men who seemed not to hear anything I said.

What I learned from talking to a lawyer was that it didn’t matter if I had made the statement or not. The defense against slander was to prove that it was true, therefore not slanderous. I argued. I said unequivocally that no matter how the boy had offended or maligned me, no matter how offensive his father had been, I would not put either of them in the position of having to face such a fact because of me. He helped me prepare an apology. Then I arranged for the apology. The attorney, who could not be my lawyer because there was a conflict of interests, advised me to arrange for this boy to be returned to his senior homeroom, and to avoid unnecessary contact in the future. He said, “Just hope that he doesn’t try out for the play this spring.”

Well, I hoped he would, and I’m sure he knew that there would be a weak spot in the cast where his strength should have been. The show was a musical, and the fact that he convinced our best alto soloist to stay away from tryouts and try out for the community theater musical, The Fantasticks, instead, further weakened the cast.  Unfortunately, there was not enough interest to get The Fantasticks off the ground, and the show was postponed until summer when I received a call from the casting director asking me to try out.  I asked if my former student had tried out and was told he had not, so I ran through a song with my wife and hurried over to the Methodist church where tryouts were being held.  Guess what!  He was there, standing in the room’s doorway and talking rudely and loudly as I sang.  I left immediately, but we were to perform together in that show.  I played the leading role; he stood in the wings and made light of my performance.  Rosalie Richardson once told me that The Fantasticks  had been one of the highlights of their summer.  I apologize if I am sounding petty here.

My apology had followed almost immediately: “I do not believe I ever made the alleged statement. However, if anything I did say has been construed to mean that, I am deeply sorry.” And it seemed our differences were ended—until he learned he had been returned to his original homeroom.  The lawyer had advised me to find someone who could verify the allegations.  I replied that I would never produce such evidence.  He advised me to inquire anyway.  “The defense against slander is to prove that it is truth.”  I had to make one call to a college student I knew well to find someone who would testify in court to that effect.  The remainder of that school year was the most miserable of my teaching years except the first. This boy spread the story that I had been fired from every job I ever had. I told the young lady who was one of his greatest fans (he always had a fan club in the audience—a troubling matter, especially when the actor really is good) that she didn’t have to take his word for that.  I pointed down hallways as I said, “Go down this hallway and talk to Mrs Pasco—I taught her and Mr. Elsworth at Eastern Hancock, and she knows the truth; go down this hall and talk to Mr. Allen.  I taught his family at Southwestern and he knows the truth.”  She replied, “Mr. Rhoades, I know the truth.”  And later, after she had discussed the matter finally with her very kind parents, she told me that they had assured her that I had never mentioned her friend.

In spite of having high evaluations, I was told that my work had been disappointing, that the speech program had not shown adequate growth and the speech team had not enjoyed enough success. (I go on record here as stating that no team since that time has had half the success of that talented group, brought home so many trophies, and perhaps the most talented was the person who had become my avowed enemy.)  I had been overworked and was not sorry to see someone else appointed to take over the speech team work that had taken me away from my family so many Saturdays for so little pay.  And I was told that I had an enemy in high places.  How I wish that I had approached that allegation head on.  Mr. Tidrow was to become a friend and a supporter for the remainder of his years at Greenfield.

I learned a valuable lesson in the midst of this conflict. One night while I was at a rehearsal for the spring musical, someone threw large rocks through both the upper and lower panes of a kitchen window and its storm windows in my historical home. Glass shards were everywhere, but our cat that ate in that window area was not hurt.  The glass had been in those windows since 1868, although the storm windows had been  added much later.  I was galled for months with the thought that someone would dislike me enough to do such a thing, as no one had ever made me the victim of retaliation before. I did not believe my drama president would do this—perhaps a friend home from college thought it would be appropriate.  Margaret calls this thinking “vain imaginings and idle fancies.”

Four or five years later two boys in my sophomore English class were telling about the time they had thrown stones through a window in my house before I lived there. “Man, it was awesome—glass everywhere.”  When I assured them I had lived there when they were in the sixth grade, they were sure it was a house across the street from mine. The fact that struck home was that they didn’t do it out of malice towards me personally, and I had allowed myself, without a shred of evidence to support the thought, to believe that I had been the victim of such outrageous hatred.

*         *         *

About fall play time in my second year at Greenfield-Central, my father passed away, and my brother Chuck insisted that my brother Danny, home from California for the funeral, travel from South Bend with him and my mother to see my play, Life with Father. The set was astonishing and the play required that three breakfasts be served onstage.  I think I’ve mentioned this. The cast went to see a production at an Indianapolis school two weeks prior to our opening, and they were able to discern that the actors had not practiced with real food. “We must begin at once to have food at rehearsals.”

I assured them that we could not afford that much food. I had started at Greenfield with a -$200 balance in drama fund. I had thought we had brought the club to the place where it had a lot of scenery and many costumes on hand and no debts, when the officers went out and bought themselves gifts and expensive trophies for the awards banquet. Their purchases left us again almost exactly $200 in the red. It was the last year for officer gifts, although we gave many awards, plaques and pins, purchased from a couple who sold beautiful trophies inexpensively from their home, and each officer received at least one. And our fund began to grow until it was safe for me to spend $5000 on Hello, Dolly! to prove to myself what a successful drama coach had told me—that “you have to spend money to make money.” It worked!

The actors agreed among themselves that they would contribute food each night during rehearsals. I had designed the set for Life with Father to include an offstage cooking area just behind the living room fireplace so that the smells, especially of bacon, would fill the house as the audience was arriving . After the first rehearsal with food, I found a utility sink backstage filled with unwashed dried-egg platters. These I washed before I went home that night. Then I hid nearly all the dishes, leaving only enough for one table setting. Next, I got a set of dish pans—one for washing, one for rinsing—and a stack of dish towels. Act II breakfast could not be served unless the Act I dishes were washed and ready. It worked like a charm.

Immediately after the curtain call, Danny went backstage to investigate and talk to members of the cast. He did not introduce himself as my brother. What he said to me afterwards was this: “This play has exactly the attention to details that I would expect to come from your mind. You can’t know how important it is for teens at this stage of development to take part in something of true excellence. They can never again be told that something mediocre is good enough.”

My newly widowed mother was there too, but she only noticed that Larry Andrick, in the title role, said “damn” and “damnation.” But we didn’t use all of those that were scripted—we had sometimes used “tarnation” and “by thunder,” etc., but it was too much profanity for her. Her father had travelled in season to Oklahoma to work in the oil fields, but I guess he didn’t use even those mild expletives in front of my Grandma Bisel, who, I am told, had healing powers because she had never used the Lord’s name in vain.

At Carthage I had given selflessly of my time and energy, and as Margaret was always at my side when she wasn’t working at being a first-grade teacher, that meant that she also gave tirelessly. We became youth directors at Fletcher Methodist Church in addition to our many responsibilities at the school. We attended nearly all sporting events, and I even chaperoned the Future Farmers of America club initiation at the principal’s insistence because no one else would do it. The club sponsor left town that night on “business.” As I recall it was on a Friday night just before Thanksgiving, and I told Mr. Brenton, the principal, that it was the first night since school began that I had not had an obligation with school kids. I had promised to take my wife on a date. The second time he broached the subject he said, “Yesterday I asked you if you would chaperone this event. Today I am telling you to do it.” Little wonder that when we went to the basketball sectional in Rushville, the county seat, as teachers from Charlottesville, our entrance was announced to the crowd by a Carthage cheer that went, “Yea, rah, Mr. Rhoades—some teacher!” (It was a yell given after every score for our team that named the player and his grade in school, as in “Yea, rah, Smith—some senior!”)

This yell followed us to Charlottesville and greeted our arrival at every away game. Few teachers ever went to away games, but it never failed to embarrass us a bit, which just egged them on. It never stopped making us feel glad to be loyal fans.

*         *         *

During my fourth year of teaching—the first at Charlottesville (later renamed Eastern Hancock)—it began to cross my mind that I might leave teaching. There were several factors of influence. Bob Kendall was the minister of the East Street Christian Church in Carthage. He was attending Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. At that time CTS was on the Butler University campus, and it was well-known that the seminary sported a fully-equipped TV studio, which in 1961 was a rare thing. We went to the Methodist church, where the Kentucky-born minister was from an orientation far different from mine at Central Evangelical United Brethren Church in downtown South Bend, Indiana, or from Margaret’s in the small E.U.B. church in the little town of Harlem, Montana.

The day that stands out most was not an average Sunday, but it brought to a head what I had been feeling almost every Sunday morning at Fletcher Methodist Church in Carthage. The minister was ill-at-ease, loud, and hard-to-follow. He lacked any of the polish of the city ministers I had known. On this particular Sunday, one of my students, a talented red-haired freshman named Lynn Kennedy, was at the organ. I knew that he sometimes baby-sat for the parsonage family and knew his way around their abode.

Near the end of the service, there was a baptism ceremony, the sprinkling of two very young Winters boys. The minister welcomed them, spoke to the congregation, and, moving to the left of the sanctuary, removed the lid of the baptismal font. He registered a look of consternation, replaced the lid, and hurried up the levels of the choir loft to the organist, who faced the congregation from the center of the top level. He whispered something to the young man, whose face turned that crimson that only a red-head could display so well. It was obvious that he was trying desperately to decline the invitation, but the frenzied reverend would not be dissuaded. Lynn ran from the sanctuary.

I imagine the minister soon realized his second mistake. In sending the organist on the errand, he had removed the only smooth way of filling the lengthening gap—with a hymn. Puzzled, we waited in awkward amazement until Lynn returned with a fruit jar containing unholy, ungloriified tap water. There was, needless to say, a feeling of disbelief as Rev. Mayfield emptied the jar into the baptismal font. He then took the first boy in his arms, performed the rite very precisely and offered to return him to his father in exchange for the second boy. Much whispering ensued—he had baptized the infant using his brother’s name and would have to start again…

Finally, the service was over. I don’t think I discussed the matter with Margaret at the time, but I consciously decided that there was a real need in the ministry for men who planned ahead for details and remained cool in front of an audience. Besides, I was an accomplished speaker, and, most importantly, I would have time to read something other than student themes, term papers, and plays suitable for a class play. When the Charlottesville Christian Church announced a vacancy after my first year at that town’s small school, I decided to try out for it and, if selected, to continue my education at CTS with an emphasis on television and communications. A drastic change was in the air.  They paid me $25 a week and allowed us to live in their quaint, two-bedroom parsonage.

This move exposed me to the influence of a magnificent communications professor, Dr. Alfred Edyvean, who had trained at Northwestern University under the great speech teacher and poet Lew Sarrett, who had travelled and performed with Carl Sandburg (one of the great entertainers of his time). Dr. Edyvean gave me acceptance and impressed me with his firm kindness, efficient management and knowledge of his field, and presented me with lesson plans for the speech classes that became the center of my classroom teaching success.  For the next two years I toured with his show, The Cup of Trembling, seven roles in a powerful play about the holocaust that played colleges and universities in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. We explained in British accents that we were actors playing various roles because all of the participants in this drama were deceased.  And each Nazi I portrayed needed a slightly different German accent.  I recall that in order to project a German prisoner after a bombing raid, I lay on the floor offstage and hyperventilated until I could feel that I could not adequately control my diaphragm.

I think this is a good point at which to interject my speech class experiences after high school. In college speech class at Indiana Central, I was seated, as in most classes, alphabetically. This placed me next to Bailey Robertson, our local basketball sensation who is now deceased and in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. His older brother Oscar, also from Indianapolis Crispus Attucks High School, achieved basketball immortality. But Bailey was convinced that I was the funniest man on that campus, and he would begin to laugh as soon as my name was called. Often my speech was not intended to be funny, and I had a really hard time getting through it without mannerisms that lowered my grade. I finally succumbed to giving only humorous speeches, thereby salvaging a ‘C’ grade. This professor, Martha Troop, was not a good speaker or a very good speech teacher either, I’m afraid.

However, Dr. Edyvean was both. The only point on which I might attack him was that he believed (as many professors do) that he could only give one “A”. This made vying for the “A” very aggressive. By this time I had taught English for four years with a speech class for three of them. I was no longer threatened by the faces in a small room. On virtually every speech, I got the only “A”. Now, in the speech classes I would teach, once I had survived this experience, we did not evaluate or routinely discuss each others’ speeches immediately after they were given unless I needed to point out some excellent device used in the presentation.

Here’s the scenario. Jack Rhoades has just finished his speech. Everyone in the class is a ministerial candidate who preaches every weekend and fancies himself a very good speaker. However, no one has shown the dedication required to produce the finesse of my performance, or the dramatic flair. Dr. Edyvean insisted on what he called “sandwich criticism,” meaning that negative comments were cushioned between compliments. All hands go up decisively. One is called upon. He slices Jack with a negative comment that, more often than not, is neither accurate nor kind. Then it is time for a compliment. No hands go up. (Now, I never told anyone in there that I was getting the “A’s”—how did they know?) Finally, a hand rises slowly, a name is called, and the lamest comment which could possibly be considered a positive statement is given. Immediately, every hand is again in the air.

On my last speech, a sermonette, I spoke about Christian love coming from the pulpit on Sunday. My final statement in conclusion was something like this: “So I say with every member of every congregation represented here from the bottom of my heart, ‘Love me. Can’t you please, please love me.’”

When I had finished, I stood at the lectern, awaiting comments. When every hand surged into the air, Dr. Edyvean came out of his chair at the desk at the rear, shouting, “NO! NO! . . . There will be no comments on that speech!” It is not only children and teenagers who can be cruel. But I cherish the professor’s respect for my talent and diligence as well as his kindness. He once told me that I had the most versatile voice of any person he had ever worked with. I believe this versatility is found in a release of inhibitions, and I found many of my students capable of such vocal range.

On early speeches when the fear is greatest, I set definite goals.  “If you do these three things, you will get an “A”.  When Ruby Nay at Southwestern went to the principal to complain about the grades given in my speech classes (I had two large elective speech classes by then in that small rural school), she selected the name of one senior girl who, she said, could barely manage a “C” in her senior English class but had received an “A” in speech. The girl was simply not capable of doing “A” work. She demanded that I be reprimanded.

Mr. Yoder called me in and explained the circumstances. I asked simply, “Bob, have you seen any of my plays.”

“You know I have never missed one. I come to all performances.”

“Have you ever seen a student get up on that stage and do something you knew he or she was not capable of?”

“Many times. Every time.”

“Well, Bob, praising them and rewarding them is the technique I use to get them to do it. I only see the quality and the potential, and I reward ingenuity and effort. But the most coveted reward is the “A.” It is only my assessment, but they come to believe in my assessment and in themselves.”

“Don’t worry about this, Jack. I said I’d talk to you, and I have. Thanks.”

Somehow, with the passage of time, I have slipped somewhat in my ability to draw out former students names on the spot, but I took care to know more than their names by rows. In high school I had a teacher (a Mr. Rhodes) who knew the names of the seats, and students soon learned that if they changed seats, he would call them by the wrong name and not realize it.  They did this often.)  I once gave a lecture in Richmond, Indiana—a long way from Shelby County—where a thin man with a full beard approached and asked if I remembered him. I responded with his name. “How do you do that, Mr. Rhoades?” he queried. “No one recognizes me. I was a fat kid in a wheelchair. I now walk without crutches, have lost eighty-five pounds and have a full beard.”

“I’m not sure, Steve,” I responded. “I guess it’s your eyes that haven’t changed.”

But I didn’t see the wheelchair. I saw the boy gaining confidence. That speech class performed Hello, Dolly!, and Steve was assigned the role of the drunken judge, probably because he could brace himself with the lectern and stand without his wheelchair. He had recently undergone an operation during break and was secretly learning to walk. He confided that, although he would not do it in rehearsals, he was sure he could walk from behind the curtain in the wings to the lectern. His parents did not know he could do this. (Reminds me of Heidi, you know.) So I had seen him walk two times—in performances. Of course I would remember him. He was one of the kids who tried for me to do things no one thought they could do.

*         *         *

Because I attended other school’s offerings of my favorite plays, I often knew every line that was altered or tripped up. This made me feel very reluctant to make more than subtle changes to scripts lest there be someone in the house that knew the script as well as I did, or as my students did when they went to see a show they had been in recently (and they loved doing that.)

This presented a real handicap when doing Shakespearean drama. Even professionals shorten them drastically. I tried to make the language “sound” Shakespearean when I simplified it, but I was reluctant to alter any well-known soliloquy. For this reason audiences often had some difficulty understanding the dialogue.

After my first attempt at Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, in 1969, Nancy McDaniel’s father met me at the door, “Mr. Rhoades, I thoroughly enjoyed that play—I didn’t understand it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.” The Shakespearean clowns carried the show for the groundlings in Shakespeare’s day, and for almost the entire audience in mine. I wouldn’t even consider attending a Shakespearean play without giving it a fresh reading first.

*         *         *

So I had become the minister of a small-town church, a job for which I lacked preparation, having been reared in another denomination altogether. This church membership was made up of persons with two different loyalties and understandings. Nonetheless, there I stood at the rear of the sanctuary to shake hands with each one as he/she left. When Margaret Smith, retired English teacher and world traveler, approached, she asked with some perturbation, “What are you doing here?”

I answered blankly, “Why, don’t you know? I’m the new minister here…:

“I know that!” she replied, But what are you doing here?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

At this point she leaned very close and looked deeply into my eyes, “Don’t you know that you are a born teacher?” And with a little nod that seemed to say, “There, I’ve done my duty,” she hurried away.

I believe the soul has the capacity to recognize truth instantly. Something in me was dumbfounded at the realization of what she had said and what steps I had taken in resigning my post. I remained as minister for only two years, but after the first year, I returned to the classroom because I missed being with teenagers so desperately.

I ran into Margaret Smith some time later when she had just returned from the Orient. She introduced me to her traveling companion as “the most charming man this side of the Mississippi.” Boy, the kid who grew up in a large poor family of hearty, hungry boys could hardly get through his dinner at the Brown County Inn lest some slip in manners would give him away.

Thinking of Margaret Smith brings to mind Miss Ethel, who also told me I was a born teacher. Before Charlottesville Schools consolidated with Wilkinson to the north, Ethel Harlan had been their librarian and senior English teacher. She was demanding and careful not to make mistakes. She taught me the fine points of grammar—she was a linguist who knew several languages—and in all the time I knew her I only found one instance when she erred. We were talking across the circulation desk when she brought up the subject of “Hoosierisms” in the plays. I mentioned a few of the most commonly distorted words, such words as “git”, “cuz” and “jist.” Then she casually approached the criticism she was aiming at. “I notice you let them say “wuz.”

“Wuz? How do you say it?”

“It’s “waz” (rhymes with Oz).

I looked alarmed as I went to the unabridged dictionary on its stand and looked up the word. Then I muscled the thing to the counter to show her the only given pronunciation. She was a bit taken aback, but she said, “Well, I’ll never say that again.” And I would be willing to bet she never did.

Miss Victoria was Miss Ethel’s sister, hence the use of first names. “Vickie” (only behind her back) taught Latin and government. She also was firm, but somewhat softer in her approach. I often shared class sponsorships with one or the other of them. I tell this only to show how precise they were. On one occasion Miss Ethel had left her billfold at school. A student found it and brought it to me. After I had locked up the building, I took the billfold to our custodian, Mary Powers, who lived nearby. When I got home I called Miss Ethel to tell her where it was. She was both grateful and appalled that she had driven home without her driver’s license. In a few days I received a thank-you card with, I believe, seventeen cents taped to it—precisely the cost of the long-distance call I had made.

Teachers used to be responsible for filling out the students’ permanent record cards on records day. Miss Ethel and I were often teamed up to do the seniors. I would take half of the alphabet and she, the other half. It required putting on the card 5 to indicate the number of days per week a class met and 55 in every square to show that each class met for 55 minutes. One’s hand felt ready to fall off very early on; so I, believing this to be a stupid waste of time, put a capital S in each square on the grid. She, however, would make the bottom part of each 5 figure, lift her pen and go back across the top (as we were taught so carefully in first and second grades. Of course, I would finish the A’s through M’s before she got to the Z’s—long before, and would offer to help her with her stack. Not only did she feel the need to complete her half herself, but she would stay to go over all of mine in case I had made mistakes in my haste. How I loved them both!  They were born to teach, did it with authority and loved doing it.

Now Reid Jones, the other government teacher, was another story. We sometimes clashed, and I was never very good at keeping my contrary opinion to myself. I recall that after one test Reid was relating in the teachers’ lounge that Karen Miller (top student, great musician, actress, drum major, etc.) had put some of her answers in the wrong spaces on the answer sheet, and Reid, a stickler for precision, had counted nineteen answers wrong. Livid, I rose from my seat, stated irreverently that “I, on the other hand, prefer to test my students on how well they have mastered the material, rather than on technicalities.”

And I left the room, seething.

*         *         *

Reid Jones had directed the last class play at Charlottesville High School before I appeared on the scene. My leading lady became very upset that people were unsure of their lines. She scolded me by saying that I would have to do what Mr. Jones had done the year before—tell them that if they didn’t have their lines by a certain time, I would cancel the show. You know, just really crack down on them.

My reply was that I hated to disappoint her, but that just was not my style. They were going to do this play in front of an audience no matter how unprepared they were. I chose to direct plays because I love to direct plays. I love everything about the theater. Everything that was my job would be done. Learning the lines was their job. She was angry with me and no doubt discussed it with Mr. Jones, but that play was quite good.

I also ruffled Reid’s feathers because I did not appreciate tradition. The class he had sponsored had chosen for their senior gift a set of grey-tan cyclorama curtains on a sliding rod and a standing door and a hanging window. No one would ever have to mess with scenery again. My response that I “loved making scenery” incensed him, and he insisted that the door must not be painted. It was finished plywood—natural, no stain—ugly, in my opinion. So I built two doors and painted them white.

Their only lighting was a six-bulb footlight that sat in the middle of the stage and two rows of fluorescent lights onstage that flickered the way such lights do. I wouldn’t have it. I sent two boys out to the wood shop to saw the footlights in two so that they could be balanced below the sight lines on folding chairs and aimed to a better advantage at both sides of the stage, not just at center stage. Onstage we hung yard lights and were able to switch them on and off.

The lights came back uncut. Did I have permission to make this change? So I brought a saw from home and cut them into two parts myself. If anyone objected, I never heard of it. One of my early musicals was at Charlottesville in that gym. I’m sure someone who had directed a class play to, say, one-hundred or so parents would be appalled to see the parking lot full and cars parked blocks away on the nearby streets. Even the bleachers were full.

There were several actors in small roles who just would not use a gym voice no matter how I pleaded and cajoled. That show, my first Oliver, got my first ever standing audience. The next day Reid approached me with these words: “Just three things—I couldn’t hear _____; So and So might just as well have stayed home; and ______ used little or no expression.” As he started to walk away, I said, “I feel sorry for you, Reid, if you could watch that difficult production with its many technical problems to overcome and have only those comments to make. Don’t you think I told ____ and ____ to talk louder every night? Couldn’t you see that even a monotone was a stretch for that bashful kid? You saw nothing to praise?

And he made that comment I have come to recognize as a left-handed compliment, “Well, the scenery was good.”

I didn’t know that I loved Reid too until he became ill one year in the new building and missed a lot of school. I ached when I looked in each morning to see if there was a sub in the classroom next door. Reid and I were so much different in our approaches, but Reid was, I believe, a “born” teacher. He taught with fervor and was a change factor in many lives.

Chapter 4

Some Insights from a “Born Teacher”

At Southwestern I had a student who was full of anger. He had been placed in the home of a prosperous family, but he was rebellious and his attendance was “spotty.” I gave him a failing grade in English 11. The next year there he was on my class roster again. I hurried to the guidance office to complain and demand his removal. Obviously, since I could get no work out of him whatsoever, he needed a different teacher. The other two teachers who had English 11 classes were very strict. I recommended (nay, insisted) that he give this boy to one of them.

“But he was really adamant in insisting that he be in your class,” the counselor offered.

“Well, that’s tough! He just wants an easy class. He is surly and he despises me. And while we’re talking, I want you to look at my class list objectively, look me in the eye and tell me that these were assigned randomly. I have not one student I had hoped for. I’ll tell you what. You take this list and give it to either of the other teachers and I’ll take theirs sight unseen.”

“Let’s stick with the matter of Wade. I don’t think you’ve assessed this right, Jack. He’s in a tough place in his life. Maybe you can help him.”

“How can I help him? He ignores me. He has never spoken to me voluntarily, I’m sure. But if you think it’s important, I’ll go along with it.”

“And you know I can’t change the class lists.”

I had been promised a job in Indianapolis at Howe High School and had informed the administrators that I was going to resign. When I went in to IPS to ask when I would be signing a contract, I was told there was no job. At this point in the Southwestern discussion, I read to Mr. Farris the following poem which I had written about that experience. It seemed appropriate to the situation.

A DREAM NOT GRANTED

The promised job, so right for me–
Why did I speak so blatantly
And dare to lift the reins of hope,
Accepting every feature, like a dope?

Do something physical, big man, so tall,
To make your power conceivable to one so small.
Don’t make me stand here wounded—you must know
I bleed from hurts I dare not show!

Step on me! Please don’t seem kind!
Kindness and lies I find
Vapid and ineffectual when
I know it was your pen
That made the fatal stroke,
Your booming voice that spoke.

You gave another what belonged to me,
And I must not become angry—
May not seem to be annoyed
About the dream you have destroyed.

From all the applicants inspected
I was, alone, approved, selected.
No job? The man downtown would have no say?
Well, tall man of power, you’ve had your way.

I’ll love the job I have been given,
Teaching my second choice—driven,
Heart and ego scraped and sore,
To ask for little more
Than to be man enough
To give dedication to the little stuff.

God, make me learn to see the worth
Of every little soul on earth.
And let me know it is Thy will—
That greatest Power—so I may thrill
To know that it is victory I meet
Because I walk this modest path—
And not defeat.
July 2, 1978

Wade moved to the back of the second row as soon as I had learned all their names and let them choose their seats. He moped. He had heard so many of my stories (and did I tell stories—especially in lit classes!) But one day in the hallway he caught me by surprise. He was standing beside Jeff, a graduate who had been a fine athlete. I had nodded a greeting to Jeff briefly when this young man stated rather bluntly, “I used to be an athlete. I was pretty good, too. Wasn’t I, Jeff?”

Jeff affirmed that he had had much promise in many track and field events. I felt somewhat elated as I walked away—as if I had just broken some invisible barrier.

The very next day the boy was in an auto accident on his way to school and was on the absence list. Later in the day I saw him in the hall outside the office and approached him to ask details of his wreck and inquire after his condition. He was expansive. When it was time for his class, he was not there when the bell rang. Soon he came in, and with all those junior eyes watching him, the only senior, he walked to his rear seat, started to sit and then said, “Oh, I forgot. This is for you.” And he walked back to my desk at the front of the room and handed me a carnation.

I was more than a little surprised, but I thanked him, went deliberately to my cupboard and took out a vase, crossed the hall to the water cooler and then put the flower on my desk. Class began and I forgot about it. That flower was a parting gesture, though I failed to recognize it as such at that time. I never saw Wade again.

Many years later in Greenfield, a tall senior boy in one of my speech classes came to my desk one day toward the end of the semester. He showed me a photocopy of a yearbook page and asked if I knew anyone on that page. I did a double take, “I know everyone on this page. Who do you know?” He pointed to the picture of the boy I just described and indicated that Wade was his father (though the last names were different.)

“Well, I lost track of him and always wondered what had become of him.”

“I’m not supposed to see him, but every once in awhile I go down to Shelby County to visit him. He remembers you. He’s had a really hard life. He’s only thirty-five, and already he has had two heart attacks. He said to tell you ‘hi’ if you remembered him.” And so I shared with the son the story I just told you.

A few years ago one of my students noticed that I diisplayed student art work in my room. I told him that most of it had been rescued from trash barrels on the last day of school over the years—art work rejected by the artists themselves. He set out to design his next project with a place in my classroom in mind. I don’t think he realized how pleased I was or how much I would cherish it. It was an unusual papier maché sculpture that won an award at an art show at the mall. He called it “Motley Crue,” but to me it was the masks of comedy and tragedy from the Greeks. When he brought it to me, I offered to let him keep the piece, since it had won an award, but he insisted that he had made it for me. It had a pink, marble look to it without the sheen. He kept the blue ribbon. Probably such an award should have stayed with the artwork, but I did not suggest it.

*         *         *

In the second grade my teacher was Miss Burke, a kind elderly teacher who met her demise driving the wrong way on the new divided highway between South Bend, Indiana, and Chicago. I believe she had never heard of a divided highway, and although nearly every car flashed its lights, honked its horn or both, she drove on toward her destiny. She loved me. I knew it. Not because she had loved my brothers, although she may well have done so, but because she made no attempt to hide it. She would call me to the front to lead the class in a song, and I have her message of delight on a faded old report card. “Jackie sings like a bird.” She also cherished my art projects. She seemed to feel that nearly every art work of mine was so good that she couldn’t bear to part with it. It would be an example for future classes. So she’d ask me if I would make a second one to take home. I didn’t make the second with the same delight as the first, which had been an act of love for my mother. Do you think I ever offered Miss Burke an art work of mine? Heck, no! I wanted all of them myself. I liked Miss Burke a lot, but I was selfish—especially, I wanted that Santa with the curled paper beard, so much like the one on her door which children passing out would inevitably run their hands over in a downward motion to make the beard of white curled construction paper strips flip back into curls again.

My junior English teacher, Miss Grace Lushbaugh, doesn’t quite fit in chronologically, but this is where her story jabs my memory.

*         *         *

Miss Lushbaugh wore a lot of black—a black coat that nearly reached the floor, black masculine shoes, and a black derby-style hat that was held on by a black scarf tied neatly at her chin. She moved a bit like a steam roller as she plowed through the hallways. Get out of her way! Eccentric! That’s exactly what she was, and emotional. She had her hair piled on her head and held in place with large dark plastic pins. I only saw it down once. When Evangeline rode her horse along the stream in one direction while her lover floated downstream in the opposite direction, she became Evangeline (in a pig’s eye). She let her hair fall across her shoulders and straddled her desk chair as if it were a palomino, and, reciting from memory, she galloped across the front of the classroom, tipping back and forth on the legs of that wooden chair.

She always told us we were to enter the classroom quietly and take our seats. However, one morning she was not at her desk as usual. Students took advantage of the situation to socialize a bit. The bell rang and out she sprang from a very small closet at one side toward the back of the room, crying, “Aha! I caught you!”

We were not surprised to read in the yearbook that she had her degree from Notre Dame, an all-male university at that time. We wagered she played halfback or tackle. But the most memorable experience (indeed, I have forgotten all the rest) came during the study of Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables. She assigned a two- or three-page paper on the character of Hepzibah Pincheon. Alas, we did not understand the vital importance of perceiving the depth of this woman’s soul. The day she returned the themes (the first such paper I had had to write in high school) she was a very disappointed woman.

She began to write a list of wonderful characteristics on the board as she expounded them, sometimes so emotionally that she was unable to hold back the tears. It was then that I captured the truth of the situation. There were events in her life so like those in the novel that she felt a strong kinship to that great, strange lady. I took notes galore. We would, I was certain, be asked to write this paper again with some passion.

What I gave Miss Lushbaugh the second time around was precisely what she had hoped to get. Her own ideas, juggled around a bit to disguise them, and a smattering of Miss Lushbaugh’s idiosyncrasies blended in. On the day she was to return them, she came to me with glistening eyes. Could she keep this paper as an example of a good theme? (There were no copy machines to assist one in 1952.)

I always thought it was ironic that I, who was to become an English teacher, studied under eight different teachers—a new one each semester—with lazy students who convinced each teacher that we had not had this material before. The effect was that we did the same introductory grammar work over and over. But in math, where I was hardly ever to use the material again, I labored under the same demanding teacher all four years, grateful to a degree because Miss Murphy was the best.

I remember three things from those years with Miss Murphy. First, she had five school dresses—a Monday dress, a Tuesday dress, a Wednesday dress, etc. It was long enough after the depression and after World War II that we would notice and think it eccentric.

Secondly, she had us put all the problems from the assignment on the board. I made sure I did the assignment and understood its concepts, but I did not do the first five or six problems. They were usually the easiest, and I had figured out how not to have to put one of them on the board. I simply volunteered for each of the first five problems. On the next one, I waved my arm up and down as if desperate to get that one. On the seventh one, I did not raise my hand—ever. And I was always called to do the seventh problem, which of course, is where my preparation had begun. I learned to manipulate people fairly early, especially brilliant people like my brother Danny, with whom I was only occasionally successful.

The last incident was more important. Because I despised study hall, I skipped out to work on scenery as soon as play practice began. For two to three weeks, I would skip my math homework, doing just enough to know I could do the others on the board if I got called. Miss Murphy soon realized what I was doing and that it was my dedication to drama that stood in the way of doing her thing. What do you think? In trig my senior year she suddenly began to take up homework. I think she watched to see if I had done it.

I had A’s on all my tests, but when the six-weeks grades came out, I had a ‘D’. I laughed as I handed her my card, saying, “I think there’s been a mistake.”

Very crisp was her reply, “Oh, do you THINK so? Look here in my gradebook. You have a zero in homework. Not an ‘F’—a zero. That ‘D’ is a gift. I could have averaged it out to an ‘F’. You are a leach, Mr. Rhoades. Any questions?”

Well, of course, I did my homework every day from then on, and I raised my final grade average to a ‘B’. However, when the next play began, I did not let my homework slide. After having done it every day for so long, I knew that if I only appeared without it one day, that would be the only day she would take grades and I would again have a zero in homework. Tough lady. I didn’t mess with her after that.

*         *         *

My sophomore year I had a semester of English under Mr. Barach. A large portion of that time was spent on speech. Now, I could act. I could be someone else on the stage, but I found it very difficult to project myself before a classroom full of my peers. Mr. Barach did a number of things I have spent a lifetime avoiding. He left each of us believing each and every day that he would be the next speaker. I was always prepared on the first day, and on every assignment he left my speech till last on the last day. The effect was that I suffered anxiety twenty-five to thirty times needlessly every week. Tremendous relief when another name was called, then the voice inside began to say, “Brace yourself, kid. You’re gonna be next. Here it comes. Get down. Hide behind the kid in front of you. Whew. That was close. You’re so lucky it wasn’t your time. Just relax, now. Look out! He is on his conclusion. You’ll surely be next….” You get the point. Only I never was next.

The result of this in my speech classes was that one week before any speech began, on the day the speech type was thoroughly examined and expectations spelled out, we formulated a speakers’ list. Each student got a copy, and each day when students arrived, the speakers’ names were on the board. Anyone who felt too traumatized or just wasn’t quite ready could draw a line through his name. That, at first, carried no penalty. But the name went to the top of the list for the next day. Usually the first day was filled easily with volunteers. This gave a lot of sample speeches for less accomplished speakers to pattern after. At first, I did exercises on days when there were not enough speeches to fill the class period. And in these exercises I made sure that anyone who had crossed out his/her name got to get up in front of the class briefly under some pretext or other. I made it fun—usually humorous and always insisted that everything be followed with applause—a generally accepted sign of success.

Another treatment I came to expect was that Mr. Barach would stop me several times. “Pull your shoulders back. Stand up straight and look us in the eyes. Now this time speak loudly and distinctly.” Honestly, I was never to finish one single speech in that room. But on one assignment, a radio speech, we went out into the hall and spoke into a microphone. Here I was in my element. I could be someone else. And I was Mario Lanza singing “Be My Love”; I was a sports announcer at a baseball game; I was the sound of changing stations; I was a news broadcaster; I was the Lone Ranger and Tonto. And I used the full three minutes I was allotted. When I came back into the room to hearty applause, Mr. Barach said, “I can’t believe that was you! I just really can’t grasp it.” He said the same thing to me in the hallway after he had seen me in a play, and I told him again, “It’s very easy for me to be anyone but me.”

I wonder whatever happened to Marilyn Moran, whose father taught at Notre Dame and who gave me the feeling forever that I was not a cute kid when she told another girl within my hearing as they walked behind me after school, “Jackie thinks he is so-o-o cute, but he is ugly!” I guess I was over-confident because I had been singing into a microphone since I was three and had to stand on a chair to be seen by the congregation on Sunday nights.

But this is an “embarrassing moment” episode later in Miss Carbeaner’s class, grade five. Miss Carbeaner was an excellent young teacher who had us prepare a newspaper about the Civil War period and paint a mural for the classroom that period.  I painted Stephen Foster sitting at an upright piano. About all the grammar I was exposed to by the time I entered college I had learned at that early age under Miss Carbeaner. Marilyn Moran and Patty Kish were in Miss Burke’s grade two class with me. Could they also be in their seventies? That’s incredible! When my son Danny was three and we were in the hospital waiting room because Margaret was there with her first incident of blindness with MS, Tammy’s grade-school principal, Lloyd Penrod, who was married to our home economics teacher, Mary Penrod, struck up a conversation with the kids. When he asked Danny his age and Danny told him, he replied, “You know, Danny, I used to be three.” I loved that line so much I sometimes use it myself. Well, Patty Kish used to be ten. And when we were eleven, Miss Carbeaner asked us each to tell the class our “most embarrassing moment.” When it was my turn, I just said, “My most embarrassing moment was when Patty told you about hers.” And I let my face turn red (I can do that at will, even today) and went to my seat.

This is Patty’s story: “I sat on the aisle at a front table in Miss Burke’s room, and Jackie Rhoades was her pet. I knew he was sweet on me, but you know how it is in second grade? You’re always in love with someone? Well, I was in love with someone else. One day Jackie went up to Miss Burke’s desk on some flimsy pretense, and on the way back to his seat as I glanced up at him, he just kissed me on the lips. (Ooh’s at this point from fifth grade boys who hated the thought of kissing a girl.) That’s right,” she emphasized, “right here on my lips. Well, I rushed up to the teacher’s desk in a huff and said, (and here she whined plaintively), ‘Me-uss Burke, Jackie ke-ussed me.’ And Miss Burke just smiled as if that pleased her and replied, ‘That’s nice.’ YUCK!” (Applause and laughter from all but me. I don’t remember doing that, however characteristic it seems. But I just felt certain that Miss Burke would have given that reply.)

At that time Miss Carbeaner said we could submit a poem for extra credit.  This was mine:

                                              WHO OR WHOM

Who or whom?
I do not know
When they come
Or when they go.
Who or whom?
That’s quite a question.
I don’t know.
Do you have a suggestion.

Miss Carbeaner thought it was too short for extra credit, so she had me read it to the class.  They voted unanimously for the bonus points.  Today, I might add a few lines, thus:
Now he and him do not confuse,
So I’d just substitute the he’s for who’s
And him’s for whom’s and then I’d see
The choice was easier for me.

Believe me when I say that Miss Caruthers was an altogether different story.  She made sixth grade a misery for many—none more than me. When Bill Denny took my love note away from Sarafay Landis, whom we both loved, and gave it to Miss Caruther, explaining that he had found it, she called me to the front of the room, put her rigid, bony arm around my shoulder to keep me from squirming and made me read that note aloud, pronouncing the next word for me at the slightest pause. It was a lovely note that was very hard to read in front of the whole class because it was so personal. It said great poetic things such as “I love you. Do you love me? Remember, you promised to marry me.” I don’t think I ever forgave either of them. I did my worst work for Miss Carothers. She taught math and gave me a terrifying ‘D’, my first ‘D’, convincing me that I lacked mathematical sense. I sat frozen in her icy classroom. My other memories of her include that although we heard rumors of her retirement every year, she never retired. I bet she’s still teaching. One day she sang for us—finally, something I knew I was better at than she was. She sang America, the Beautiful, I think, and her ancient voice sometimes cracked. I felt everyone exhibited a bit of a crooked smile as she warbled, proud of her vibrato, and everyone worked to squelch the desire to explode with guffaws, included the portrait of George Washington that hung on the east wall of her room. I never cared for history much, or politics, but I felt a kinship with the ‘Father of our Country’ after that. I love that particular portrait. It is as if he and I will always have this great secret at Miss Carother’s expense.

*         *         *

In the eighth grade at James Whitcomb Riley High School in South Bend, Indiana, I had a math teacher named Harry Woodard. I remember that he was extremely hirsute, and he proudly removed his shirt in class one day to reveal his chest and back. I remember thinking, “I can’t believe he’s glad that he’s so hairy.”

One day in class we had a very difficult problem. I was still positive that math was my weakest subject. Anyway, Mr. Woodard from his seat at his desk called up and down the rows asking for the answer to the hardest problem. I knew my answer was wrong because several other people had proposed it. When he got to me, he skipped to the next person. Finally, he had gone all around the room and no one had the right answer. Then he said, “All right, Jack, tell them the answer.”

When I gave my answer apologetically, he banged his textbook on his desk, saying, “You think you have one person who knows what’s going on and even he doesn’t know!”

I thought, “He can’t be saying this about me. I’m not good at math.” I felt so bad about letting him down that I never again set aside a page of problems he had assigned until I had checked and double-checked the answers. By the end of the semester, I was the best math student in his class, I did know what was going on, and he recommended me for accelerated math classes in high school. Math became my best and favorite subject. I sometimes become convinced that my students don’t hear what I say, even if it’s spoken with intensity; however, when I least expect it, I hear them quote me about something they felt was important to them. Aha!

*         *         *

When my two oldest children were small, Roy Trowbridge of Charlottesville became a friend, and his wife became our baby-sitter while Margaret taught school. Irene was wonderful. Our children’s grandmothers were in far-off cities, and she became that figure for them on a daily basis. When we went to pick the kids up, she would be sitting in her rocking chair holding the baby to give him ample time to awaken slowly. Our kids would never eat toast at home in the morning. Irene would ask them if they had had toast, and if they said no, she fixed the best toast in the world in a toaster that popped up to lay the bread right out on the table.

When Roy passed away, I preached his funeral sermon. I thought I could remain in control of my emotions because I had done a lot of work onstage that required control. However, when I said, “Roy was not only an elder in my church, Roy was my barber. He cut my hair every week. Roy was my friend, and he loved my children,” The last four words were choked and tearful.

What that taught me as a teacher was to notice how much more supportive parents of students became when they knew that I loved their children. If I could give young teachers only one piece of advice, that would definitely be it—love the children entrusted to you! You can’t fake it.

In the early days of Hancock County Children’s Theater—actually, right after the performance of our first show, Peter Pan—I was approached by the once-terrified child who had to overcome his fears in order to fly and whose parents had both been "my kids," Phyllis Wisehart Addison, who had won best actress award in my first musical, Lady in the Dark, and Dwight whose best actor award came after a comedic class play called Mumbo Jumbo. As he looked up at me with admiring eyes, young Scott said, "And this is the man who did it. This man right here made it all happen."

His dad confided, "He loves you, Jack. He really does. They all do."

I protested, "I don’t know how they could. All I do is yell at them. There is so little time and so much pressure that. . . “

"Well, they know your heart is in your work; it gives them heart, and they love you for it. I know we always did."

*         *         *

Thinking back to Harry Woodard, I guess it’s unfair that I should have thought it strange that he removed his shirt. Many of my students must remember a similar thing about me. When I was thirty-three, I bought a very expensive toupee. It made a drastic change in my appearance, and I wore it for three years. Then I deemed myself old enough to be balding and took it off for good.

I made a grand entrance wearing my “hair” for the first time one Sunday morning at the Wilkinson Methodist Church. I had warned people to be expecting it. The first person I saw was an older elementary teacher who exclaimed, "I love it! It makes you look twenty years younger!"

"Thanks a lot," I moaned, "That makes me nine."

Later she apologized, then asked if I was really only twenty-nine. I confessed to being thirty-three, saying, "So that makes me thirteen." But I assure you I was glad to look twenty years younger.

Somewhere near the beginning of each new class my practice was to take off my hairpiece, showing them how I really looked, and giving a simple ‘speech to inform’ on the subject of toupees. We laughed together about it, and I suppose I felt that they would then be less inclined to laugh about it behind my back in a way that didn’t include me in the humor. I think the point I’d like to stress is that I felt driven to be myself in the classroom since it was to be my daytime home for so many years of my life. I don’t recommend scowling. Being yourself does, however, add to your vulnerability. I have shed tears and I have shown anger. But I always follow through if I threaten, and I always apologize when I feel I might have been wrong. I heartily recommend those actions.

*         *         *

I would like to give some examples of positive reaction to apologies. In the Carthage school the office secretary was Gloria Plank, good humored, kind, efficient. One day I was in the office when she explained some regulation or procedure that I felt was unjust or shouldn’t apply to me. I sounded off and stormed out of the office. About fifty feet down the hall, I caught my bearings, turned around and retraced my steps. I think I caught her off-guard when I said, “Gloria, I owe you an apology. I know you don’t make the rules, and I know you have to enforce them. My anger was misplaced and unfair, and I had no right to speak to you the way I did. I am really sorry, Gloria. There is no good excuse for it. You have given me every reason to treat you with respect and I promise to do that in the future.” Her instant tears were a confirmation that I had hurt her feelings deeply and would most certainly have damaged our relationship had I not realized and admitted my error. We occasionally meet, after years of leading very different lives, and it is always a delightful occasion.

“My bad,” is what the kids say now. When my restored 1982 Lincoln Towncar with its reconditioned motor and brand new paint job was totaled by two of my students who went through a yield sign, hit me twice broadside and sent me off the roadway onto a patch of ice, and into a house that sat, on that day in 1995, too near the street. The driver approached me as I got out of my vehicle. “Are you all right, Mr. Rhoades? My bad. My bad!” I tried to calm him down a bit and asked him if he was alone in his car. “No,” he said, “Dane is with me.”

I hurried over to his lightweight car, which had gone into a chain link fence after the collision. There was Dane, unconscious on the passenger side, with blood trickling from his nose. Dane Isner was a children’s theater graduate and was in the cast of Hello, Dolly!, which was in rehearsal at the time. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t heard the ambulance siren just then. They took us all to the hospital. I was limping but essentially unhurt, but I couldn’t leave until they let me see for myself that Dane was all right. What a night!

*         *         *

The second example happened to me in the G-C cafeteria. I felt I had been overcharged and demanded an explanation, a breakdown of prices. I was angry and she knew it. By the time I had finished lunch in the teachers lounge, I knew I needed to apologize to that person who had to face me almost every day in that line, unless I avoided her and went to another line. Ours was an impersonal relationship, but she was a parent and a colleague of sorts and she deserved to be happy at work. When I walked up to her register, there was no longer a line. She said that she had figured wrong and handed me a quarter. I said something like this: “Well, thank you, but I didn’t come to complain. I came to apologize for treating you the way I did. This meal is a bargain. I couldn’t get it for this price anywhere, and there is no excuse for my being angry with you. I just had a talk with my students last period about their apologizing to people when they had been wrong or offensive, and I think I had better listen to my own advice.” She too had moisture around her eyes, but I’m sure she let go of the hurt I had caused. I had a reputation for being a kind person, and one needs to live up to his reputation.

On one occasion in a difficult class, I had assigned a set of speeches, trying to get them to think about their own images as they projected them to others. One girl seemed to be haughty and I felt she was sniggering at others while unprepared herself. When I felt she had overstepped the bounds of allowable behavior, I sent her out. The assistant principal, who had never once given me backup in a difficult first year, sent for me to hear her side of the story. I learned in the office that she had done nothing offensive, that her laughing was not at me or another speaker but at someone clowning across the room, and she had been prepared but just had said she wasn’t because she didn’t feel well. I took the response I had learned to use in that office with that man. I said something like this: “That is very different from what I thought was happening when I sent you out of the room. If what you say is true, and I assume it is, I owe you an apology. I make it a practice as a person as well as a teacher to be fair and just. It appears that I have been unjust to you, and I really regret that. Tomorrow I will apologize to you in front of the class for this injustice. However, if I was right and you are setting me up, I will know it, because you will not give your speech, and I will be made a laughing stock.”

In class the next day she gave a good speech, and true to my word, I made a serious attempt to set things right before we went on to the next speaker. The next speaker had asked to use the microphones in the auditorium for a musical presentation—something I encouraged. As we passed through the hall, the young lady was suddenly beside me, saying softly, “Mr. Rhoades, you didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to be fair,” I said, and the contention between us was gone. If she had been mocking me in class, the members of that class would know it without my insistence upon the matter. If I had been wrong, they would also know that. Do you think I did the right thing?

*         *         *

Another time, much more recently, I taught a girl who seemed pleasant enough but was full of anger. There was a new school rule against drinks being brought into the classroom for any occasion. When I seemed surprised as she pulled out a Coke can and began to sip openly, she became confrontational. I insisted that she put the Coke can away and stop arguing about the matter. She was sent to the office, not because of the rule she broke but because she would not stop arguing and allow me to get on with class. As she went out the door, she was still arguing, “Oh, sure. You can overlook it when John and Jim (not real names) drink in class, but not me. I’m a special case. I get kicked out of class big time.”

No sooner was she gone than I asked, “John and Jim, is this true? Have you brought drinks to class?”

“Yeah, but at least we hid them so you couldn’t see them.”

I was immediately out the door and heading down the hall after my student. I stopped her and explained that what I couldn’t tolerate was the way she abused the dignity of the classroom verbally. But I really felt, knowing others had gotten by with the drinking offense, that I should give her a second chance. “Why don’t you just come back to the room and we’ll start over.” She came with me, glad not to have to deal with the Mr. Jackson, who always gave me great support. After a brief statement about everyone’s obeying the rules in the future, I gave an assignment and put them to work. When she had had ample time to cool down, I attempted one on one to reestablish rapport. We came to friendly terms and I have enjoyed seeing her as a graduate of GCHS.

My final anecdote on this topic has a slightly different turn.  In the classroom one day I realized that I needed some forms, and I needed them immediately. I sent a student to the office to get them. The student returned without the forms, saying that Mrs. Reason would not give them to a student. Teachers had to get those forms themselves. I thought she could have sealed them in an envelope. Also, I really did not think I should leave this particularly testy class, and the office was at the other end of the building. Now, I should explain that I had taught Nancy McDaniels Reason at Eastern Hancock, as well as her older sisters, Sally and Mary, and her husband Roger. She had played the lead in Twelfth Night, my first attempt at Shakespeare on the high school level. But I was “ticked off, man”. A biology teacher, John Rihm, was standing at the counter, talking to Nancy in a conspiratorial manner. Without a word I stormed behind the counter, went to the appropriate cabinet and took out everything I thought I might need in the next millennium. When I looked up, they were both holding their sides. “Did I miss something funny?” I snapped with crisp sarcasm.

Mr. Rihm spoke for them both as he chucked, “I’m sorry, Jack, but neither of us has ever seen you angry before.” I was almost at the door before I too felt I had to laugh at the situation and with the laughter, the anger was dissipated. I think the need for any apologies was thrown out with our seeing the humorous side of the situation.

Since I mentioned the importance of getting support from the dean, I’ll just give a few examples here of times when I did not get support. On several occasions when I was new at Greenfield-Central and had large, really difficult classes, (The sophomore English classes assigned to me had lost their freshman English teacher to a heart attack midyear.  The substitute teachers who finished the year were literally ‘run out’.” I met with administrative resistance. The first matter was about chairs. I had more students than chairs in my classroom. After several days of complaining and requesting while my five extra students sat on a large table across the back of the room, I went searching on my own. I discovered that Mr. Rickett, several doors south of me had six brand new chairs lined up across the back of the room facing a side wall—obviously not in use.

I went to the principal, who was not the administrator who had been finding chairs for teachers, and explained my situation and asked why I could not borrow the unused chairs. I was told that Mr. Rickett had requested six extra chairs when he got new ones in his room (no one else got new chairs, I believe), and insisted that these must never leave his room. This would assure that all chairs in his room were the same type and color. Mine were a hodgepodge. When it became obvious that no one was going to approach this man about those chairs, I made an ultimatum—I don’t recommend this very heartily. I said that if I arrived at school the next day and my classroom had fewer chairs than the students in my room, I would take a sick day, and continue to do so until the situation became a just one.

Mr. Tidrow said, “Now, Mr. Rhoades, I don’t think that will be necessary. Just pick five students from your overflowing class and send them to the office to be reassigned to another teacher. I was floored to realize that chairs were so much more important than students.

*         *         *

A fight broke out in my room during the minutes at the end of class that were to be set aside for assignment preparation, as we had a six-period day, and many students had no study halls. Of course, most of these unchallenged students did have one. At any rate the ruckus was the worst display of anger I had witnessed in all my years of teaching. I had in my English 10 class a senior who was giant sized. I also had a much smaller, though very muscular wrestler. As the senior got up to sharpen a pencil, he bumped the wrestler’s chair. The wrestler muttered just loud enough that I could hear, “Watch it, queer.”

I called him down, but the senior seemed to ignore the comment and went on to the pencil sharpener. However, on his return trip, he stopped and delivered a crushing blow to the shoulder. I got there as quickly as I could, but not before the younger man had stood, plowed into the senior with five hard jabs in quick succession. The boy was laid back across a chair about three rows over as students scooted to get out of the way. I walked between them to the office to report the incident, and en route was pushed aside twice in their effort to get at each other again. Once I was pushed into a wall of glass classroom windows—plenty of witnesses. Fortunately the wall held.

Seated outside Mr. Rubush’s office, the boys had time to cool down. When they were escorted into his room, I had returned to my class. When Mr. Rubush approached me, he asked me to back down. The boys had convinced him that neither had “swung in anger.” They were merely a little miffed and each had “shoved” the other once and the matter was over. The boys were assigned to in-school detention (not the usual punishment for fighting) and later given an extra day for lying about the matter. But they didn’t stay in the detention room. They appeared again and again at my door trying to convince me that they had never had an altercation.

*          *         *

Some time later in the year I had another situation. The student involved was a friend of my son John’s and, though I had no awareness of his situation, he had been advised that with his next infraction, he would be expelled. Actually, when the problem arose, he was volunteering an answer, which few were willing to do in that class. When he started talking, I could tell he had a “chaw” of tobacco in his lip. I asked him to spit it into the wastebasket I was carrying to his seat. He jumped out of his seat, and in spite of my demands that he stay, he ran from the room.

Again, I was approached and asked to back down. I could tell by his manner that this administrator believed that any problem in my classroom was due to my weakness. He explained that Harold would be expelled, and without evidence, he was reluctant to do that. He suggested that I should have followed him and got the tobacco as proof. I said, “Punish him for insubordination. I ordered him not to leave the room.”

Finally, I said I would back down if I could talk to the boy in his presence in his office. What transpired there was this: I told Mr. Rubush that I had no idea that Harold was in trouble in other classes as he had been a model student in mine. I insisted that he was one of the most cooperative boys in the class. I protested that I couldn’t bear the thought that he would be expelled over this incident and begged that he be given another chance. Mr. Rubush conceded. When Harold returned to the class, he told the others, “I woulda been expelled, but Mr. Rhoades saved my neck.” And in this way, Harold saved my neck because instead of making me seem weak willed or unable to carry out a punishment, it made me appear to cherish justice (as, indeed, I do). Harold was, however, caught smoking in a shop class the next week and expelled for the rest of the term.

I discovered that in this school situation I was better off to deal with any disruption by using my own devices.

Sometimes students say something thoughtful or kind about another teacher. I always make a point of passing it on, even if it might sound “hokey” or insincere, because there is little enough thanks for teachers. On his last day at Southwestern, a young math/science teacher/coach name Marvin Guffin stopped by the stage where I was doing final cleanup for the summer. He had stopped, he said, to say goodbye because he wouldn’t be back the next year, having been hired by a larger school closer to his home. (Like me, he had driven some distance every day.) He told me that on the last day of classes he had asked his senior physics (or was it chemistry?) class who they thought was the best teacher in the school. “I had expected them,” he said, “to express some differences of opinion, but almost without pause, one of them declared, ‘Mr. Rhoades.’ The others agreed unanimously. I thought you’d like to know that, Jack.” Then he shook my hand and was gone.

Now I was certainly not the best teacher in that school. Some days I hardly taught at all. I tried to arouse an interest in drama in every student in unusual ways. I took time out to explain the costumes that were all around the room. I had drama students prepare short plays for assembly programs that were well accepted and gave the student body a chance to realize that good athletes were involved with the plays. Mr. Knarr once told me that I needed to realize that all my students were not interested in drama. I replied without blinking, “Ed, most of my students are not interested in participles and gerunds—not even in commas and semicolons. Shall I not give attention to those. Some attention to drama is indicated in the state guidelines for teachers of English. Do you think any teacher in this place gives it any weight? They even skip the plays in the textbooks most of the time.”

“Okay! Okay! You made your point. Okay?”

“Okay.”

*         *         *

In the summer of 1985 we received a phone call about the twenty-fifth reunion of the class of 1960 at Carthage. They called to tell us that our reservations were paid for. Although I had not been their sponsor, I had accompanied the class on their senior trip to Washington, DC, Philadelphia and New York City. I explained that Margaret and I had a conflicting engagement, but they were adamant. "Cancel it! We had our ten-year reunion without you, our twenty-year reunion without you, and we have no intention of accepting ‘no’ for an answer."

We canceled our plans, took my visiting sister-in-law along, and enjoyed ourselves immensely. I can’t know what impact I had on their lives. They marked a turning-point in mine. I forgot to tell them that. I had stayed at that small school (twenty-some graduating seniors) only two years until my strong sense of injustice forced me to move—the result of promises not kept.

Maybe some of the old-timers remember the old trustee system that administered the hiring and firing of teacher. Winning by election gave those who ran schools a political motivation. The year we went there many teachers had been fired for voting the wrong way in the election. (At least that was their story and I believe it.) I once had this discussion with the trustee’s wife, who was a staunch Democrat, the daughter of a judge, and who could hardly tolerate my independent status. She cornered by saying, "People say that we ask teachers about their politics. That’s ridiculous! Have I ever asked you about your politics?”

“No, Betty, you never have.”

“You’re a Republican, aren’t you?"

When I resigned after refusing to sign a contract that contained two broken promises and would require that I go to library science classes for a second summer when I had no intention of being a librarian, Bill called me into the office and read me the riot act for not being grateful to him for hiring me when no one else would. All I could say was that I felt I had been a credit to him and I certainly had earned my meager pay. Soon after that Margaret, who had signed her contract but not been given a copy (none of the teachers had), got a letter releasing her from that position, “her health being as advised.”

Charlottesville schools had urged Margaret to join me in the move, and we immediately went there and signed her contract. So they lost another compassionate and dedicated teacher to pettiness. Nevertheless, I felt I had to follow up on his actions. I went to the county superintendent and asked if he had a copy of Margaret’s signed contract. He confided that it had crossed his desk but that he would not swear to that in a court of law.

I then went to ISTA (Indiana State Teachers Association) for assistance in seeing that Margaret did not go on record as having been fired. I guess the ethics of the situation seemed unimportant to them, and as that township trustee had just been appointed to a political job on the state level, his position seemed powerful. I knew that the man was having financial problems with the school books because, at the end of my first year, he brought me a form for the library expenditures. I had been told there was no money. “Pop” Gardner told me then that there was $900 of tax money that could only be spent on the library. Bill had said, “Just fill it out with the same figures as last year,” and when I looked it over, I was to show that I had spent exactly $900.

Well, I did as he said, but when school began in the fall, I began to spend “my $1800” on the library without asking permission. Not one of those bills was paid while I was the librarian. I later heard of teachers whose teacher retirement had been deducted from their pay but never sent in to the state. When I retired in 1995, I had to prove that I had been employed in Carthage in the 1960-61 school year, as my payments had never been made. Luckily, I was listed in the Carthage paper as a faculty member on several occasions that year and there was a large picture of me in the dedication of Carthage High School’s first yearbook.

But when I was refused consideration by ISTA in this matter, I decided they were not MY association, and I never again paid a dime for membership in that organization for Margaret or me. Soon thereafter the ISTA memberships were tied into NEA membership, so I disassociated myself from them also. I guess I am lucky that I was never involved in a lawsuit, huh?

At the class reunion there was one man, Joe Foust, that grinning, blond, blue-eyed kid, who insisted that we sit with him and his wife. I had really liked him as a senior in composition class, and I must have told him several times a week that he would have to learn to spell in preparation for college. He would always insist that he was not going to college. My answer was always the same: "Joe, you can’t possibly know that."

Joe Foust was, by the time of this reunion, the president of two corporations in Dallas and had flown to the reunion in his own jet. You see, he did make it to college after all. He had told me in church once that he could now spell nearly anything; he was in pre-med at that time. I saw him later in a hospital where he was working. He had not gone to medical school, but was still hoping to. He told my sister-in-law that night that he felt he could not be the person he had become if our lives had not crossed at that important juncture in his life. In her inimitable way, she told him he ought to give me half of his salary. But it was quite enough for me to know that my being a teacher had made a difference and perhaps had enabled Joe to realize the potential that I knew was there before he did.

But Mike Watkins wasn’t there. I had hoped to see him. One of the sad things about the teaching game is that most of those kids just leave and you never see them again. Some of the others who weren’t there I have seen from time to time. It’s not so much a matter of how they’ve changed as realizing how much we are the same.

One fascinating fact that I should like to share is that so many of the students in that now-defunct, seemingly very insignificant little school have gone into the world and made a difference. There were only about twenty-three graduates in each of the two graduating classes, but they became teachers, executives, farmers, good citizens, and one became a Broadway actress (Pam Hunt had been our next-door neighbor; she and Jeannine Terhune, both to be seniors in the fall, stayed with a very pregnant Margaret while I chaperoned the senior trip in 1961). Among other things, Pam directed the Hasty Pudding Review at Harvard for many years. Because David Ruby had been his personal page for several months, Birch Bayh, then a state senator, consented to give our commencement address for his class. David, Marvella, Birch, Margaret and I sat together at the senior dinner.

*         *         *

It was customary at Carthage to make sure the senior play had a part for every student in the senior class, so I found one that did. (If it didn’t, the sponsor had to write in parts.) Now, Billy Muir was ever so outgoing on the basketball court, but he simply could not get up in front of a class. Mrs. Lord (Latin and English 11) told me that she once got him to give a speech by having him come in after school and turning her back to him while he gave it. I did something similar. The first week of rehearsals it seemed as if he would not take any part. David Ruby and Jimmy Ellis tried to shame him by asking if he wanted us to get someone from the junior class to do his part. He was sure he didn’t want that, and he began to convince himself that he could do it. One week of rehearsals were in a basement classroom at school. During that week, Billy stayed in the hall and listened.

The next week we moved into the Community Center auditorium. The whole cast stayed onstage most of the performance. It was a courtroom drama, and Billy sat on the jury. We thought he might want to sit in the first row of the audience and give his lines from there for a few days, but he knew that would mean that everyone would be facing him, whereas if he sat behind the jury onstage, he would be safe until there was an audience. And I believe almost everyone in Carthage came to see that play because no one could quite believe that Billy Muir would come out onstage, much less say a word. Did he fool us! He must have realized that the best way to be inconspicuous was to do what everyone else was doing. And after the hand he got on opening night, the second night was a cinch. There were several couples in that class that married and have remained together all these years. Billy married Judy Harrold, a vivacious, talkative, delightful girl. She was, I believe, his girlfriend for years. I remember the horror of walking into the typing room one day to find her unconscious on a bookkeeping table. She remained unconscious for several days, in part because her doctor, (Dr. McNabb—in those small towns, the doctor was a folk hero, trusted and adored) went to Florida on vacation without putting another doctor in charge. When they figured out her problem, they put a paper bag over her head to make her inhale her own carbon dioxide; and she carried a paper bag with her at all times for awhile after that.

I think a major reason for the high success ratio in small schools was that the parents and community members were so involved in the children’s lives. We “wasted “ a lot of time in English classes planning ways to raise money for the senior trip and finalizing details for the prom, and they all worked on those things. The major downfall that I see in the system was that so many of the “mill kids” dropped out after the eighth grade. My eighth-grade classes both years were in the high forties. Only half of any class would finish high school. That’s appalling to me. A few eighth graders couldn’t read at all. I remember one boy who just made what he thought looked like words on a spelling test so no one would know he was illiterate.  Of course, they didn’t look anything like words.  To hold his attention during spelling tests, I told him to listen to the initial sounds, and if he got the first letter right, I’d count that.  He never got beyond four or five out of twenty.  Our education system has come a long way, I think, in making opportunities for kids like these, although many still fall through the cracks for one reason or another.

Another member of the class of 1961 who stands out in my memory is Judy Kennedy, whose strong will and keen mind have enabled her to overcome the tragedy of polio. When I arrived at Carthage, Judy was a junior, and the only juniors I had were in my study hall. She first attracted my notice when a student rushed into the library to tell me that… “Judy Kennedy has taken a fall in the hallway near your door, and she won’t let anyone pick her up. She said ‘Get Mr. Rhoades.’” So I picked her up; we checked out that she was unhurt, and with the aid of her crutches, she went on about her day, as did I.

But the story I remember best was the next time I picked her up. We were on the senior trip in New York City, and the class had assembled to wait on the subway train. Judy began to cry a bit and whimpered, “My doctor said I am not supposed to ride on the subway.” I had a choice to make—abandon the rest of the class, already loading, or insist that she get on the subway. I decided on the latter. By this time the others were finishing the boarding procedure, and it was our turn. I held her right arm, but as we stepped into the opening, the door began to close. I put my right foot out as one would for an elevator, but this did not deter the left door, which closed on her foot. I pounded that door by reaching across her back, and it miraculously opened meekly to allow us to get on. Every eye was on us as she sobbed loudly. Her foot was bruised only slightly and the skin “skuffed,” but she was wailing, “My doctor says I am not ever supposed to ride on the subway.” I was sure all passengers thought I was pretty incompetent, as did I.

I sat beside her to calm her down after I had rubbed the bruise and determined that the skin was not broken, nor were any bones. Soon it was time to get off the car. I had learned my lesson. I made the others wait while Judy and I got off first. Soon we realized that the only way out of this dimly lighted place was via a long escalator. (These were pretty new in 1961, and of course, Carthage or nearby Knightstown—even Greenfield and Rushville, the county seats—did not have such a thing.) Judy neared hysterics as she wailed, “But my doctor says I can’t ride on an escalator.” Those disapproving spectators were close behind us.

Again, I chose to ignore her doctor’s orders. (Was there an alternative?) I lifted her onto the bottom step easily and felt relaxed until I looked back as we neared the top and realized that we were at the head of a mob that would run us over as soon as we reached the street level. I had never seen an escalator more crowded, probably because people who are used to them climb instead of standing still. It was lucky that the escalator was a long one. That gave me time to collect my wits beyond thinking, “Jack, you idiot, you should have waited to load her until last.” As we reached the top, I took her by the waist with both hands, saying calmly, “Just hang on, Judy.” Her metal crutches were the kind that fit over the wrist and hang, self-supported when at rest. I lifted her easily to our left at the top of the escalator and watched the crowd swoosh past, staring at the youthful teacher and the tearful young girl (who in reality looked older than I did—no one in New York believed me when I claimed to be the sponsor.) After that, Judy traveled everywhere by taxicab, accompanied by the first-year business teacher who chaperoned the girls because Margaret was too far along in her pregnancy to travel.

In the late nineties, a member of the class of ’60 tracked me down at my home in Lexington, Kentucky. Richard and his wife, Brenda Grigson Jackson would be celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and they wished to reenact their wedding and renew their vows. All their attendants would be there. Would the minister who married them consent to do it again? He knew how to tie the knot ‘real good.’ I consented and enjoyed another reunion. Brenda was younger than Richard and was, I believe, a sophomore at Charlottesville when I left Carthage and first taught her.  It was so enjoyable to be a part of this remembrance.

A few years ago my older son, John, had car trouble on the other side of Indianapolis. It was only a few miles from the home of one of the closest friends I ever had–one who taught me a lot about open acceptance of people. I mentioned him in the preface to this book. While John and a friend fixed the car with parts I paid for, I called at Dick Merritt’s home.  As it turned out, he was at work on a summer painting job, and his wife Pat wouldn’t let me leave before he arrived. We hadn’t even talked on the phone for over ten years.

When he got there just before dinner, he let out an exclamation of happy surprise. Then he said, “This is so strange, Jack, but…” and then he stopped.

“But what, Dick?” his wife urged.

“Oh, nothing. You wouldn’t understand.”

“You started this. Now spit it out. I hate it when you do that.”

He said, "Well, when I said my prayers this morning, I said, ‘God, it sure has been a long time since I’ve seen Jack Rhoades.’ And here you are. I can’t believe it!"

I guess when a friendship is strong enough to last for eternity, God makes us move on, knowing we don’t have to nourish it any longer. These associations, I think because they are marked with mutual deep respect, pick up where they left off without any doubting or proving. When I walked into a crowded room years later for his party of retirement after forty years of teaching and being an athletic director, he had been gravely disappointed that his aged father had not made the trip from southern Kentucky, and he had no idea Margaret and I had planned to be there. Instant tears glistened in his eyes. Dick Merritt had been my best man in June of 1958; I was his best man in August of the same year. My poem, "Broken Windmills," written in l977, was about this friend during a difficult time which he handled well and about adversity, which he overcame.

          BROKEN WINDMILLS

My dear best friend from youth,
May I just speak in truth
About the shock you gave
When you appeared so grave,
Feeling life was rotten–
You who’d often gotten
Stern when I was passive,
And put your arm, massive,
On my slender shoulder,
Making me feel bolder
In the face of trouble
That seemed more than double
What it was really worth.

Deep-rooted in the earth
You were a source of pow’r–
My awesome windmill tower!
Now pains of deepest wrong
Have left you less than strong.
Still, quick to smile, bracing,
Turning windward, facing
Life squarely in the eye,
You muster strength to try.
Water yet is there
And wind enough to spare.
And you, sad and broken,
Your two blades, a token,
Do the work of many,
Hardly pumping any.

But there is life in you
If someone only knew–
Some carpenter who’d care
Enough to make repair–
And polish ev’ry blade
And whirl it, unafraid.
I listen, weak,
To hear you squeak
And cry in pain.
I wish again
That with a snap
I could just scrap
All that’s been done
And put some fun
In your bright eyes.
With clever lies
That, meant to tease,
You’d naught but please.

Then you, grand tower,
Would generate power,
Would be once more
The man of the hour.

I’d like to mention at this point that in Dr. Sutton’s poetry class at Ball State University students were required to write a paper about our poetic experiences each week. I have no idea what other students in that class did for that assignment, but I chose my favorites from the pages of poetry assigned that week and discussed what they meant to me, and I composed some poetry of my own. For two days I tried to look at everything I saw on my way to and from Muncie, taking the back roads when I could and looking at the countryside with the eyes of a poet. I stopped many times to write down something that I thought could be the basis for a poem some day. One of the items was a broken windmill that was moving a little in the wind. I wrote the poem several years later. Beside the list Dr. Sutton had written, “What will you do with these?”

One of the items mentioned on the list was a huge dead ‘possum’ that someone had picked up and draped over a country stop sign. The temperature was in the high ninety degrees and few cars were air-conditioned. My Volkswagen needed all the windows cranked completely down and the sunroof wide open, but, after one trip, I learned to stop quite a distance ahead of that stop sign, roll up windows and close the sunroof against the awful stench. I wasted no time getting off that road onto the highway. If that was poetic as I suggested, I have yet to use it in anything.

The last item on the list was a huge fire at the northern edge of Greenfield. A construction company was burning trees they had bulldozed down and dragged beside and on top of a white bungalow which seemed to be being burned as it stood in good, usable condition. It was raining as I stopped to make a notation. The next week I submitted this poem, which he then asked me to read aloud to the class.

        FIRE DANCE

The grove is gone!
Those stately oaks that marked the spot so many years
Are mowed as grass is mowed
And burn in two gigantic grass fires.
The grove is gone!

In time the water tower for which it bowed
Will stand as tall
And mark the spot another way.
The stumps are burning and the great oak logs.
The grove is gone, and gone each trace
That might have told one who has not, as I have,
Watched the pace of mighty ruin,
"This is the place where stood the grove."

The flames, like passionate, red-skinned women,
Leap and bend
And, in an elemental rite,
Send smoke signals to their rain god
Whose power will not concern the folks
Who build this tower for more dependable supply.

The dancers bow low,
And through the shimmering vapors of their heated passion,
The slowing passerby can see among the logs
A hulk of a house that once was there,
A restful haven beside a grove of trees.

The grove is gone now–and the dwelling.
A swelling of the flames quickens the tempo.
Pain of intense heat reaches the roadway.
"Move on!"
The honking, hurried motorists protest.

Their blatancy disturbs my meditations,
And as they speed toward destinations,
Their whirring tires splash road mud in my face.
The drumbeat of the wipers is a witness
To the ritual my mud-streaked windshield
Hides from view.

A single, singing tone of invited air,
Higher and higher,
Marks my return to the pace of the moving highway.
I dispel the drummers with my thumb upon a knob.

Awareness awakens!
Only there on that short stretch have droplets come,
A blessed benediction upon the barren plain–
Cooling rain.
The grove is gone!

*         *         *

I sometimes think school boards and administrators don’t realize what simple creatures we teachers often are. They may choose to deal with us in devious ways. In 1967 when our Tammy was born, I left Charlottesville–by then called Eastern Hancock after its consolidation with Wilkinson High School in the northeast corner of the county—for a job nearer Ball State University where Margaret and I would be completing our Masters degrees. The time seemed right for a change because Margaret, who was always reluctant to make big changes, had taken a pregnancy leave of absence for a year. And while Mr. Glenn, superintendent, was in Europe with Ball State University classmates, the board decided to fire him and set aside all plans for a new building. I immediately resigned my post to accept a position at Lapel High School, where Jeannine Terhune from Carthage was teaching vocal music. The job paid $1000 more per year, which was a large increase in 1967.

A few months later a member of the Eastern school board asked me what had most affected my decision to leave that place. I answered, “I believe the most significant factor was that no one asked me to stay.” I loved that place and its inhabitants. Mr. Ed Knarr, perhaps the fairest man of power I ever knew, had become principal. Mr. Orahood had moved to a middle school in the Greenfield-Central rural area (the “Central” part of the name came from Hancock Central, which had recently consolidated with Greenfield High), where he served with distinction until his retirement. The next principal, from the outside, was there for only one year. Ed was a biology teacher and coach who had called me for advice when he was offered the principal’s post while I was teaching at Lapel. We had been neighbors, and he thought my perspective as an insider/outsider would be valuable.

The school’s most valuable asset was that team of sisters, Victoria and Ethel Harlan, who had served long terms in the Wilkinson community prior to the bitter consolidation. They were firm, and Ethel often spoke for both of them. She had nearly convinced Ed that the only hope for an end to the nasty political nature of this consolidation was to bring in someone from the outside and definitely not to hire a man from one of the two schools.  I felt, however, that an outsider would flounder and be cremated and useless before his first year was over. This would be our fourth principal in four years. Ed, I ventured, would know of all the enemies; his wife’s influential parents were natives—an enormous plus; and Ed was all backbone (and nose—behind his back he was known as “Nose Knarr.”) I once went into the first floor boys bathroom and discovered someone had created a caricature of Mr. Knarr’s head. Subsequently, student had added length to his nose until it went all the way around the room. He was short of stature but his skin was tough. He may have known it was there. I doubt that he ever knew I mixed matching paint after scenery work one night soon after and painted it out. Obviously, he took my adviceand accepted the job and proved me right. He was a dedicated fixture there for years until a heart attack took his life too soon, far too soon.

A Digression

I believe it is a blessing that I am somehow able to envision future successes in the admirable traits of even the most recalcitrant student. Teachers need to realize that those young persons grow up to be the parents and leaders of the next generation, and they remember those who treated them with respect. Those brilliant few will move away to conquer the world. The others will likely stay to praise you, assist you, or curse you and block your way.

*         *         *

In the meantime, school was set to begin on the fifth of September, right after Labor Day, which was my birthday. I have never been big on birthdays and often lacked patience with students whose parents thought they should miss rehearsals for the birthday of any member of their family. I sometimes have reminded actors that in high school and college, I never missed a rehearsal of a play in which I was to perform. My birthday fell at a bad time for our family of seven children whose need for school clothes in those years following the great depression used up all the money, and few people had any credit nor would they have considered purchasing anything they didn’t have the money to buy. So in bearing the burden of that responsibility, my parents overlooked the fact that it was my birthday year after year. I was not a child who could remind his family (as my children usually have reminded me) that his birthday is next week…next Tuesday…tomorrow….today. With my children, I always used the line from Our Town first thing on a birthday, “Where’s my birthday girl (or boy)? Where’s my birthday girl?”

On more than one occasion, I waited, thinking they would surprise me with a cake or something, only to give up finally and begin sobbing. "What’s wrong with Jackie?" someone would ask. And then it would be out. They would be sorry, but…

On September 4, 1967, God must have said, "Enough of this!" Because He gave me a birthday bundle that compensated for all time. We named her Tamara Marie, and she has been a blessing indeed. When Tammy was two weeks old, Margaret was asked to substitute teach for a day. At the end of the day, the principal, who knew that Margaret delivered her children easily and recovered quickly, asked her how she felt and if she thought she could return to work the following week on a special assignment for the year. She did this; Mr. Knarr became her principal; Mr. Glenn proved that his firing was illegal, and his contract was renewed; dignitaries broke ground for a new building. I drove thirty minutes to Lapel each day, Margaret drove twenty minutes to Eastern, and our children enrolled in Riley Elementary School in the Greenfield school district. Keeping up with three school corporations’ activities was just too complicated, and the expenditure on gasoline and tires was using up the extra salary I was earning. The next year I returned to teach at Eastern. The following is a poem I wrote about Tammy as a child.

           PERFECTIONS

What is perfection in a child of nine or the?
Is it her desire to please adults
By getting A’s and forming letters perfectly,
  Spelling correctly
     Brushing her hair
       Staying clean
          Talking quietly or not at all
             Smiling at everyone
                Playing at excellence
                  Reading constantly
                     Helping Mother
                        Learning through doing
                           Studying ballet and tap
                              Working at gymnastic feats
                                 And playing the piano by the hour?

Is it becoming more beautiful each day?
If so, then here she is:
Her name is Tammy,
And, I bet you’ve guessed already,
She belongs to me, child of my old age.
Her teacher says, "If I could draw a composite
Of qualities and traits
That make a student perfect,
I would draw Tammy so closely
That no one could miss the resemblance.

Last year her teachers made a chart
They showed to all the parents.
It had a space by each child’s name
Filled with suggestions for ways to improve.
They said they had great fun preparing it.
Suggestions flew from both,
And they wrote fast until each name’s space was full
Until they came to the space marked "TAMMY’!
Each one, they said, looked at the other,
And neither spoke.
And there it was upon that chart–
A blank where their suggestions should have been.
It makes one wonder, doesn’t it,
What is perfection in a child of nine or ten?
It’s hard to tell–
Perhaps it’s Tammy just being herself
And doing everything, just naturally,
Very well.
                                   December 1977

For some reason while they were growing up there was more distance between myself and my older son John than with the other kids. John chose friends he knew I wouldn’t approve of much and defended them. At six an older neighborhood boy convinced him to get money from his mother’s purse, and they rode bicycles into town. John was shaky on his bike and certainly not ready to adventure out along a highway. In order to make sure they didn’t get discovered by Kevin’s father, they went some distance out of the way and took twisting, narrow Morristown Pike into town. They bought a supply of darts at the now-defunct Danners dime store, then went a mile down Main Street to get a soft drink from a machine at the A & P and return to Bowman Acres by way of Franklin Street Road, a straighter, less-traveled route of country roads..

When John came home, he had a ten, nine ones and three quarters to replace the twenty he had stolen. I took him by the hand and headed for Kevin’s house, looking for the lost quarter the whole way. When he rang the doorbell, the mother answered. I asked for the darts John said they had bought, explaining that I was going to make him return them to the dime store so he could return her money. Her boys were in the background saying, “You can’t take those; those are our darts. John didn’t pay for those.”

Then we walked home, got into the car and drove to Danner’s. I made him explain to the manager why he had to return the darts that had been bought with stolen money. There were three that had bent points and could not be returned. Then I drove up to Kevin’s house and let John out, explaining that he should ask for Kevin’s mother, and return the money and the bent darts. Margaret and I became close friends with that fine lady, and John, while he had other problems that got him into trouble, seemed not to be tempted to take things that didn’t belong to him.  I think iit is rewarding to know that, as an adult, John is such a friend to me and such a reliable person to all of his friends.

As John got older, say sixteen, he began to carry a book of my poems around with him. He must have memorized some of them—at least one about himself and Danny.

           DANNY AND JOHN

Danny is four.
Fast-action toys
Are anything within his reach–
And hardly anything is not!

Coke-bottle bowling pins,
Spray-bottle guns,
Box-car rides and banisters
Are fun to him.

Tears and anger
Accompany paper airplanes
If daddy flies them better
And meet the mention of Pizza Hut
If Daddy says no.

When he gets tired,
He cuddles–
He spots a place beside me on the couch,
Dashes, dives, and, with great accuracy,
Fits.

If you’d like to borrow him
To add some noisy joy
To the end of your day,
He’ll return your love freely.
But let me warn,
He’s like a doll
That’s somewhat predictable–
He drinks; he wets.

Ask John,
Whose bed he scrambles into
Almost every night.
John knows his regularity!
John is thirteen
And likes to sleep
In warm, dry comfort,
But even he forgets
When love comes
In blond locks
And tattered socks
And fits into whatever space is left.

What comfort to be four
And Cuddly
And always welcome–
Or thirteen and loved so much.
                                      1976

Snow was everywhere the day John and I got into the car to make a run to the grocery store. The motor whirred into action. A child’s voice called, “Hey, Dad! Wait! Look!” There stood Danny at the top of our front embankment with a scoop shovel, which he placed between his legs in such a way that he could sit on the scoop and hold onto the handle as if it were part of a wagon. Down the hill he came toward the car, grinning from ear to ear.

John, from the driver’s seat, looked over at me, shook his head and quoted the line, “Coke bottle bowling pins.” It must be tremendously exciting to be a writer and hear other people quote words you have written in such a manner as to indicate perfect understanding of their meaning.

This might be as good a place as any to include a poem I wrote that mentions all of my children. The occasion for it, a policeman shot down in the line of duty, is described in the poem.  Our home in Bowman Acres in Greenfield, the one we brought Tammy and Danny home to when they were born, was beside a creek that ran along the side and back of the yard.  On the other side of that creek was a much larger house, home to the hospital administrator and his family, the Morrises.  Barry Morris was the director of A Delicate Balance, in which I played Tobias, the main character.  This event followed closely upon the death of my father, Earl McKinley Rhoades of South Bend, Indiana, at the age of eighty-five.

           BED CHECK

The day is done.
Each task is set in its place–
   Completed
      To be done tomorrow
           Put off–
And I can take my rest.

I climb the stairs and know that all is well
But, just the same, out of habit,
I check each bed to see that my little world is quite secure:
Tammy looks serene but takes her mask of seriousness
To her land of dreams.
Lori leaves it all behind and seems to sing.
John looks pale–he wasn’t well today.
(He’s hardly ever ill, but this new flu is relentless.}
Danny sleeps untroubled
As if remembering that tomorrow he’ll be master of a new cat–
His only birthday wish since ‘Shakesbeard’ went to sleep a week ago.

Margaret waits up for me, and she shuts out the light.
As she drifts off to sleep, I sift through troubled thoughts.
I tiptoe into the baby’s room
To look at tiny Lori, first and only then–
My first "bed check" upon awakening in the night
And wanting reassurance.
She seemed a miracle, breathing all alone
Her faultless motor never missed a beat.
Knowing all was well and full of pride and joy,
I went to bed again. Soon I slept.

But tonight, though everything is right here,
I can’t escape my thoughts.
I see Jerry and Barry’s father but a few years past
Checking the beds in the house next door,
And I snap to wakefulness!
His children are grown and have lives of their own;
Yet one bed must be forever empty, a hero’s bed.
How dare anyone murder the boy next door!
(Though we have moved, he will forever be the boy next door.)
This villainy haunts my bed-check hour!

I scarcely know I’ve slept, but somehow in the magic of slumber,
I am a boy again, in a house long since torn down,
And I awake and am afraid at night.
I slip to the floor to run to the safety of another bed nearby
And stop and see I am a man, at home now, standing,
All the glory of my day set aside, grieving
For I cannot, even in my dream
Run off to my daddy’s bed. He’s gone!
His bed forbids me come to it.

What was it about my father?
He was there! That’s what it was!
He was always there: like Tammy, too serious; like Lori, serene;
Like John, rarely sick; and like Danny, the master of his world.

O grieving Earth,
What loneliness wells up in you at bedtime!
O divine kingdom,
What treasures we give up to you
O Thou merciful God,
Refresh me now and let me sleep,
And Mama too, and Barry, and all those
Who, in the freshness of parting,
Cannot sleep at bedtime.

*         *         *

Probably the most successful play in the new auditorium at Eastern Hancock was Hello, Dolly! Shortly after the sold-out run of that musical, I attended a school board meeting for the first and only time during those thirty-seven teaching years. I suppose if I had not happened in, I might never have known their feelings. What item of business they were discussing when I entered, I will never know, because when the president realized that I had taken a seat among the visitors, he said, "Gentlemen, Mr. Rhoades is here." Whereupon they all rose and passed me around their conference table to congratulate me upon a spectacular performance. The architect, I think of him as Gloria and Mary Camplin’s father, had once told me that he regretted that he had not been able to give me a "working stage."

My reply had been, "I hope you’ll come to Hello, Dolly! to see how we make that ‘non-working’ stage work." Students had helped me hang pulleys to I-beams and build wagons to make the show move the way it was designed to.  My counterweight, as I recall, was a paint can full of cement, of which I had read in a stagecraft book.  I wouldn’t advise that!

I should not move on from there without remembering Susie Davis. She was Dolly. She was the reason the show was sold out. As a freshman she had tried out for the children’s play, The Sleeping Beauty. She had talent; I could see that. After the others left, she asked me if maybe there could be a part for a fat fairy. I didn’t react, but I thought there was. Her older brother, Jerry, a bright kid who could sing and act and was soon to be Fagin in Oliver, was a senior. I asked him what he thought about Susie’s idea. He said, “Why not? If she’s up to it.”

I told him that I thought that anyone who was acting all the time really ought to have some training. What I meant was that Susie was a natural comic and people liked her. She threw the shot put too. So she became the yellow fairy (the most unbecoming color for a large person). Once she began to lose weight in preparation for Dolly (her determination, not mine) during her senior year, I brought out and showed her that fairy costume to inspire her. It really was very large. Anyway, as each fairy arrived, she was announced by a page at the top of a “cake” staircase that I had had the students carpet. As music played, each fairy did a graceful turn and then floated (fluttered?) down the staircase, flitting as a fairy might. When the yellow fairy appeared, she did an awkward, bumbling turn and fell down the staircase as all the fairies, now posed on the steps, caught her to let her seem to bump each step of the way.

On Saturday night she told the other fairies, “Don’t catch me. It’ll be funnier if I am not supported.” It was certainly hilarious, really proved her sense of comic timing and began a career of endearing clowning that gave her terrific audience reactions to something as simple as a lifted eyebrow. What she hadn’t taken into account, and what I certainly didn’t dream was a possibility, was that in the center of that staircase, hidden in the fabric that covered it, one side of a long staple was waiting to dig into her leg. It left a scar about fourteen inches long. It was the worst accident I ever experienced during one of my plays, and I learned to look for every possible accident before it could happen. Anyway, Susie was also an artist, and she and Rick Ray led the after-school scenery group in a delightful romp that brought a rough vision of beauty and color to the stage.

On the last night of “Hello, Dolly!” there was a group of people who could not get in due to the sell-out but who wouldn’t leave.  Finally, they were allowed to stand at the back.  Due to an unforeseeable, potentially tragic accident in which one of our close, dear friends from the Zapf family was trapped in their grain bin and in danger of suffocating.  He was being rescued as those dear family members stood by in helpless terror. At intermission, the standees in the audience were allowed to take those empty seats.

A year passed, and when, at the end of the school year, I sought to tender my resignation to go into business, the principal talked me into delaying my decision for a year. (Principals really should advise teachers in such instances to take a year’s leave of absence rather than resign.) He said the school board had told him, "Well, Ed, your job is to talk him out of it!" I’m sure that Leon Wilson had told them my comment from the last time I had left. That was all it took. I postponed my leaving for a year—a very important year in the scheme of my teaching life.

During that year I changed my teaching style. I relaxed. I expressed my feelings of friendship more readily with the kids I worked with after school nearly every day. I took off my toupee when my scalp began to sweat and put it back on in time for play practice. One evening as I was putting it back on, someone said, “Mr. Rhoades, maybe I’m speaking out of turn, but I like the way you look better without that thing.” And I left it off for good. Also, I removed some of the artificial barriers I had erected for self-protection. I was in my mid-thirties by then, and they were no longer necessary. And if I wasn’t going to teach any more, why should I be in fear of a mysterious “somebody” lurking in the shadows to discredit me and cost me my job. Hey, America” Don’t you realize that you require more and more performance from teachers and you are giving them less and less protection as children get more and more street wise? I always knew, and twice in my teaching days I experienced the ramifications of it, that one angry student who sets out to discredit you can soon enlist the aid of his/her parents and their connections. Anyway, I felt I had arrived at a point where I could be more free (not loose—I wouldn’t know how to do that).

Our big show the year before had been Brigadoon with Jeanie Crider and Laura Jarrett playing opposite Jeff Hewson. As we were cleaning up from scenery work and preparing for rehearsal to begin, the stage door opened and Laura, ghostly pale, ran into my arms crying, “Oh, Mr. Rhoades, I had a wreck!” Then she was unconscious as I lifted and I carried her down the long hallway to the sick room where I called for an ambulance and notified her parents. Neighbors told me that they had approached her to offer help, but she screamed hysterically and ran from them as if she thought they intended to harm her. Somehow things like this and the tornado that hit the next year work to draw a teacher more closely into the community.

That was also the year that Jeff Hewson went off to college. He was a handsome kid who had had an operation to correct a club foot pitch when he appeared at his first tryout and pitch problems when I first cast him in a leading role, that of Tommy in Brigadoon. I remember that I would often stand behind him in rehearsals and try to be inconspicuous when I sang along softly to keep him on a truer pitch.  By performance, he was very good, and no one mentioned pitch problems—mostly they said, “Wow, Jack, I never realized Jeff Hewson was so darn good lookin‘!” When he returned the next year, he sang even better because he had begun to sing at weddings and to have other opportunities to use his voice. Jerry Davis and Steve Harding, for example, were so busy with athletics and editing the yearbook, etc., that they didn’t sing from one musical to the next although they had natural gifts. When I was called to the phone at school one day, I was surprised by Jeff’s calling to say that he had “made” the Purdue Glee Club. “I wanted you to be the first to know, because you are the person who taught me to sing.” (Well, I drafted him into it anyway.) That was the first year that the Purdue Glee Club was featured at Radio City Music Hall where they were a sensation for several years. I have lost track of Jeff since he left the QVC shopping network on TV. I used to turn it on every once in a while for a few minutes just to feel as if we had had a visit.

*         *         *

I also should mention Ronnie Breece, who died some years back in an auto accident. Ronnie was small of stature, but he played with enormous heart. He was a champion wrestler in the lightest weight class, senior class president, and working so many hours a day that he fell asleep on the carpeted aisle between his scenes when he played the role of Scrooge in the first musical on the new stage. In addition to Pappy Yokum, which we brought him from the junior high to do because Danny Cupp was hospitalized, he was a wonderful Artful Dodger in the production on the small stage at the end of an old gym where Darlene Speer, Steve Harding (as Bill Sikes), Jerry and Ronnie got our first standing response.

Once when we were preparing To Kill a Mockingbird and Ronnie was playing the villain, Mr. Ewell, I invited Penny Riddle, an African-American friend with a theater background to a rehearsal to advise me on sensitive racial matters. Ronnie could hardly get out the vile epithets with her there, and I told her that. She said, “I LOVE that kid. When I first saw him as Scrooge, I thought, ‘Am I supposed to scale down my thinking to that degree?’ But by the time he began to leap and cavort, I had completely forgotten his size. He just mesmerizes you.”

One of the things a director treasures about an actor is having his/her complete trust. During Mr. Scrooge a young teacher offered to help out and began to attend rehearsals. Scrooge had a line in a song that referred to himself, once he had been transformed into a dancing dervish, as “the fairy on top of the tree.” Suzanne took me aside and informed me that we just had to change that lyric. “How about “the angel on top of the tree?” I stopped the song and relayed the message to Scrooge himself. “Well, Mr. Rhoades, what do you think? It doesn’t bother me.” And as I found it rather more delightful, we left it in. I loved his willingness to do that for me.

When I went back to teaching after a brief respite, two and a half months, I began to write poetry almost every day–mostly to express the happiness that welled up in my heart because I was to be allowed to continue the profession I loved. I include here some samples of those poems.

These poems were written In gratitude to the hardest workers after a successful production of Mary Chase’s seldom produced MRS. McTHING in which Mike Yonts played the male lead, a devilish child turned into an angelic “stick” by a witch, and for which Tara Wertz was my student director.

       TO MIKE AFTER THE PLAY

I want to paint in broad, bright strokes
And leave the canvas heavy with textures.
I want bold contrasts that please the eye in daring ways.
I want no wishy-washy pastel shades today!
The vivid brightness must burn into the memory’s screen
Until the viewer need only close his eyes
To scan the scene again.

What I create today has special significance
And grand proportions.
It must have perfect balance,
And, quite unlike the dabblings of some
Who find expressions of the depths in cool and calm colors,
It must convey my joy and lightness
With a pride so commanding that you cannot look away.

It must have awe and generate a sense of goodness.
Then I must spatter it with gratitude and love
To blend the hues together and give the portrait texture
Because it is for YOU,

And "thanks" is such a pale word.

And for the student director who was incredibly loyal and who relieved my
burden of play production a great deal:

        TO TARA AFTER THE PLAY

We take a huge canvas and cover it with colors.
We paint in broad, bright strokes and stretch it
across a lighted stage.
We open a curtain before a seated crowd
And display the efforts of our hands and minds.

We play a scene before it boldly, and at a rapid pace.
We laugh and yell and weep an hour or more.
We strive to do our work so well that when we draw
the curtain closed
These scenes will remain, indelibly, upon the mind’s eye.

We wait until those who were seated there are freshly gone,
And then we clear the stage and put the show to bed,
And we store the dreams for memories.

Why did we do it?
To prove that we could?
Does that make sense?
There must be something more that drives us on–
And even as we shake our heads in wonder at our folly,
Our minds begin to draw the plans for a new piece of canvas.

Is it that we do it together?
That the doing makes a bond of unity that is sometimes pleasant?
Or is it that the memory of those who went before
Drives us to create new memories?

I think it’s this and more,
Because I see what those out there can never see–
Six unrewarded, aching arms
That held, unseen, a valance in its place
That fell just as the curtain should be opening.
The hands that ran the lights,
And those that moved the sets–
They make a team!

And there, beyond them all, I see you,
Working at a labor of love–trusted and determined.
A part of each of us is stenciled there upon those walls
Like big bouquets of ribboned roses.
And on our hearts are spiked
The places where we sat and talked and planned.
And now it’s done.

And for Tara on her birthday–

          HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TARA

May the objects of your heart’s desire
Realize the warmth of human fire
IN THE YEAR THAT LIES AHEAD!

May you find each day’s delight
Brings you comfort every night;
May you make each choice with courage
So that no regrets discourage
IN THE YEAR THAT LIES AHEAD!

May the friendships that you cherish
Grow mature and never perish,
May the love that’s just a spark
Become a candle for the dark,
And may the child’s become a woman’s goals,
Her virtues those mankind extols
So that when the year has passed
With triumphs greater than the last,
Tara will rejoice for what it’s been
IN THE YEARS THAT LIE AHEAD!

Tara was, herself, interested in writing poetry, and I’d like to include here the
delightful response I received from Tara after I had given her that poem.

      TARA’S REPLY

Received September 18, 1977 with cake

Words
Written on paper
Through the pen from the mind,
Read by you to gain understanding.

Thoughts
Spoken outloud
Through the voice from within,
Heard by you to explain the reason.

Feelings
Not written and not spoken, but
Expressed through the eyes from the heart
To you, for I wanted them to be yours.

And thus it was that I discovered that when one ceases to take friends for granted, others begin to respond in kind. Letters of thanks to me from those around me began to include the word "love." One such note that came to me at Christmas during this same period of my life contained these words, "You are among the things for which I give thanks to God every day of my life." That from a fellow teacher. I cherish those lines from Marcia Berner.

Actually, one of the most wonderful of the things that I consider Godsends that came my way at Southwestern was that brilliant young sophomore named Mike Yonts, whose themes I wrote about. Mike came on a regular basis to do scenery work after school. At about six a parent picked him up each day. Scenery work took place after school each day and every student was encouraged to attend without invitation or obligation to return. Over the years I have not been left to work alone many evenings, but the Mike Yontses, the Rick Rays, the Susie Davises, the Carol Bartons, the Larry Andricks, the Sam Blanchards, the Rodney Coes, the Andrew Kelleys, Michelle Reddicks, and the unsung ones. Oh, there are far too many to name them all here, but they came every night without fail, and I remember them all.

Anyway, once Mike enlisted I never had to work alone. The stage was, as I’ve said, at the end of the gymnasium, and, as many members of the basketball team were in the plays, they kept close track of the scenery work—even though Coach Marty insisted that I keep the curtains closed. I mostly humored him, although it gave me claustrophobia, but often Mike and I worked closed up in there, and even though he was a really quiet kid that first year, we got to know each other pretty well. When Marty’s attention was called away, the guys would lift the curtain to let me know they knew we were there and dash away, not to get caught shirking.  And remember, they were a superb, winning team.

I can still see Mike walking across the gym floor that September day his junior year as drama club kids sat on the bleachers for a meeting, calling out, “Hey, Mr. Rhoades, when are we gonna start working on scenery for the fall show?”

“Next Monday, Mike. I was thinking you’d probably be trying out for this one.” It was Harvey and he made a wonderful scatterbrained psychiatrist. I can still hear the echoes of lines the way he read them.

Mike left a brief, pregnant pause, then kind of exploded, “I guess I will!”

Mike Yonts lives in the Indianapolis area and makes commercials for television from his studio in Carmel.  He owns fancy equipment we never dreamed of when we hoped for and bought our first spotlight.  You should look him up on Google.  I did.

I’m digressing today because I awoke at 5:30a.m. with an unusual memory from long ago rolling around as if fresh in my brain.  This experience is one I have often. It’s better than awakening to a nightmare, but there is often a companion to these dreams—an urgency to write them down to keep them fresh. Many parts of the memory are missing, and it is more like becoming aware again than it is like dreaming.  I often wonder if I have been asleep.

Kelly Reed was an unusual child when I first became aware of her. The occasion was auditions for a Hoosier Heartland Repertory Theater production I had been called to direct. If you lived in Greenfield, Indiana, back then and deciding to do The Sound of Music on the little stage at the old high school, by then Lincoln Park Elementary, with it long, tall windows and its steep balcony that had its entrance on the third floor, it would be natural to ask a local director named Jack Rhoades to pull it together. They completely reworked that space into many rooms, but it is no longer a school.

The thing I love about The Sound of Music is that it draws hugely on a community of people who wouldn’t otherwise try out. It gives one a wonderful pool of talent to work with. This version would have an awesome chorus of amazing women who desired to portray singing nuns, and an equally stunning array of talented children from which to cast the seven Von Trapp children.

I also loved that the show allowed me to use my own children in a way that told them exactly what their father was doing when he was away from home. Being integral to the show was different than lying in a “punkin seat” as Danny did when Margaret became the concertmaster for the orchestra when Gordon Wheatley and I did Brigadoon at Eastern Hancock High School, or falling asleep on the cool concrete floor as he did during the rehearsals for this show. John had learned to pull down two of the padded seats at Eastern, curl around the arm that separated them, and sleep in relative comfort. Lori stayed awake and ‘sucked in’ every word and every note.

One of my first musicals had been in the old Charlottesville gym with Lori as Gretl, the youngest child. She was in first grade. Lori was devastated when I hadn’t chosen her to be Maria in this present production and chose not to be a nun, but Tammy was excited to be cast as Brigitta, the mischievous one—she too had been Gretl and knew the show. I recall that Austin Smith, retired band director from Charlottesville (the first person, after my first musical, a horrendously difficult Lady in the Dark, to confide that he thought I was a genius). Austin Smith was currently teaching strings in Indianapolis and was the lead violinist in the orchestra for this Sound of Music. Among the children was a tenor from the Indiana Soldiers and Sailors Children’s School as Friedrich, a tiny explosion of personality named Toby Campbell as Gretl, a boy named Adam Hunt, who auditioned with a song I had studied in college—five pages taped together—and it rocked when he sang it. Liesl was an actress I have since seen in commercials and television named Joyce O’Connor, and Louisa was Kelly Reed. During the final days of that show, I got a call from Greenfield-Central high school to become their new drama man starting in the fall of 1979.

In the years that followed, I watched Kelly grow up singing. Directors are tempted to do shows that make money—S of M—makes big money, and to use actresses who sell tickets—Sherri Ballinger always packed the house, and she was Elsa in this show. Doc Gabrielsen was Uncle Max, and his wife Jeannie was Sister Margaretta, paired with Cheryl Heath, the girl from Evansville college who had just been their nominee for the Irene Ryan award and had done the lead in Carnival for me the year before. She played Sister Berta, and I thought a moment when the wto of them crossed the stage ad libbing was a very special moment in that play.  Jeannie was to do Dolly that same summer under a different director.  Her costumes for that role were brilliant creations which she donated to drama club later, and I thought of her fondly every time I used on of them.

The man who played the Captain, Dr. Christian Gries, was an Eli Lilly man, and the woman who was to do Maria was a walk-in with a wonderful voice. The day after we began to lay out the kissing scenes, she withdrew from the cast, and I was faced with a dilemma—only three weeks till opening. Ultimately, we focused in on my daughter Lori, shy and passed over for everything at Greenfield-Central, but she was the first to know all lines and all songs. She was a natural whose singing voice lacked its later maturity, studied piano instead of voice, but she saved that show. The children fell in love with her, and I wonder if people knew that they wrote her love notes every night during rehearsals and the run of the show.

Oh, I do get off on tangents, don’t I? Anyway, sometime later in life, Kelly asked me to sing at her wedding. I didn’t see her that day, and if there had been a rehearsal, I wasn’t there. I was to meet with the organist, organ professor at nearby Butler University, one-half hour before the wedding guests were to arrive. It was taking place in the Catholic cathedral nearest what was then The Hoosier Dome—St. John’s, I think. The organ was in the balcony, and the chancel was immense. The wedding seemed to be far away and surreal. I had no way of knowing how my echoes would play out among the arches of that vast apse.

The organist hadn’t shown up until it was the moment to begin. I assume he was the cathedral organist, as he was very much at home. No time even for any discussion, the ceremony began, and I knew he would follow me, which he did.

I felt my vocal power had been enormous that day, as the cathedral did its thing with my offering. I don’t know what I sang other than “Ave Maria.” But as he left, the awesome personage at the awesome instrument in the forsaken balcony of that truly awesome place, slid off his bench, glanced at me and said, “You can sing for me anytime.” And I followed him out the escape exit, not seeing any of the wedding party as I slinked to my car and drove home, wondering if Kelly had known or cared that it was I who sang unrehearsed at her lavish wedding.

Chapter 5

I never blossomed much in high school. Those were mostly dark years for me when my much touted boy soprano days ended and the basso profundo began to emerge. I lost my swagger and was supported on better days by a beautiful and talented girlfriend named Shirley Joseph and a gang of drama kids I have never seen since but cherish anyway—Diane and Billie Pollock, Sally Rosenheimer, Steve Barany, Marc Mangus, Judy Jerald and a host of others. Where did they all go? When Mr. James Lewis Casaday passed away, I placed long-distance calls all over South Bend to find out about services. A lady on the switchboard at the South Bend Tribune read me an article over the telephone which said there would be a memorial service in the Riley High School auditorium on Friday at a certain time.

Although only a week prior to the performances of our next play, I took off at midday on Thursday and set out for South Bend. When I arrived at Riley on Friday, there were no preparations going on. In the office they informed me that it was to be on Friday of the next week. I imagined that Sid Pollack would have taken part, as he had kept in close touch with Mr. Casaday for some years. I missed the only event that would have involved those alumni I cared to see and an opportunity to pay homage to someone I think I owe my life to. What he gave me long before it had a name was tough love, I guess. Those tactics were successful on a teenager who was at the same time overly sensitive and settled into a very hard shell.

During my senior year I served on the drama board. At the end of the year, Mr. Casaday took us by train (the South Shore Line) to a spaghetti dinner at a restaurant under the El tracks and to the ballet in Chicago. This was an occasion I was unable to comprehend at that time. Alicia Markova, in 1953, was retired when Alicia Alonzo, a remarkable ballerina in her own right, opened to acclaim in New York in Giselle, billed as the world’s greatest Giselle. Suddenly, infuriated , the great Markova joined Igor Youskavich to open in Giselle in Chicago to prove that she was still, although in her fifties, incomparable.

This was the ballet that we saw—the six of us and Mr. Casaday. Markova was sensational. Mr. Casaday had flown to New York to see Alonzo and assured us that in his mind Markova had proved her point. However, when she was at her most magnificent, in a scene where she appeared floating as if suspended by wires from stage left, her partner dropped her. He had, no doubt, stopped her momentum and broken her fall, but she descended to the floor and with most remarkable control seemed to float upward until she was again perpendicular to the floor and dancing as if the moment had been choreographed thus. There had been, unmistakably, an audible, unison gasp from the house!

During the curtain call Markova would not appear onstage with Youskavich for some twenty minutes or longer, and that admiring audience would not let her go home until she had admitted that she forgave him publicly—until she had been assured that the audience knew her performance was flawless. The curtain would be held open in tunnel fashion and she would appear. Then she would leave and he would take a bow and leave. Finally, she bowed and gestured for him to join her. Then the ovation, twenty-plus minutes in duration, ended and we were free to leave that theater where, in bold letters above its arched proscenium were the words: “YOU, TOO, MUST BRING FAGOTS TO THIS BURNING.”

Of course, I could not have guessed, as a poor and culturally-deprived lad of seventeen, that some thirty years later my third child, Tammy would dance professionally for a brief time. How could I have imagined that the deep respect I felt that night would give me the strength to guide a young dancer toward excellence or that, after years of watching ballet classes, I would come to know the French names of the movements and would develop an appreciation and understanding of that art form. I retired from teaching in 1995 and in 1996, took the position of technical director of the Lexington Ballet in Kentucky for one year. I loved so much of the job and all of the people, but laying dance floors was far too strenuous at my age. In one week during tour, I laid floors five times and took them up six times. That season, among other things such as Peter and the Wolf, they performed Alice in Wonderland, and Giselle, both somehow connected to my youth. I also designed and constructed a tree for Firebird that was quite workable by renovating an old, once remarkable tree from another show and enlarging it, enriching it with dazzling color that had an oriental look quite in keeping with the costumes that the Louisville Ballet Company had patterned after the Bolshoi production. I was continually aware that my theater background did not prepare me for setting the stage for the ballet. I worked in a W.T. Young warehouse with a tin roof—so hot that I lost twenty-five pounds in a very short time. When the set was moved into the opera house, nearly one-third of the set pieces I had prepared remained offstage, unused. Dancers need about all the space a small stage allows and side lighting cuts down scenery space even more. Lots to learn.  Our final show was Giselle. 

When asked about a contract for the next year, I told them of my many visits to the chiropractor and that I felt it was not a job for a retiree.  “Would it matter if we told you that no one has ever done the job as well as you did it?”  And I had to tell them, “No.”  By this time we had moved our ballet supply store from the little shop around the corner due to a violent robbery that left our principal dancer unable to dance for part of the season, and all the money I had earned with the ballet had gone to pay her doctor bills and continue to pay her weekly.  I don’t think the victim of that crime was ever able to go into Dance Essentials again.  Jennique Wolfe was a lovely girl and a beautiful dancer. Seeing her dance again made me feel that it was worth every minute, and I wouldn’t take anything for the experiences of that year.

A teacher often fails to realize that she/he is planting many seeds as he teaches and that he just might himself be one who gets to harvest some of them. For example, I could not have imagined in the late 60’s or early 70’s that one day in the late 80’s a snow plow would completely block in my car parked in front of my home on highway 9 (State Street) in Greenfield. Nor could I have imagined that a state patrolman would pull up, ask if I “could use an extra hand,” back around the corner onto Walnut Street, get out and say, “Dennis Hoppes—do you remember me, Mr. Rhoades?” Of course I remembered Dennis, especially the day he got caught after setting off a cherry bomb in the hall just after the hall emptied with everyone in class and had rushed into my room.

I had said, not thinking it could have been he, “Sit down quickly, Dennis, before someone thinks you did that.” It was the last day of school for seniors in his senior year at Charlottesville in the old building, and a janitor had caught a glimpse of a match being struck as he descended the staircase outside my room.  Dennis hadn’t been allowed to go through graduation because his 3-day suspension included that memorable day. “Of course I remember you, Dennis. Thanks for stopping.”

“I bet you never thought I’d be a policeman some day,” he chuckled.

“Well, Dennis, I always thought you’d grow up to be somebody special.” And he helped me push my car through the snowbank into the street—little traffic due to the big snow. Most folks couldn’t get out that day. We shook hands and he walked out of my life again. That’s how it is for all teachers. For example, I sometimes wonder what became of valedictorian Debbie Fitzer who was my first Maria in my first The Sound of Music in 1969. Unexpectedly in 1979 when I directed that show in community theater, I was surprised when another valedictorian, Linda Miller, who had been Liesl in my second Sound of Music and then did a remarkable job as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, which was my final show at Eastern Hancock in 1974, was standing before me, having finished her doctorate by then. I never saw her again either.

I have come to believe that in order for a class to be of real significance to a student it must be a change factor in his/her life. Very few courses produced such changes in my life, but there is one that stands out. The teacher was Ruby Guilliams, the chorus teacher. Her favorite line, sitting at her piano at 7:31a.m., was to address any late comer with, for example, "Good afternoon, Mr. Rhoades." How I detested that ‘humorous’ line when it was aimed at me. But there was great kindness in this seemingly severe woman. Some of the things that I remember about her were that gray was her favorite color, and she had a very rich three-tone gray wool suit that she sometimes wore three days running. Now this was not so far removed in years from the days when I had had only two outfits which I wore on alternate days while the other was being washed. So it was not as noticeable as it would be today. It was not as amusing as Miss Murphy’s five outfits, none of which was stylish, worn in the same sequence every Monday, every Tuesday, etc.

Miss Guilliams’ features were sharply angular and aristocratic. She was tall and thin with a regal carriage and a severe look that could set one straight without the use of words. Everyone said she had a huge crush on Mr. Casaday, and maybe she did. I didn’t care. I too was striving so hard to please him that he was often at the center of my thoughts, but I certainly didn’t delight in his presence! I lived in dread of that tongue clack that clapped like thunder and often stopped us dead in our tracks in mid-line. Miss Guilliams became rather fond of me, and upon discovering that my mom was a waitress in the stylish Robertson’s Department Store tea room, often asked her about me while I was in college.

The course I took that changed my life was music appreciation. I went into the class with an affection for country music and little appreciation for classical art forms. My favorite song lyric, sung with a nasal twang, was “…and if dogs have a heaven, there’s one thing I know—Old Shep has a wonderful home.” Miss Guilliams had pictures of the instruments of the orchestra posted all around the room. I really only recognized the violin because I had had one from school once for a week before my dad ordered it out of his house and the trumpet because my cousin Dale Schraw had wooed us with it often at church.! By the time we had mastered the instruments’ names, we also knew how to recognize their sounds when we heard them on a recording.

We listened to symphonies nearly every day for a portion of the period, and when she pointed to one of us, we said the name of the instrument that was playing the solo part. If I missed one, she would point at me again when the sound returned so I could get it right.  She also posted great opera stars’ pictures with their names and then removed their names and rearranged them for quizzes. I listened to opera on the radio every Saturday for extra credit points. And somewhere in the middle of this, I came to aspire to sing some of those arias myself. Often when I have attended an opera (and Tammy danced in several of them while she studied dance at IU), I have found myself unable to breathe when an aria was particularly well performed.  I remember being somewhat disappointed at the movie, Phantom of the Opera, when the music that had thrilled me in several theaters failed to attain that effect.

When I had been a student at Indiana University, one spring semester after my sophomore year in college, I sang with University Singers and performed with the chorus in Wagner’s Parsifal, an opera which ran so long that it started in the afternoon and had a dinner-break intermission. We also took that show to St. Louis for the national convention of the National Association of Music Teachers in the afternoon and evening and rehearsed for hours in the morning with Dave Garroway in New York by remote TV. In the early afternoon, we performed an eight-minute segment live on Dave Garroway’s Wide, Wide World. The segment ended with a close-up of me, ripping off my headgear, laughing and talking to other knights leaving the stage after performance. As a second-semester transfer student, I only knew a few men in the dorm, so it was a real surprise when we returned to the campus the next day and my dorm mates, one after another, said, “Hey, man, I saw you on TV yesterday!”  In 1956 most locals appearances on TV were on “Cowboy Bob.”

In 1956 all TV was black and white and men’s dormitories had only one TV set—the one in the lounge. Few people knew anyone who had been on even a local TV show. It was a neat experience. Thank you, Ruby, for that opportunity. It, too, was a change factor in my life. After the evening portion of the performance had ended at about 11:00 p.m., those music teachers stood and applauded for twenty minutes while we bowed and bowed as the curtain opened and closed. I thought of Markova and Youskevich and realized that they must have been at the point of exhaustion when she finally relented and their ordeal was over. Incidentally, that St. Louis stage opened in front to the opera hall and in the back to a coliseum in which Liberace had performed to a standing-room-only crowd the night before.

I do not believe that I could be the person I am today and have held the positions I have, however modest they were, or have been the cultural influence that I have been in my community and upon my students if I had not taken that course at that time. I developed a deep love for classical music and the arts because that woman developed a special love for me as a person—I think because she realized how much she had broadened my horizons and deepened my love for the beautiful things that the world of music has to offer which develop one’s soul.

In 1953 when I enrolled at Indiana Central College, now the University of Indianapolis, there were about 300 students who resided in the four small dormitories or commuted from their Indy homes. The cafeteria/dining hall was in the basement of one dorm, and the administration building, which still stands and is, I believe, still in use, housed all classes, contained the library, the bookstore/ campus cupboard (mail and café), and the auditorium as well as all classrooms.  There was a one-story wooden structure called the gym where sporting events, p.e. classes and many social events took place.

My brother Danny, upon graduating from Central was awarded a Danforth Foundation fellowship and headed for Yale, where he went first to the Divinity School for two years before entering the doctoral program.  My situation was very different. I made a mark on their little sloping stage and was offered by President Esch through the dean of students an opportunity to escape, but my parents, conservative religionists, refused to allow it—it was to be the church college or none. After a mild “melt-down”, I dropped out of college for a semester, worked through the Christmas season as the assistant buyer in the toy department of a large department store in South Bend, lived at home and saved money to enroll at Indiana University, bury myself in theater, and not work the two or three jobs that had been necessary at Indiana Central. I was in five shows in that one semester, studied opera and performed in one, and I knew I was out-of-step with the rest of that campus.

I could not afford to enroll for another year, received a draft notice (the Korean War was being fought), and with the quiet guidance of Pres. Esch, was granted an educational deferment and returned to what had become Indiana Central University. I had, while at IU, won the wrath of the dysfunctional new drama professor, Dr. William Teufel, who at tryouts for the first show upon my return interrupted my audition to announce to me publicly that he was casting this show from “people that I know.” I got the role I had aspired to, although that man had assumed I wanted the largest role, and at every rehearsal he found delight in venting his anger upon me, once making me repeat a five-word line more than a hundred times, reducing the actress playing my wife to tears and causing her to beg me to quit.  The play was Our Town by Thornton Wilder.  I had studied the Act III opening soliloquy in an acting class at IU and had memorized it in its entirety.  When he stopped me, I inquired, “Do you want me to finish or not?”

“Suit yourself.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I like to finish what I have begun.”  Then I dropped the playbook from which I had been pretending to read and finished the soliloquy from memory.  Then I left the theater.

Indiana Central didn’t offer a degree in theater, and in fact, to teach theater in nearly any high school during that time, one had to spend the major portion of his day teaching English; so an English major was a must. During the week before our graduation day—Margaret and I were to be married in the afternoon of that day, our last at Central—President Eisenhower announced that the nation needed teachers more than it needed soldiers. I then went to one nearby high school interview and was hired on the spot, and my deferment was again secured.

Perhaps as a soldier, I would have suffered and hardened as four of my older brothers had, probably learned to drink heavily, swear like a sailor, and smoke several packs of cigarettes daily. Instead, I learned to deal with teenagers.

As a graduate student—one had ten years to complete his master’s in those days—nearly every professor with whom I had close contact advised me to aspire to a doctorate and to being a college professor. But the sad truth was that I continued to be trapped in a nearly impossible job which I dearly loved and which required me to slave as few professors had to do to learn my craft. I was trapped in the English department, and I knew that I was in a niche that suited me. I knew many of my students’ parents, their brothers and sisters. I enlisted their aid and “rubbed shoulders” with them. I loved them, and many of them loved me. What professor could say that. Yet he could say that he had the respect that few high school teachers receive, sabbaticals, opportunities to travel, etc. that I would never have, and it would be true.

So I took some rather useless courses like Milton, a fascinating study of folklore, which produced a brilliant paper that my professor never read but gave me an ‘A’ on nevertheless, and I distorted classes to be about drama every way I could. I took a course in poetry that changed my life and outlook significantly, and I wrote a thesis (although it was no longer required) on “Problems for the Scene Designer in Tennessee Williams’ Plays.” That project had begun as “Problems for the Director…”, but it soon became obvious that that should be my doctoral dissertation. However, a doctorate in English would have priced me out of a job at the high school level and forced me to teach in a university where my contact with theater would have been minimal.

In the last few years of my teaching, I began collecting LP’s. They could be picked up for anywhere between ten cents and a dollar at thrift stores and library sales. I used the covers for bulletin board displays above the chalkboard, but as I had a large stereo just behind my desk, I took to playing classical musical softly during any study time at the end of the period, and I played it louder through the passing period. I wrote the composer’s name, the name of the piece and of the performer on the chalkboard. Before long, if I forgot, one of the first to enter the room would say, “Where’s the music?” and suggest one of the masters he’d like to hear.

In Tammy’s early years–well, 13 to 18–she came under the influence of the staff at Butler University in Indianapolis. The ballet department was recognized as a power nationally. Tammy auditioned for the early admission program and drove about eighty miles a day for two years, summers included, to study ballet and gain the dedication that has carried over into everything she does. Somewhere near the "heart" of the program at Butler was a very powerful personage named Peggy Dorsey. I remember how Tammy cried the first time she took one of Mrs. Dorsey’s classes at the special instruction division (SID). The class was too hard! I wanted her to be in a class where others would push her and she would be surrounded by excellence. She wished for a class where she would excel. With advice from other teachers, I enrolled her in an easier class with the same teacher. Soon Tammy adored her.

Peggy Dorsey died of cancer in 1985 at the beginning of Tammy’s senior year in high school. I talked with Mrs. Dorsey on the last day of summer school—I could not have known she would never teach again. She called it a wonderfully intimate summer because the classes had been small. I remember telling her that Tammy was a lucky girl. "How many people do you know who get to do something they love every day?"

When fall classes began, the dancers were told that Mrs. Dorsey was terminally ill and that, although they could write and send cards, no attempt was to be made to contact her. Then, quickly, she was gone. Tammy had sometimes given the grand lady with the cane a ride to her home near the Butler campus, so she knew where she lived. After her death we drove past on the way to a Saturday rehearsal of The Nutcracker and saw that they were having a ‘garage sale.’ They let us go through her house and we bought a few things. I had very little money with me and the sale ended at noon. Tammy has, of all things, a pair of glasses that she cherishes. I have one of Mrs. Dorsey’s canes.

But what I had wished to share was another memory: In class one day Mrs. Dorsey admired something Tammy had done or just how hard she was working. She walked over to her, kissed the tips of her index and middle fingers, and placed them on Tammy’s forehead. To the others she said, "She’s young. You don’t get kisses." And she laughed. She had a delightful sense of humor, and she knew what many teachers never learn–that a student works hardest when she gets praise and affection. How hard Tammy worked, and how happily. She also took classes with Carl Kauffman, and Colette, his wife, before she passed away. I was to become closely associated with the artistry of that talented man with the Lexington Ballet. Not only was he a fine dancer, teacher and choreographer, but he was the finest scenery artist in town, although in my year with the company, he was the costumer who could make anything. He was still recreating costumes by the final performance. Every performance had to get better!

Mr. Casaday, on the other hand, used very different techniques. He gave his affection quite sparingly and never to me. Yet I owe him, I believe, nearly everything that’s precious to me, including life itself. I was quite bashful and withdrawn in high school. I believe that my older brother Danny’s gifts were so dazzling that I could not see my own. I couldn’t be me for wishing to be Danny. In Alice in Wonderland I was the mock turtle. This show was a property designer’s nightmare, and I was the prop designer, builder, manager. I made my own turtle shell as well as twenty-four oyster shells, a number of flamingos with moveable necks, etc. The art department built masks. Mine was a cow’s head with big cellophane tears. I also built the rock I was standing on during the performance when I realized that Mr. Casaday was offstage left, yelling my lines along with me. I tried to drown him out, but the mask had a muffling effect. Then he stopped projecting lines, and I realized he was shouting, "Come out of that shell! Come out of that shell!…"

Danny was captain of our very successful basketball team that year, and just after basketball season had ended, Miss Guilliams asked me to approach Danny with the idea of joining glee club. To her surprise, he was enthusiastic about the idea, having sung in church choir ever since his voice had changed into a beautiful solo baritone about the time mine began to crack and drop to pitches my ear didn’t distinguish very well. Then he had decided to try out for Alice in Wonderland and got to sing the solo “You Are Old, Father Williams” while cavorting about the stage with abandon. He still says he was not very good, but I tell you he created quite a sensation. He also got to sing a solo at his graduation exercises.

*         *         *

In other shows I was always the arrogant villain. During rehearsals for my first large part in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Mr. Casaday approached me in the high school hallway. I didn’t see him coming, nor did I expect to meet him there. He had four high schools which he served, and he was rarely at James Whitcomb Riley during the day. Suddenly I was doubled over by a severe blow to my abdomen. My brother only hit me on my underdeveloped biceps, and no one else hit me at all, so I wasn’t prepared for this. Then he raised his voice and began to denounce my posture to me and the astonished students who gawked as they passed. "If I ever see you walking around like a human apology again, I will hit you twice as hard."

I never told anyone in my family that he had hit me, but I walked around for nearly a week with my shoulders so squared away that my muscles ached. I didn’t like him much, but he transformed my life as well as my posture.

I was shocked when the actor who played the title role in King Dodo, the musical my senior year, slipped out during rehearsal one night and slashed all four of Mr. Casaday’s tires. I never had any urge to be vindictive. Mr. Casaday was a costuming genius with a huge stock of beautifully built costumes at Central High School. Each year he directed four musicals—one at each high school. Only one would get new costumes. King Dodo got all new costumes. The chorus room became transformed with bolts of fabric laid out on a table that ran from front to back along one end of the room. When I went in for a fitting, he looked at me askance, pulled out a bolt of cloth and went to work with his scissors. Then he held a piece of fabric up to the front of me, said, “Hold this!” and put another pattern piece in back (only he used no patterns.) Then he began to pin. Same routine with the vest I was to wear as the fop, Bonilla. When the costume was delivered a week or so later, it was fully lined and fit like a glove.

When I got away from home to attend college, I went through this process of thought…"I don’t like myself very much. I am nothing like the person I want to be. Now, I can act. I can act well enough to become somebody else. Who would know? I can become anyone I want to be. So who do I want to be? I want to be a big man on campus—that’s what! I want to know everyone on campus and call them by name and have friends and be happy."

I suppose I wasn’t much BMOC, but I did the rest, and after awhile the transformation was so natural that I couldn’t have gone back if I had wanted to. I studied lists and learned names. I worked in the mail room, and as I passed out mail, I looked at faces. I took meal tickets in the lunchroom, and as I punched tickets, I learned faces and called everyone by name. Then I began to speak to the people I passed on the paths and walks and call them by name. Did they know who I was? No, nor did they care (except other freshmen, wearing green beanies too). They had to ask around as to my identity and soon learned I was Danny Rhoades’ arrogant little brother. Small wonder they resented me and picked on me in play rehearsals.

But as a teacher I still believe this is a key classroom factor. Learn names quickly and catch them off guard by using their names in the hallways, at basketball games, etc.

*         *         *

After I became a teacher, I went to see Mr. Casaday one time. I really felt a need to tell him that he had taken a desperately unhappy boy and given him the tools he needed to be happy. I wanted him to know that I had married the girl of my dreams and had a job that I enjoyed and did well. It was true that I was at a very small school, but already after only a couple of plays, it was obvious that I had a natural gift for directing, which used so many of my talents and brought me very close to the most talented students in the schools where I taught.

I told him only that I was teaching and was directing a play. He asked me what play. I said that it was Going Steady. He gave a ‘Humph’ and walked away. I believe he meant it as a challenge to do only difficult plays, but that was a good play for a beginner. And I take consolation in the coincidence that Pam Hunt, one of the leading ladies in that little play in the little town of Carthage, Indiana, has performed many roles on and off Broadway, has directed at Harvard, has made many commercials and is an important actress, director and choreographer. Long before I came upon the scene she was a person with a fire of dedication for the arts, and I am immensely proud to have known her.  In order to use everyone in that junior class, I had to double-cast, and I made some mistakes from which I learned.  I hope those involved also learned.  What Jeannine Terhune learned was “do not double-cast. 

In dance even triple casting is common because injuries are so prevalent.  When my daughter Tammy was at IU, having graduated early and having time on her hands, decided to tryout for a theater production of A Chorus Line.  She was cast as a balletic tryout who is eliminated until the final number when she would reappear in “One.”  She called and said, “They don’t know that dancers get injured, and no one is double-cast.  I will go to all rehearsals and be on hand in case.”  Soon the dance captain was leaning on Tammy’s ballet experience and quick memory for choreography.  She’d say, “What did we do here, Tammy?”  And soon Larry, the in-show dance captain was injured, and Tammy became Laura, the new dance captain.

In my last show as a high school teacher, two very talented girls came to me together and asked to be double-cast in the leading role because they knew they were in contention for that part.  I said, “Only if you work together, help each other, and intend to grow as singers and actresses and not to be better than the other.”  (Something like that.)  And that’s what they did.  It enabled me to double-cast a couple of other parts and train more talent. 

The object was never too make myself look good.  I had a saying I used when the cast of a play seemed not to be working as hard as I was.  I told them that I only worked as hard as they did.  If they wanted to be part of a flop, I could stand that.  It had been awhile since I had a show I wasn’t pleased with, but it was not my reputation I was concerned about but the kind of experience they took away from the show.

Occasionally a parent would decide that their child should not take part in a play as it might take their concentration away from their homework and their grades might drop.  As a matter of fact, over the years it became obvious that students’ grades actually were better during shows.  They had study groups in the lobby to fill in time when they were not onstage.  This also encouraged friendships and camaraderie for young talent and set an example about careful use of time.  The dedication of the top scholars in the school was an example.  Having parents be welcome, as I did in later years, eliminated the need to try to chaperone areas and set up examples of successful adults for them to know as friends.

In elementary school Danny and I had a third-grade teacher named Miss Vivian Haring. She was also cheerleading sponsor and treated us as if we were college cheerleaders. (I had become a cheerleader at the urging of the beautiful Barbara Molnar, and as the smallest boy in my class, the school mascot, more or less; we won the award as the best cheering squad in South Bend Elementary schools for three years then.)  She was also very strict in the classroom. But she recognized in Danny a special genius, and she became a woman on a mission. She was afraid this keen mind would not have the opportunities it needed to develop fully, so she began a letter campaign to every college and university in the US. By the time the college bulletins began to arrive, she had surrendered her life to cancer. I recall that someone told us she spent her last days sleeping over an ironing board. (Could that be?)

When those bulletins began to arrive from prestigious schools, it opened my father’s mind to the idea that college was an inevitable situation for Danny. Then my brother Chuck began to press his certainty that as delicate as Jackie has been all his life, he must have a college education to survive in the world. The rest is history.

*         *         *

In my senior year of high school, I was offered a full scholarship to Indiana Central, our church school and my college of choice because my brother Danny was there (and besides, it was the only college my father would consider). In fact, the college was so impressed with Danny’s work that they offered his high school a full scholarship to present to the student of their choice. The single requirement was a certain GPA. I missed that mark by a very narrow margin. However, none of this could have been anticipated in my junior year (Danny was then a senior—we were born eighteen months apart).

During the first days of my senior year, leading actress and newspaper editor Diane Pollack approached me about taking Latin IV. “Are you kidding? I could never pass Latin IV without having taken Latin III.” I really had wanted to take Latin III, but after Latin I with Miss Noble, I was very disappointed with Latin II. The teacher was very lax, and cheating was rampant. I just felt I did not learn enough to survive in Latin III, which was taught only by Miss Noble. I also knew that Miss Noble was very irritated with me in Latin I because I was so self-conscious at that point in my life that I would not wear glasses. I could not see the chalkboard, and she always put all of her tests on the board. She finally, exasperated with my asking to move and knowing full well that I had glasses at home ( the plastic frames were sort of pink and, I thought, horrible), made up a special written test for me to have at my desk.

Miss Noble was the strictest teacher I had in high school. She made each student stand to recite. No one ever spoke out of turn. I might point out that this ageless woman (maybe late 30’s—who could tell?) was in my opinion very hard to look upon. She had a mouth full of oversized teeth which seemed to me like dangerous weapons. She was really very kind to almost everyone else. And she had loved Danny enormously. Like many others who knew us both, she could not fathom that we were products of the same parents, the same environment.

So how did I end up in Latin IV, then? Let me explain that Diane was very personable, vivacious, and persuasive. She was used to getting her way about things, and unless I signed up for this class, there would be no class. The minimum enrollment was seven. “Miss Noble would never fail you, Jack. You know that, don’t you?”

So did I talk to Miss Noble? No. Did she ever realize that I didn’t want to take this class? Maybe, but it was such an honor that I should have worked harder and relearned all I had forgotten. I could retain some of the vocabulary, but even when I knew what each word meant in English, I could not make a sentence that was logical. We took turns translating aloud Latin to English for each lesson—Cicero’s orations against Catiline. Lofty, meaty stuff, I’d say.

Miss Noble was very patient with me, rolling her eyes, fumbling with her kinky bush that was pulled back but never quite controlled. Her large glasses exaggerated those glaring eyes as she made me look up every word I didn’t know while the class waited. Then, finally tested beyond even her control, when I couldn’t come up with a congruent sentence, she turned it over to another who did so easily.

What Miss Noble did not know was that I worked frantically, making up my own shorthand (which I then used in all lecture classes, even in grad school until I got an old textbook and taught myself shorthand) to get every sentence down as she would have it translated. Then we would go through the lesson a second time, another day. Behold, I could translate. But she knew I could not. In my sophomore year I had been so excited to have a role in Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona that I memorized that formidable work from start to finish. So it was not so difficult for me to master a shorter work like the Orations against Catiline. I memorized it in its entirety to Miss Noble’s exact specifications.

Now for testing. Each chapter test consisted of two parts. Part one was to translate Latin into English, which I did flawlessly. Part two was another story. How could I translate those English sentences which she composed into Latin? I didn’t try. So every test came back with the same score. An ‘A’ on part one; an ‘F’ on part two; a ‘C’ on the test with the same comment—“I know you can’t do this!” The hardest part was to find an important Latin word I knew, count the sentences backwards to find where in the larger work the quotation came from, count all the sentences, set it aside and write from memory.

Miss Noble watched me like a hawk. She crept up behind me during tests. She looked for cheat notes. I have often wondered why I was too bashful to confide in her. So it was the ‘C’ in her class that kept me from a full scholarship to Indiana Central College.

Let me explain something. I never held that against that wonderful teacher! And another thing: I consider Latin IV the second most valuable class I took in high school. How could that be? I became a speaker of some note. I taught speech for thirty-six years. I don’t believe there was ever a speaker who was more eloquent than Cicero or a teacher who examined his brilliance with more love and passion than Miss Noble. When she was thrilling to the power of a turn of phrases, she became luminous—beautiful, even to my jaundiced eyes. That class was a change factor for me.

Often during the two years I was in her classes, a college student would knock on her door, and she would excuse herself to effuse over him/her. I patterned my attitude after her. I told my students to come back and see me. It brightened my day. When I returned to class shortly after such a break, I would say, “I hope some day YOU will come back to see me. I will love to remember you.”

           AT MY OPEN DOOR

What is your smile to me
Upon discovering at an unexpected hour
That you are standing
At my open classroom door?
It is a reminder of the past–
The day you first appeared
As if you owned the world
And were impatient of delays of any kind,
Demanding simply, "Come here!"
I had to laugh out loud–
I think because no other kid on earth
Would stand there and address me in that way–
But mostly as it put me there with you
As equals in a lofty place,
And every student in that room was much in awe of you.
I wonder if our lives have greater joys
Than being held dear by one we see to be
Standing tall above the heads
Of all the rest.
This was not the same respect
Which I had learned to strive for.
With you there was no looking up,
(Yet there was admiration in your eyes,
And for me, a really special smile)
And, though another might not analyze it thus
It was a moment that will give me warmth for years.
There you are again today
Pausing by the open classroom door
To nod and grin to let me know
That there is standing just outside
A happy giant of a man.
We visit briefly there, and you pass on,
Leaving a man who will never be your equal
Strangely warmed because he is…
Somehow… your friend.
                       for Jerry Parmer     1976

One year when our vacation days did not coincide with South Bend schools’, I went to see Miss Noble. It was time to explain myself to her. When she opened that door, there was abhorrence written all over her shocked countenance. She told me in a very brusque manner that she was busy. If it was important, perhaps I could return during her preparation period. Of course, I fled the place, appalled that she could retain that loathing all those years.

Chapter 6

“The Tell-tale Heart”

I can’t remember when I first read "The Tell-tale Heart" to my classes as a dramatic presentation, but I do know because of the following incident that I had already arrived at what is now quite routine by the time I left Carthage in 1961. I had learned that the much-loved story by Poe took exactly twenty minutes to read aloud, even with all the dramatic pauses I could muster. So I always started it exactly twenty minutes before the final bell for a class. I think I perhaps felt I was having some difficulty reaching the seniors at the new school in Charlottesville, and I decided to hit ‘em with my best shot—so, only four weeks into the school year, I found myself watching the clock for the moment to begin. I turned my necktie askew, mussed my hair, pushed my glasses down on my nose, arranged the front of the room so that a chair sat just in front of my lectern with empty space in front of it where I could emote on the floor—killing, dying, pantomiming and grunting when I wasn’t tapping my fingers on the hollow lectern behind my back to simulate the beating of the heart.

I concentrated on vocal variety, strange eyes, especially using a high chin to look both egocentric and, with much white showing in my eyes, quite mad; and, to make what I felt was the slow-moving section more captivating, I twitched one side of my face with increasing fury. I smiled my sweetest smile as I told of dismembering the body. I lowered my voice to a whisper just before my loudest shriek, “Ha! Would a madman have been as wise as this?”

Finally, just before the bell, I fell to the floor in an exhausted emotional frenzy, and as the bell rang, I stood and bowed amid polite applause where there had been raucous approval in the past. Then a frozen silence, followed with slow and orderly movement out of the classroom—any way out that kept them from passing close to me. This made me realize that they were not sure the new teacher was quite sane. I think it was at least a month after that before any student in that room stayed after class to ask me a question. Since that experience I have waited to read that story until the students in a class have come to know me quite well. Then, just before fall break, near Halloween, I gave a bit of a preface and called it the only gift I could afford for all my students.

*         *         *

In 1971, when I was firmly entrenched in the brand new classrooms in the new Eastern Hancock building, there was a convocation featuring the swing choir from Lapel High School, where I had taught for one year four years earlier.

The eighth graders at Lapel, now seniors, comprised the best class it was ever my privilege to teach. Their basketball team had never lost a game in three years of competition, and the top seven athletes all had straight A’s. They also were in choir, and we used them in the chorus of Lapel’s first musical, Brigadoon. During that previous summer, the janitors had destroyed all scenery stored under the stage at the end of the gym because it was a fire hazard. It was made of plywood and 2×2’s, and I would never have used it.

Mr. Roudebush, the principal, asked me to build new scenery in time for the senior play (directed by someone else). Mr. McKamey, the band director, helped me a lot by matching my hours, bringing band kids to help, and taking me home to eat Mrs. McKamey’s good cooking. I designed a very complicated set so that it would include every set piece I would need for Brigadoon in the spring. Several years later Jeannine Terhune told me that a new principal decided they should have scenery that was professionally made. The old was destroyed and new was ordered. When it arrived the kids exclaimed, “Hey, that’s just like the scenery we got rid of.” But, of course, it didn’t have layer upon layer of paint on it. Had I been there, I would have simply replaced the canvas.

Anyway, back at Eastern, Jeannine Terhune’s smartly dressed and highly polished swing choir had wowed the entire school with their assembly program and their astonishingly good looks. After lunch while I was teaching a freshman English class, the visitors were being given a tour when the door opened, and a 6’3” red haired boy named Meredith Ray walked to the back of the room and sat down, saying, “This is the part of Eastern Hancock I want to see.”

The girls were agog. “Well, Meredith,” I grinned, “what would you most like to see?”

Without the slightest hesitation, he asked, “Mr. Rhoades, have you read “The Tell-Tale Heart” for these kids?” I had not, so I did it then. When I had finished, he walked to the front, shook my hand, said, “Thanks a lot, Mr. Rhoades.” Then he was gone.

I believe I should avoid the temptation to gloat over any kudos I have received over the years, but I must share one more here. Probably everyone who was ever a teacher has such “warm spots.” I had resigned from Eastern Hancock and was working with a new community theater group called Hoosier Heartland Repertory Theater. I designed , constructed and decorated the set for the first show, a Neil Simon comedy. I realized that I needed something I could easily borrow from the stock of things at Eastern, so I stopped by there one summer morning, just as the high school band was coming off the football field. I tried to scoot away in time to miss them, but one girl, a sophomore by then, ran to catch up with me, and as she put her arms around me, she began to cry. “Oh, Mr. Rhoades, what are we going to do?” was all she said, but the name Julie Wilson etched itself on my memory in that moment.

Many years ago a very needy student committed suicide. This boy seemed friendless, and every day he watched from my second-story window for me to come into the school parking lot. He would then hurry to meet me on the stairs and walk me to class, sharing with me the new joke the kids were telling that morning or the latest news. I felt I should have detected his despair, and my guilt took me to his funeral, although at that time I did not know other members of his family. He had removed the food and shelves from the refrigerator and climbed in. In those days there was a catch that left him with no way out, and the inside compartment was battered by his efforts. There he lay in a pauper’s casket with a filmy cloth draped over it to make the bluish tint of his flesh less noticeable.

One always has the feeling that one should go to pay his respects, but sometimes, for a teacher, it leaves scars on both parties. I mean, what could I say to them? That I was fond of him? He always wore a suit coat and the same dingy white shirt and tie to school. He was buried in that same recognizable uniform. In later years, when I have had his brother, his sister, and much later, his nieces, I felt that if I had not gone to that place on that occasion, they would have been more comfortable in my presence.

His younger brother had come home, seen all the food on the table and opened the refrigerator door to a horrific sight.  Later, when I had that boy in a junior lit class, we were to have read “The Fall of the House of Usher” in which someone was buried alive—a favorite theme with Poe.  We skipped that story, although I had once, upon realizing that a very weak senior English class was not retaining the grammar we were studying, decided to make a departure from the textbook for a time.  We Studied the “House of Usher,”  plotted the movie by scenes, (I had learned to do that in a summer audio-visual course at Purdue) and went on location for filming them.  Video cameras were just then available, but we didn’t have one yet, so we filmed with my 8mm movie camera, sent the reels off for developing, and I spliced and edited before showing it to the group.  The class was small enough to travel in two cars, and they were treated like royalty at each destination, always close enough to be back in time for their next class.  The film was quite a hit at the county teachers’ conference that year, and several of those students later told me that was their favorite class of all their school years.

I also realized one time, as I was beginning to read “The Tell-Tale Heart” that there was a boy in the room who had been orphaned by a case of murder/suicide, in which his father had been the shooter.  When his head dropped to his desk, I hated what I was doing to this very intelligent young man.  I knew that if I stopped, the kids would ask why, so I continued, but that was the most lifeless reading I ever gave of that classic story.  You never know for sure what life has brought to the students who sit before you every day.

Although the circumstances were quite different, there are similarities I could compare to a situation at Carthage when I worked at the funeral home because Frank Hampton of Hampton’s Mortuary had become my best friend. In a small town there were only occasional funerals, but Frank and Marie and their boys could never leave town without someone to stay at the mortuary and answer the phone. There were not such conveniences as answering machines or answering services. We would move into their apartment above the funeral home from time to time. I learned to come at once for ambulance calls or death calls.

On one occasion Frank called and asked me to help him pick up a body from a home in town. In a flash we were on our way. The family was grieving in the adjoining room. I looked at the abandoned shell of the father of the household. Cancer of the esophagus had caused him to bleed to death, gushing blood from his mouth. His fourteen-year-old son had been alone with him, and a glance at the wastebasket filled with blood and Kleenexes brought an instant vision of the death scene. We quietly put the body on the gurney and Frank put the shroud in place. As we wheeled the gurney to the door, loud weeping swelled in the adjoining room. When I passed that boy in the halls thereafter, I knew from his face that my presence had caused him to revisit that nightmare and to be very sad.

Many years later I went to a nine-day summer institute for Baha’is, members of my newfound religion. When I first heard of the institute, I had laughed and said, “Who could possibly give nine days to spend at a conference of any kind?” The reply that was fired back caught me by surprise, and I recognized the challenge. “Well, school teachers could, for example.” The institute was held at a beautiful camp surrounded with pine trees and a small lake. From this time of purification I came to see many things in a new light. Two large posters designed for my classroom that summer introduced my new Classroom Rules. Rule #1 was “Please, please, please BE HAPPY!” Rule # 2 was “Please, please, please DON’T BE UNHAPPY!” These were the rules that had worked so very well at the institute. I adopted them for my classroom. They work!

I embraced a number of concepts at this institute. Study sessions required that each group sit in a circle with a facilitator at the head. Absolutely everything was addressed to the facilitators. A frequent reprimand during the early sessions was, “Please! No cross-talk.” In this manner, everyone was free to express his/her thoughts freely without fear of interruption or judgment from others. I know the attitudes during these sessions were tempered by the vast amount of time each of us spent in prayer during those nine days. No one criticized another or told him he was wrong in his thinking, yet in the course of these sessions, each individual displayed impressive, even awe-inspiring growth.    One very shy young lady that I had dubbed “little bird” in my mind was at first very reluctant to speak and obviously intimidated by the male members of the group.  As she blossomed, I realized that people don’t need to be told what they are doing wrong to enable their growth.

The other principle required that, in studying scripture, one analyze one word at a time. Of course, all of the scriptures originated in languages other than English. The book we studied was revealed in Persian. There were Iranians in my group who understood English to varying degrees and who followed closely in Farsi/English dictionaries. Their explanations of the subtle differences in the two languages in most cases shed light upon the intent of the passage, even when the meaning seemed obvious from the outset. All shadings of meaning were considered as language became revered and mystifying. There could be no end to discoveries made in the practice of meditation.

I have never felt my dreams were significant enough to remember afterwards. I had, however, often awakened with a solution to a difficult construction problem that had been puzzling me for days. This outing was a time in which no television or newspapers were allowed and during which no visitors from the outside interrupted the flow of events. We were, however, permitted to call home from time to time. We refrained from sharing events from these calls. We were separated from the world at large. There was an Iranian hostage situation during these days that none of us knew anything about at the time.

Our daily schedule began at 6a.m. with dawn prayers in a circle in the meeting hall. Offering a prayer was optional, but on most days, everyone participated. After breakfast an hour for individual meditation and prayer preceded the morning group session. The small campus in northern Indiana known as La Lumiere was owned, I believe, by a private Catholic school. The tall pine trees, row upon row, inspired reminiscences of a Washington state visit just a few summers before. I claimed for my afternoon prayers a spot on a small island, reached by a long, narrow bridge, where I could be alone, yet enjoy the water, the earth and the sky.

During this solitary, prayerful hour of preparation for the second study class, events of the morning class loomed large for me. After the afternoon session, there was mingling time before dinner. Some people took naps during this time. After the evening meal there were various activities. Each group planned an inspirational act to present one night. Another night featured a sharing of talents. Spirits ran very high, so that often I felt elated when I went to my lonely bed. Rooms were private, and lights out left just enough time for a quick shower.

After a few days, I began to feel the need to commit some of the revealed Bahá’í prayers to memory and decided to use the ‘island’ devotional period for that purpose. I have mentioned dreams. I have sometimes listened to spiritual persons telling of a dream or a vision and enviously wished I could have such an experience (and perhaps doubting their authenticity). On the day I wish to share, I was learning to recite the prayer for the departed so that I could offer it up instantaneously anytime I happened to have the inclination upon learning of someone who had departed this life. I would say, “This is for my mother.” Or “This is for my brother Shirley and his wife, Louise, and their daughter, Gloria.” (He was my oldest brother, Gloria was their oldest child, and I had lost them and my father within a short span of time.)

Now I am going to share one of the kind of stories I promised myself not to drudge up, in order that you might understand that this experience altered some well-established impressions I nurtured.

I think somehow my father was simply amazed that one of his seven children attained the brilliant successes Danny has realized; Dad was inordinately proud of that fifth son. Many times I heard him declare that his children were his wealth, and he carried himself as if he were a very wealthy man. The year Danny left Indiana Central for Yale, I invited my father to come to Indianapolis for Dad’s Day, and I took him to the football game, thinking it would bring some happy memories from his short college football career.  (I never heard him talk of college or football, but there was a photo in the attic of the team at the small Ohio college he attended for, I think, only one year.)  As soon as the game was over, Dad spotted President Esch in the bleachers nearby. I could not dissuade him from moving in for the kill, so I tagged along reluctantly. He stepped in front of Dr. Esch, held out his hand and said, “How do you do, Mister Esch, I’m Danny Rhoades’s father.” Dr. Esch kind of looked startled, moved his head very deliberately to direct attention to me—after all it was my Dad’s Day we were celebrating.

The attempt was wasted on Dad. He was scoring on Danny’s success and wished to talk about it. Never mind that I had just directed the very successful Geneva Stunts, a student fund raiser involving more than 150 students that had raised the most money in the school’s history of that event. Never mind that I was editing the school newspaper or that Dr. Esch had arranged for me to be admitted to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and knew my father had barred the way. And it was Dr. Esch who approached me working in the kitchen of the president’s mansion to ask delightedly, “Well, Jack Rhoades! Are you coming back to Indiana Central College? You know, I think you should.” And so I had.

I could tell other situations in which my father stepped on my heart as he reached out to praise Danny. But I’ll refrain. Suffice it to say that I erected a wall of impersonal demeanor which remained intact until that day I fell asleep saying these words:

“Verily, we beseech thee to forgive the sins of such as have abandoned the physical garment and have ascended to the spiritual world. O my Lord! Purify them from trespasses, dispel their sorrows, and change their darkness into light. Cause them to enter the garden of happiness, cleanse them with the most pure water, and grant them to behold Thy splendors on the loftiest mount.

Bahá’u’lláh has written that God gave us dreams to assure us of the spiritual life that follows this one—in dreams we see clearly without using our eyes, hear without using our ears, and move from place to place without leaving our beds. In my slumber I had a dream in which I was holding a beautiful baby boy that, though I knew it was not Danny or John, somehow belonged to me. I had loved this stage of infancy with each of my four children, and I was making my child smile and coo. I was loving it abundantly when the realization struck me and I became aware that this child was my father—an infant (I thought upon awakening) in the spiritual world. I knew I was being told that I must let go of those old feelings of resentment because no one could feel enmity toward a baby.

One of my favorite lesson plans at Eastern Hancock was for the story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. There are several vivid recollections associated with this lesson plan. I had decided once at the old building when Mr. Knarr was first principal that I would illustrate Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” by making a partial mask of black cloth and telling students that they would never see my face again (as the minister did in the story). At the end of the period I took it off until my next American literature class. Long before that, Mr. Knarr was at my door to tell me to knock it off. He thought someone would take it as having racial significance and that it would end up in the Indianapolis Star or on the late news.

The routine for “The Lottery” was to follow roughly the format of the story in conducting the lottery. Students who had not read the assignment would not realize there was to be a person ‘stoned to death’ at the end. The story has to do with human sacrifice and our unwillingness to break with accepted traditions. But I did not follow the plan exactly as used in the village because the groups were too small. First I placed a folded slip of paper in a black box—one for each student and one for me. One of the papers had a black dot on it. No one was to open theirs until everyone had drawn. I called the students up to the platform in the ‘gazebo’ by standing on my desk, which I had cleared off. I placed a chair as a step up. I called names in alphabetical order (with mine under the R’s), and as they stepped up on the chair, I recited some line from the story, such as, “Glad to see your mother’s got a man to do it.” When each had a paper, I said the words from the story, “Open ‘em.”

Then we waited for someone to reveal that they had the black dot. If no one admitted it, I walked around the room having them show me their papers until we found the culprit. Then he/she was led to a corner at the front of the room, and we threw the large paper ‘stones’ we had prepared. After that, we discussed the story, asking such questions as, “Did anyone feel certain that he had the black dot before he looked?” “Did anyone NOT throw stones?” “Why” or Why not?” “Was the story about human sacrifice?” “Why did some primitive cultures find this acceptable?” etc.

We talked about each person’s chances. They (in the story) seemed to think the first and last people had the best chances to escape. Then we held a second lottery after having students point out discrepancies in procedure. Each row became a ‘family’, Each row chose a family name so that we could call families alphabetically. They made a list of their first names by ages, youngest first, oldest last. Then the oldest male in each row came forward to draw as I called out family names. Of course, there were only six families. After one family was discovered to have the dot, its members were called up one at a time. Again, one was stoned.

One year as one of my classes was ‘stoning’ someone in the corner nearest the door, that door opened and Mr. Knarr, the principal, put his head in. Without reacting in any way to the large paperwads, Ed said, “Mr. Rhoades, you are wanted on the telephone. You may take it in the business department’s office across the hall.” Then he was gone.

In that new building in 1970 or ’71, the teacher could buzz the office and the principal could call over the loudspeaker, but he had chosen to look in personally. After class I went to his office to explain the situation. Before I could get to any details, he said, “Jack, I didn’t think anything about it. I have learned not to expect your classroom to be like anyone else’s.”  And I never did explain what we were doing.

Out of the “Lottery” lesson plan, a few odd incidents arose. The first was the time one of my very quiet female students received the paper with the dot. She went up to the corner, and no one threw paper. No one! Then, as if realizing that she would be embarrassed because they treated her differently than the first ‘stonee,’ they began to throw their stones out of kindness, gently.

*         *         *

Years later I was to have this girl’s daughter in class at Greenfield-Central. An outgoing student, she informed me one day that her mother had asked her to bring something to show me.  She may have told me earlier who her mother was.  On the last day of school at Eastern that year, I had made award certificates for each member of that special class. Some were humorous and played on the student’s penchant for mischief. Others acknowledged achievement. Hers had said simply, “Teacher’s Pet Award.” Now I had really tried hard not to have ‘pets.’ But, honestly, it is hard for me not to feel special about the quiet ones. The daughter pulled a large manila envelope from her notebook and undid the clasp. There was, after all these years, in mint condition, that little paper with the torn edges and squiggly line around the perimeter. It had my printed message and my signature on a ‘teacher line.’

I was touched that she had kept that memento of our days in class together.

          FACING A NEW CLASS

I wonder–
How often will we know the joy
Of laughter that envelops every surly boy?
Will there be moments when the anger flares?
Wounds that only time repairs?
Will there be sadness that we know
Because we’re thrown together so?|
And, looking back when the year is run,
Will we cherish the things our class has done?
I wonder!

*         *         *

There was one other occasion that I should share as well. It happened that after the first ‘lottery’ when the whole class knew what was in the offing, there was a fire drill. The parking lot at the old school was not paved, and students, without my noticing, gathered pebbles from the gravel. Then we returned to class and started the second lottery. It was the only time in seven or eight years of doing this exercise that my name was drawn. When they threw the stones, I was glad it was not a student being stoned. One girl in the class was outraged. She was living in a foster home and was at first brash and outspoken, but I had encouraged her to try out for the play, and she gave wonderful performances as a comic Maria in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Cornelia Otis Skinner in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, and Mammy Yokum in Lil’ Abner.

Jill, as we called her (actually Jillene Dehn), got so upset that she cried as she admonished the class, “How could you do that to Mr. Rhoades, of all people.”

As the others filed out, I tried to comfort her by saying how glad I was that I had been the ‘victim’ because my shoulders were broad enough that my ego was not even slightly bruised, after all, the exercise had been my idea.. That was no solace. She continued to be deeply offended as she left to go to her next class. I never saw her after her graduation from high school. She was a delightful person with great comic timing and a very large heart.

During the rehearsals for Our Hearts, she had cornered a field mouse in their foster home, and she was too compassionate to allow them to kill it.  She held it by the tail, and as she threw it into the yard, it bit her.  Her doctor insisted upon her having that painful, increasingly powerful series of shots which were given in the pit of the stomach.  She received the final shot on the day we were to open, and she was feverish and her head throbbed.  That difficult role required her to memorize over 600 lines and be onstage nearly the entire show, and she insisted upon going on.  Sitting in the audience listening to the hearty laughter that seemed nearly constant.  She was so engrossed by creating that character and exulting in the audience response that she overcame her illness completely.  It was an awesome experience for all of us.

Sometimes there was the problem of keeping a proper distance between student and teacher. One of my early memories was of Pete Rasor in about 1962 0r ’63. He was a tall, handsome, personable kid. Shortly after graduation, I was having lunch with several friends in the small-town restaurant in Charlottesville, something many people did daily, but I had not done this before. Pete walked in with a few other graduates, and before he sat down on a counter stool, lifted his voice a bit and called with a swagger, “Hi, John.”

I answered with a hearty, “Hi, Pete.” But on my way out a little later, I leaned down and spoke only for him to hear, “Pete, my students call me Mr. Rhoades; my friends call me Jack. What does that make you?”

I saw Pete again at the first basketball game, I think, and was both surprised and pleased to hear him call out, “Hello, Mr. Jack! How are things going?” Last I heard Pete was a teacher. Bet he was a good one.

At Carthage I had brought upon myself the nickname I got shortly before the end of my tenure there. The first principal had been Mr. Wendall Adams. He was a fine gentleman who also was a preacher. When it came time for the senior play, (after his departure) I discovered that the seniors had put their heads together and created a pair of tickets to send to Mr. Adams, who was living about two hundred miles away. Upon close examination, I realized they were for non-existent aisle seats in the alley behind the theater. I was furious. They had given him the nickname (behind his back, of course) of ‘the Pope.” I told them how embarrassing it would be for him and for me if he came so far across the state only to learn it was a joke.

Sometime shortly thereafter, they wanted to add something they thought would be humorous to the dialog of the play. When I objected, saying it didn’t pass the censor, they said, “It’s okay, the Pope isn’t here this year. We don’t have the Pope to worry about anymore.”

My response was, “You may not have the Pope, but you still have Father John.” As my wife was just beginning to wear maternity clothing at this time, I began to hear the words “Father John” a bit regularly, always directed toward me in humor and never behind my back.

At  Eastern I somehow got a nickname that sort of carried the connotation of a dictator. “Better not let JR catch you doing that!” I heard behind my back a few times.

During my first year at Southwestern there was a new TV show called The Waltons.” I guess it is not too surprising that I began to be called ‘John Boy’ behind my back. One day Jerry Parmer came into the gym and called to me from the far end, grin spread across his happy face, “Hey, John Boy!” There was no one else in the gym.

I called him to the stage and told him I certainly didn’t want him to call me John Boy.

He seemed surprised, “You don’t like that?”

“No, Jerry, I really can’t stand it.”

“Okay, Mr. Rhoades, I’ll put a stop to it for you.” And I never heard anyone even mention it again. Was that great peer pressure, or what?

Also at Southwestern shortly after a newly enrolled kid, tall and heavy, arrived at play practice, He walked up to the stage, saying with a lot of swagger, “Hello, JOHN. You seem more like a friend than you do a teacher.”

I snapped back, “You wanna be my friend, don’t call me John,” and I went on about my preparations for rehearsal. Never heard that again either.

My students treated me with a lot of kindness and often expressed their thanks using the word “love.”  I still have on my desk a small pewter copy of Robert Indiana’s statue of the word ‘LOVE’ that the cast of a play gave me as a gift.  But they did not treat me with familiarity, even when they gave me a hug, which happened more regularly as I got older.

I have only touched upon the process of evaluating teachers in Indiana. I do not remember having such evaluations prior to 1975 when I arrived at Southwestern. That year there were a number of teachers whom the school board and administration deemed trouble makers, and their contracts were not renewed in spite of the fact that they had received only good evaluations during the year. Their belonging to ISTA was in some way part of the conflict, and that state organization took part in trying to salvage their jobs, which did not happen in any of the cases. In the fall semester I began to hear rumblings about negative evaluations. Finally, I was in a conversation that stated directly that all teachers should expect to have negatives on their evaluations to “protect the school corporation.” My instantaneous response was the simple promise that “if my evaluation is negative, I will not return another year.” There were no negatives on my evaluation.

I think that feedback is essential for teachers, and I believe that positive feedback encouraged me to work harder and achieve more. Negative feedback got negative results. In the first place, when a teacher is inadequate in the classroom, everybody close at hand knows it without entering that classroom. In the second place, when an administrator puts his foot in a classroom, the norm reverts to something other than normal. Difficult students can use it for revenge. I, on the other hand, found that my students became too angelic, too eager to make me look good. As if they had a responsibility to me to conduct that artifice.

On an early evaluation at Greenfield-Central, the principal wrote that “Mr. Rhoades is out of the classroom too much.”

When I replied that I was absolutely certain that I had NEVER been out of the classroom for any reason, I was assured that it was necessary for a second evaluation to indicate improvement had taken place during the year. (Now why would that make any sense to anyone? Does it make the administrator seem to have achieved something by having pointed this out?) “Oh,” he assured me, “I know it goes along with the job of auditorium manager, and that there are times you have to go to the auditorium. Don’t worry about this.”

As I put in countless hours in the evenings and on weekends and was determined that being speech team coach and director of drama would not detract from my primary responsibilities in the classroom, I became unreasonably upset by this injustice.

Even Mr. Francis Jackson, whose room had a door into mine, had told me that he didn’t know how I did it. He said that everyone who had ever had my job had been out of the classroom so often that concentration in his room was affected seriously. I know that my predecessors took students out of class frequently to work on sets, etc., but I have strong feelings about that use of time. We did use students during the matinee for elementary children who were bussed in for one morning.

My response to this evaluation was to begin to take liberties. If I was to be on record as having left the classroom, I would leave the classroom. I never was gone long or far off, but I made a discovery that I probably should have known by that time in my life. It says something about your basic trust of a class when they know you expect them to be on task in your absence. Maybe today that would be too dangerous(?) Classroom life is changing rapidly.

When I received my follow-up evaluation, surely enough, there it was—“This situation is vastly improved.”

Another year, more recently, when I was absolutely secure in my situation, I was to be evaluated by an assistant principal in his second year. My last two evaluations (three years apart) had been completed without a classroom visitation. My summer had been quite busy until early August when my thoughts turned to classroom preparation and officers meetings in preparation for the drama club kick-off and dues party. I began to hound them in the office about my class schedule for the coming school year. I got nowhere. For three weeks I got the run-around, until the first day of registration, when I had again been denied access to the scheduling. My students began coming up to me in the hall, saying, “Mr. Rhoades, I have you for speech fifth period. Mr. Rhoades, I’m in your fourth-period English class.”

Just as I was about to explode after the fourth such encounter, Miss Dowling of the guidance department called me aside. “Is this what you want to see, Jack?” as she handed me the fall schedule. But by then it was too late to do adequate “new” preparation and course outlines, etc.

Three days later, I believe it was, I found in my mailbox a form explaining the evaluative process. It asked me for goals and objectives for each of my classes. What I wrote all over that “process” really put the young v.p. in a bad light, and ultimately, I decided I couldn’t hand it in. I did indicate a desire to have the evaluator visit a speech class, as that was what I was doing the major portion of the day. (The year before, the head of the department had decided to take some of the speech-class load himself.)

One day, much later, when I least expected it, I realized as the bell rang after lunch to begin my literature class, that there was a man in a suit seated just inside the door. We had just completed a unit, and I had intended to go over test results and discuss their preferences as to which unit should be next. That, of course, would make me look totally unprepared, so I turned to the unit on William Shakespeare and took off on my most enthusiastic lecture about the theater during the Elizabethan Age.

He compared me, in a brief conversation, to a teacher he remembered as his best English instructor in high school, but on his formal evaluation form, which he read to me in a post-evaluation session, after expressing many kind observations, he stated that it had been difficult to assess me properly as I had refused to cooperate with the “process.” Then I told him about my feelings upon receiving that form with those questions so soon after getting my schedule too late for such preparations. I explained that I tore it up after castigating him because I admired his serious approach to his work and I really understood that the reason I was not allowed to see my schedule was not that someone else was to teach what I considered “my classes,” but that there were a few powerful individuals who would be upset with their schedules and would attempt to force changes they did not intend to make.

Mr. Millis opened the lower drawer on the left side of his desk and took out his final draft of the class schedule for the following year. “Would you care to see this now?” And as I took it to focus on my assignment, he continued, “Don’t spread this around, Mr. Rhoades; it’s not yet available to the faculty at large.” (Some such words.) I didn’t realize that would be my last evaluation. I was selected as the high school’s distinguished teacher that year.

So much for evaluations.

I believe I was always a reader, although I dramatized everything I read internally and showed a preference for the romantic and the whimsical. I sometimes didn’t read long works that were assigned in class, and although I read and reread the watered-down version of Dickens’s Great Expectations because it was in the freshman reader, I thought students would have derived greater benefit from reading a Dickens work that didn’t have to be “translated” from his brilliant use of the English language.  After a careful reading of Treasure Island in the eighth grade, I managed only a ‘B’ on the test.  My brother Danny said, “That was an easy test.  I aced it, and I only read the Classic comic.  In a college course, I got a ‘B+’ on a test over material I had read and studied without concentrating on the authors.  My roommate didn’t read any of the selections, but studied who wrote which story.  He got an ‘A’.  As a teacher, I wished to balance this out.

I once received a call from Steve Combs, editor of the Greenfield Daily Reporter at the time and a free-lance publisher. Steve was working with Charlie Fox, an interesting personality (sun worshipper(?), former hobo, colorful writer before computers were readily available. I had taught his son and step-children—Charlie was married in our new home in Bowman Acres at Greenfield; David (Rhodes) and his teen girlfriend showed up at our home when they had decided to run away, changed their minds and didn’t know where to turn.  We called the parents and put their minds at ease.

Charlie’s manuscript for his book, Weeds and Other Good Things to Eat, came to be in my possession because, after seeing an edited copy of part of it, he had exclaimed, “They are ruining my book! There is no editor whose opinion I can accept other than John Rhoades.” I had agreed to read it. The first chapter was ponderous and boring. I made many, many changes. Then I started on what I believed was Chapter Two. Suddenly, I was enthralled and, I guess, charmed—excited, even. The writer simply could not be the same person. Then I awoke with a start to the realization that this was the original of Chapter One.

I called Steve to say, “Please print Charlie’s book as he wrote it, original spellings et al. He is quite literate, and the personality of the author exists more boldly in what a grammarian would call error than anywhere else.” I related my experience with laboriously reworking the tedious “edited copy.” Steve valued my opinion enough to accept my advice, and Charlie mentioned my name in the preface among those he thanked. He went on to write other books and the newspaper began to print a somewhat regular column on the lives of the hoboes he had come to represent..

Charlie called me a few days after I sent the copy back to Steve. His voice was filled with emotion as he said, “You saved my book.”

My life as a high-school drama teacher demanded so much of my reading time, as did the careful reading of student writing. I believe the greatest asset I brought to the job was a keen skill for recognizing the right play for the group I was to work for. I was at first thrown off by comments from an IU professor who had said, “There is only one reason to direct a particular play—because you have to!” He meant that one should incur a burning appreciation for the work itself, and that is probably very true on the college level, but with high school actors one has to begin at the beginning.

I once told Bill Bettler as a freshman that I hoped to do a  Moliére play using him when he was a senior. Bill became enamored of becoming an athlete and became less prominent on the drama scene, so my influence upon him was limited to the role of the Duke in Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, which was directed during the only period of my life when I was ill, (and the title role in A Man Called Peter.) I believed myself to be dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, which had claimed my oldest brother’s life and later took my only sister. Suddenly my asthma attacks were recognized for what they were, proper medication was administered, and I was able to work the fourteen-hour days it took to get that play back on schedule.

Bill was not a successful athlete, but I gathered from his valedictory address that he felt the camaraderie had been a strong influence on his life. When he had asked me if I was still interested in doing Moliére;s Tartuffe, I told him it had been considered only when I thought I would have some years to develop his talent. I got a postcard from him when he was studying in England, attending many productions of Shakespeare’s plays, and had just visited Shakespeare’s tomb. I took it as a great compliment that he should think of me, desiring that I share in that time in his life. I regret that I never did get to direct Moliére. Bill began college studying to be a band director at Oberlin, later studied at Purdue where he worked with their auditorium program (I believe) and got his doctor’s degree in speech. He teaches speech at Hanover College, Indiana’s oldest private liberal arts college, where one of my Southwestern students, Jim Stark heads the drama program.

I would read play after play until I found one with suitable roles for everyone I knew for sure would be trying out. The cast never was the projected one. There were always too many surprise auditions for that. Whenever people have insisted upon calling me a genius, I have said, “If I have a genius, it is for casting. People are always critical of a new cast list and accuse me of playing favorites, but a man would be a fool not to cast in every role the person who had the greatest chance for success. How else could he survive the grueling days when the play looks impossible without the confidence that he has the best of all possible casts?”

But I read enough to know that I was a reader, as were both of my girls and neither of my sons. As I did not relish giving book reports in school, I handled that assignment in many different ways as a teacher. I kept a notebook with a page for each student in every class. They were not under an obligation beyond one book per semester, but I wanted to know what they were reading, including magazines, and the readers in the classes kept me informed in order to get extra credit. Ethel Harlan, librarian, once said in a meeting, “Our students are not reading. I believe television has made reading largely a thing of the past.”

I countered with, “Strange that I should have a notebook full of things my students are reading.”

“Correction,” she snapped back, “you have a notebook full of things your students ‘say’ they are reading.”

I knew, however, why they were not checking books out of her library. She was an inveterate censor. I discovered, after recommending a book to a student, that she kept The Catcher in the Rye under the counter and would only lend it if a teacher insisted. (I guess then I got a black mark in her book.) I also donated a copy of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, being such a Steinbeck fan that I believed the library should have at least most of his novels on its shelves. It never got catalogued and placed on the shelves. Small wonder that when the song was popular, students would approach the book return in the hall, open the door to it and yell, “Don’t Look, Ethel!” How that rudeness infuriated her!

Her aide, Dotty Macy, told of mental exhaustion in the teachers’ lounge one day. Upon being questioned, Dotty explained that she had spent much of the day inking in pants on the National Geographic natives. My theory had been, “When they’re old enough to be curious, they’re old enough to know.” (Possibly because I was spared any knowledge of sex until I reached college.) My brother Danny gave me the only information about sex that I got when I once asked what to about an erection—“Don’t think about it and it’ll go away.”

Many students, I observed, read so obsessively that they kept their novel opened to the page and picked it up whenever there was a lull. Mary McDaniels came to my door one morning to pick up her daughter, Debbie (Tammy’s best friend then) who had spent the night. Upon my answering, she shared this: “You are the person who taught me to read. I want to thank you for that. I don’t know how I would have survived my divorce without recourse to books.” Mary, whose ex-husband, Larry Evans, had been a comic actor with a speech impediment, never chose to be onstage, but was often my student-director and confidant.

I learned about student reading tastes during my first year of teaching. It was the year of the Peyton Place phenomenon. It seemed to me that nearly every student had a contraband copy hidden behind the covers of another innocuous paper back which shall be coverless and unread forever.

When Lori was an eighth-grader two related things happened. First, she got the run-around at the public library when she wanted the book Go Ask Alice. Finally, when I had suggested it, Lori asked them to reserve it for her. Then they told her it was an adult book and that she would need a note from her parents. My note read, “I trust my daughter explicitly. And I want her to be allowed to read anything in the library that she feels is worth her attention.”

That same year a friend, Mike Stump (now living in Argentina as a Baha’i pioneer) loaned Lori his copy of Jaws, warning me to censor it. “I put markers around the section I think is questionable,” as he made a face that meant I had better read it first. I told Lori to leave in the markers and suit herself. Later I asked if she had read the section in question.

“Oh,” she laughed a bit sheepishly, “I read that first.” (Of course!)

One other bit of discovery while I was quite young. I had completed my master’s thesis on the subject of “Problems for the Director in Tennessee Williams’ Plays.” There were not videos one could use at that time, but I was impressed with the powerful Christian themes in Night of the Iguana. There also were not adequate machines to make copies at that time, so I tried to read it to one of my classes. It has some salient language, and it was too long to cover quickly, so I spent a few days in preparation by cutting out all curse words and toning down sexual overtones. As Mark Twain wrote in “My Grandfather’s Old Ram”, “It wouldn’t read.” It was boring, and I was losing them. As I was reading from the acting edition with penciled cuts, I began to put things back in. Instantly they were awake and alert. I then used it as a carrot to encourage them to read it on their own, as I often did with great works, reading just enough of a captivating portion to get someone to raise a hand indicating that they wanted to read that one. Then I would go on to another from the stack I had brought from the library..

In Charlottesville my fourth year of teaching, I had one handsome, athletic blond farm boy who wouldn’t give a book report. I gave him Catcher in the Rye and said that if he read the first chapter, I would guarantee he would read it all, and it wouldn’t take long. He handed the book back, saying, “Mr. Rhoades, I ain’t never read a book yet, and I’m not startin’ now.” Years later when I learned that Johnny Apple was the president of the school board at Eastern Hancock, I just hoped that somewhere along the way he decided to read, maybe when he studied agriculture at Purdue.

I once met a young man who seemed troubled. He dropped in a few times to talk to Lori, who was a good listener. Then one day he called in the middle of the night from the county jail. If I remember right, he had stolen a motorcycle and maybe wrecked it. Anyway, he was afraid to call his mother. He lived in the northern part of the county and attended a school there, so I didn’t know the family. After I had listened to him for about an hour, he said, “Mr. Rhoades, I can’t believe you would listen to me for such a long time in the middle of the night when you hardly know me.”

My reply was, “Rod, maybe I’m just fascinated because I never knew anyone who was in so much trouble. But let me give you this advice—call your mother! You can’t anticipate her reaction to this. You’ve tried it out on me; now try it out on her. It won’t be as bad as you imagine.”

I told about the conversation in a freshman class the next day, and Jay Fleming, whose parents I knew (I had taught his mother and the Flemings were a distinguished family in the printing business) raised his hand. “Mr. Rhoades, if I ever get in jail, can I call you? Because my dad says, ‘If you ever get arrested, don’t call me!’”

“Jay,” I laughed, “it’s a deal. You call me, and I’ll call your dad.” I never got that call.

I love to get phone calls or visits from former students. Patty (Blanca) Gomez used to stop in whenever she was in town. She was a fine actress and an excellent scholar. I dropped in on her at her dorm at Indiana University in Bloomington when I was there on business. She was a Lugar scholar and active in Latino activities there. She introduced me to her roommate by saying, “This is Mr. Rhoades. He was my speech and drama teacher… Well, he’s my friend… Well, actually, he’s my best friend.”

Margaret and I looked forward to those visits even after she married and moved to California to go to law school. She taught bilingual students in the evenings and discovered that she hated and dreaded the days and lived for the evenings when she could teach. I don’t think she finished law school. She was married in the Chicago area in a long Mexican-Catholic ceremony that was charming and fascinating. At the reception dinner, it became obvious that they were concerned lest we become bored. Members of the family took turns sitting at our table and making conversation. It was a long trip back home, so the time to leave came too soon. As we left, Patty’s whole family escorted us to the door and outside. We were overwhelmed with their kindness.

A few years later, in 1986, we became parents to a seventeen-year-old Iranian refugee who lived with us while he learned English, finished high school and began college. When his relatives called, I discovered a politeness and respectful approach which exists in other cultures, but which is lacking in the hurry and pragmatism of ours.

Under the topic of censorship, I mentioned Miss Ethel. When Terri Lantz was a senior in Miss Ethel’s class, she chose to write her term paper on the Bahá’í Faith. Miss Ethel revolted and disapproved. Terri, an actress of some merit, knew how to be obstinate when she felt something was unfair. She came to me, reporting that Miss Harlan had said I was influencing our students. My response was, “Oh, I hope so! I hope so.” But to Terri I said this: “If you are serious about investigating the Bahá’í Faith, talk to your parents about it and invite me to your home, and I will tell you what I know about that religion. What I cannot let you do is use my religion to drive a wedge between me and the colleague I most respect. If you pursue this, that will happen and your experience will be a negative one. Please, Terri, choose another subject.” And she did.

Several years later, Terri showed up at a rehearsal for Harvey way down south at Southwestern, probably fifty miles from her home. She just wanted to help me any way she could. And I let her help. We also used her voice for the offstage singing in act I—“Mrs. Tewksbury’s voice certainly is fading. Oh, she’ll sing an encore. I know Mrs. Tewksbury. She’ll sing an encore.” Terri warbled “Sweet Little Buttercup” into the tape recorder just the proper amount off-key.

About fifteen years after that, I got a phone call and recognized her voice at once. She was calling from Oregon. She said her husband insisted that she call me. “You talk about that man a lot, honey. Why don’t you call him and talk to him.” We talked a long time. She was diabetic long before I knew her, and by this time she was legally blind. She didn’t tell me what else, or that she didn’t have long to live, if she knew that. She was remarkably upbeat, and whenever I mentioned the length of the conversation, she said it was okay. I should not worry about it.

She had met her husband, she said, while hitchhiking some years before, and they were a great match. He was very kind. I would like him. We reminisced some, and then we parted for the last time. I had no doubt about the role I played in her life.

Terri had an older brother Mike who played character roles. He was good at doing bizarre things I suggested and carried them off with aplomb, as did Terri. I don’t know that Mike belonged to any other group, and at that time most of the guys were athletes. Tom Barton was my leading man that year. I remember him saying at tryouts, “Where’s Lahntz (they pronounced it that way, I think, affectionately.) Why isn’t Lahntz here? Let’s go get Lahntz.” And they did. I once got a call from him too, asking if I remembered him. He knew I would, and said he wanted to call because I had played so important a role in his formative years. He had been, he told me, in the Marines; been a bodyguard to several Hollywood stars; and tried his hand at screenplays.

What students most often told me when they dropped by or called was that the conversation had been wonderful. “It all comes back.” Linda Harrold told me that at a play practice. Rob McCallister said it (Atticus’ son in To Kill a Mockingbird, Friedrich in Sound of Music); Wanda Hill said it (Mother Abbess).

Mike Mazak, doing stand-up comedy last I heard, appeared at my door just before Christmas with a plaque that was engraved “To Mr. Rhoades—teacher, director, friend—Mike Mazak. Mike came to us with a heap of troubles. Hard for me to believe from the young man I knew and loved.  He was out of control and neither his mother nor his father and step-mother wanted him to live with them, so he was living with an aunt. In the circle one day before a play he stood beside me, and when I said, as I almost always did, “Tonight, especially, you must be aware that we are a family… “

And I heard him say, just for me to hear, “Better than any family I ever had.” I hope, Mike, it’s all right to tell that. Mike went on to be a drama club officer, to play such wonderful characters as Ali Hakim, the peddler man in Oklahoma. He went from abysmal grades to straight A’s.

When he told me after the fall play his senior year that he was going back to his mother’s, because his step-mother couldn’t handle his weekend visits any more and he needed space to get away from the problems of his foster family (relatives), I suggested that if he needed to get away, he call me and come to stay with us for the weekend. He was Danny’s age. A few days later he stopped by the room to tell me that he had decided to stay, that this was where he wanted to be. And soon he found a family that wanted him with them.

There was Jim Held, never in drama, but he took to me. He brought me a book of Poe’s complete works—saw it in a bookstore and thought I had to have it. Ben Hawkins from my Charlottesville days brought me his own book of poems and ask me to keep a copy in a safe place.

Too many kids dropped by to name them here. Rodney Coe, though, was a special kid. He and Andrew Kelley were my Vincent Mathews and Mike yonts in later days. Rodney was Horace Vandergelder in Dolly, Professor Hill in Music Man, Captain Von Trapp in Sound of Music and many things in non-musicals. He would drop by on Saturdays before Sound of Music for voice lessons to work into that tenor voice range the low tones he would need in that show.

Rodney wouldn’t mind my sharing (he told it in an interview with the Greenfield newspaper) that he was not expected to “make it” through high school because of a learning disability. I had had him in class only two weeks when I sent him to the office to get a more challenging class. I told him I was sure he would go to college, and he would need better preparation than remedial English. I did have him in speech, and later, drama. He was my set chairman, drama president, and dear friend. Margaret knew him first as a piano student in junior high.

One elementary teacher said, after seeing him in a musical, “This is not the Rodney Coe that I taught.” I suspect that I saw something in him that others didn’t see. He said that only two people believed he would graduate from college—his mom and “the boss”, Mr. Rhoades. Rodney’s first professional work came between his sophomore and junior years in college. Five hundred people auditioned for four openings, and he was chosen. True, he had a height advantage, but he could act and could he ever sing. He never lost a line onstage and was, if it’s not too trite, “cool as a cucumber” up there.

I won’t repeat the praises Rodney and his parents have lavished on me—they are prejudiced in my favor. I did not encourage even Vincent to go after work in the theater. I said, instead, “If you can envision yourself doing anything else, do it.” But Rodney seemed destined to have only one road open to him, and I pressed him toward it. I had to take him to my alma mater, Indiana Central, where he had been offered scholarships by both music and drama departments but could not get admitted. They claimed they had a special program for the learning disabled and had a big article to that effect in the Indianapolis Star. How could they refuse him admission because his SAT scores were low. What he has doesn’t TEST. I assured him that once he was successful here, he could transfer to a bigger school.

The University of Indianapolis, as it was now called used Rodney in every production for two years. In their programs they had three distinguishing marks they placed after actors’ names on the cast lists. Rodney had all three marks by his name, meaning among other things, that once he was taking subjects in his major field, he was making the Dean’s List. Then he transferred to Ball State University at my suggestion, although his mom thought it was too big. I guess he showed it was not too great a jump when he garnered a singing lead in the small cast of the first show, a Sondheim musical, his first semester.

I got a post card from Andrew Kelley one day from Italy. He wrote me also from Egypt, a long letter, and he now resides in Indy.. Andrew also went to University of Indianapolis. He had the greatest work ethic I ever knew. He arrived long before play practice, even though he carried a large job load at Wal-mart,, and set the stage so that everything anyone needed would be in its place. His own props and space he mastered during these times. Then he was the last to leave. Could Margaret go through a certain song with him a few times so he could work in his space. I think he considered himself an actor more than a singer, as did Vince. But his shining, unforgettable moments were as Fagin in Oliver and the stage manager in Our Town..

What happened to Andrew was a tragedy that removed his burning passion for theater. Portraying a vile character onstage at U of I, he was viciously attacked by a man in the audience who was off-balanced enough that he could not distinguish between the actor and the character. Help did not get there fast enough, and he was hurt badly. He tried to stay in school and to be in the next play, but he just couldn’t recapture the joy he had always felt onstage. He felt overwhelmed with fear. He dropped out of school and joined the army. I still wait to see if he will ever renew his calling and expose the greatness that I saw in him from the days of Capt. Hook in Peter Pan on..

(Let me just mention that I have been feverish and ill for a week, and if I did some repeating today, forgive me.)

When I was a student at Christian Theological Seminary, I played several roles (seven) in The Cup of Trembling, which went on the road for two years. In the first performance when I was playing my favorite role, that of a Nazi orator juxtaposed with Dietrich Bonhoffer saying the beatitudes, I felt the spotlight on me turn red, I goosestepped in my Nazi uniform to the center of the stage, and out onto the thrust to address the audience in hateful nasal spasms as members of Hitler Youth in a nasal German accent.

As I completed the soliloquy and the lights faded, I felt the actor who was Bonhoffer helping me offstage as I was near fainting. We had a coffee klatch afterward in which there was a question and comment period. One man said, “The play was, for me, too realistic. I was in a Nazi prison camp for three years and felt I had put it behind me, but tonight the hatred all came back.” Two other men told of being in prison camps, and I knew that what I had felt in my moment of relishing the ugly power of my role was pure hatred, and I never had much delight in that part of the performance again.  The experience, coupled with the invasion onstage that Andrew Kelley experienced makes me appreciate that the director, Dr. Alfred Edyvean had vetoes my suggestion to grow a “Nazi” mustache.  One has to be careful not to break into the suspension of disbelief that theater requires.

We performed that play at many colleges and universities in Indiana, Ohio and Illinois.  I recall that as we neared the part in the show where there was an air raid (very realistic sound effects) and as a Nazi prisoner, I was discovered cowering under my bunk, terrified and almost incoherent.  To perform that realistically, I felt I had to lose control of my diaphragm; so I lay on the floor backstage and hyperventilated backstage for several minutes.  I don’t know if Dr. Edyvean realized that I did that, but it was very effective.  I remember that when I was weeping in rehearsal early on, he told me to shake my shoulders.  Acting manuals tell actors that they do not need to feel what the character is feeling; they, instead, must DO what the actor would do.  So I shook my shoulders and made sobbing noises, and I think what I came to feel was very near what the character felt.  In the introduction to that play, we stood in a semicircle and explained (I, in a British accent) that all of the characters in the play were deceased, so we actors had to perform their roles—hence, each of us appeared as multiple personalities.  Each role required slightly different accents.

MY TECHIES

I really doubt that someone not associated with theater could begin to realize the dependence one has on reliable persons to do the tech work. This special need did not become evident until Eastern Hancock students moved into their new building. With a lighting board and other expensive equipment, we needed to rely on a few people who would stay with us from show to show. Often these individuals became or were already connoisseurs in an area that was out of the fringe of my expertise. When their knowledge began to surpass mine there was sometimes a conflict, perhaps because the “vision” was mine, and it was my demands that had to be filled. I wrote, for example, the lighting cues and aimed the lights for nearly every show. During this period I relied a great deal on Doug Addison and Jeff Casey who never got their just rewards (on awards night they walked out). It was a lesson I learned and never forgot—don’t allow petty things to get in the way of rewards. But this crew ordered pizza every night and had a party while I worked through dinner. Then, before I could go home, I went upstairs and found their mess left for me to clean up night after night. Why didn’t I just tell them to clean up after themselves? It would have worked. And they were very good at what they did. One of Reid Jones’s daughters worked faithfully on their crew.

At my first big show in the new Eastern Hancock auditorium, Jeannine Terhune came to the final dress rehearsal. I was appalled at the amount of time some of the scene changes took, and the show looked not very promising.  I always regretted that she should judge that show without the benefit of the “magic ingredient” an audience provides. During study hall the next day, Steve Engleking, valedictorian and stage manager, held a rehearsal, trying to get the hardest scene change down to thirty seconds.  At the end of the hour, the excited group appeared at myh classroom door asking, “How does fifteen seconds sound?”  They took such pride in that accomplishment, and I’ll always remember it.

At Greenfield-Central I profited enormously from the experiences techies got in children’s theater, where a short fifth-grader once stood on a platform to run the sound while a high school student with special training on the new light and sound boards stood back and only occasionally stepped forward to make a suggestion.  It was a great practice in the organization at that time to hire high school students to work with the various groups—art students became the techies and lit the show and moved the scenery once the building and painting were done.  We did big shows, and they took great pride in their efforts. Simon Padgett and David Osborne had gotten special training said to have come from Hollywood, while I remained in class, and the training wasn’t considered necessary for me.  When those two, very adequate and responsible men graduated, Dustin Davis took the helm.  There was a fine progression of talent leading up to them.  It started with Larry Andrick, who was the first drama member I met at      G-C.  He was in the auditorium when Mike Yonts and I arrived with a truckload of “stuff” from Southwestern.  Mr. Wade had said, “Take whatever you think you can use.  We won’t find someone who will use them.

After Larry, who was also a fine actor, playing the title role in Life with Father, and other major roles, always teamed with David Arland and Martha Schwer onstage, the weight fell on the shoulders of Sam Blanchard, who remains, though we live far apart, my most treasured friend.  Those kids who stayed to work on sets after school came to be family members.  We had such fun and came to depend upon each other.  Once, when I was exhausted and in the final throes of expectation for a musical production, I realized that a pair of leads were mocking themselves and not really “putting forth” the effort their roles demanded, and I “lost it” in front of a few parents who were not as plentiful then as years later.  I stood in the aisle near the back and just scolded at the top of my lungs.  Panting and ready to faint, I went through the back doors into the lobby, where Sam, who had raced down the ship’s ladder steps from the lighting cloud, caught me in his arms and held me up until I was able to go back through the other doors and start again.  I saw the Faulkners sitting there, and stopped and apologized.  They said they understood and felt I was heartbroken.  I much later was to receive a letter of sincere apology from the young man responsible for that breakdown.  That show did not come close to my expectations, but the Greenfield-Central Drama Club was on its way toward the kind of excellence that only comes when the desire of whole cast is to meet the expectations of the directors.  And soon after that, Gail Noland took over the choral music department, and together, we rather soared.

At Greenfield-Central we had the added frustration of frequent rental engagements. The traveling technicians would sometimes reset the lights without consulting me. Thus it became necessary to have a student in the lighting catwalk when the auditorium was rented out. Later when a church rented the auditorium on Sundays year round, the problems were nearly insurmountable. No one consulted me about the advisability of this situation. It seemed to someone that it would bring money to the school corporation. It did not. Hidden expenses were everywhere. And for most Sundays the scenery had to be behind the curtain with the curtain partially open and the movie screen down so that something sacred could be projected to kill the feeling of a school assembly hall. This, of course, meant that if I wanted help setting up for church, I did it after rehearsal late on Thursday night. Then any scenery work on Friday or Saturday was limited, and Monday’s scenery crew had to bring things back out to begin work—a disastrous loss of time and a frightful inconvenience.

For some shows such as Oliver! I took the scenery all the way to the front of the thrust (twenty feet in front of the curtain line) and from auditorium wall to auditorium wall on the wide apron. We built these as late in the rehearsal season as we could because they would have to remain there during the worship service on several Sundays. On the back wall we painted the London skyline behind the London Bridge structure that the entire cast paraded across. The bridge had steps down on stage right which flowed into the pub. For “Fare Thee Well but Be Back Soon,” for example, by the end of the number the chorus had wound across the stage, up the SR steps, across the bridge, through a SL tunnel that took them onto the audience level, where the thrust stage had been lowered and a rickety bridge carried them across to stage right. There, on the apron, there was the house of Oliver’s grandfather with an inside staircase to the upstairs bedroom and a balcony overhanging the front row from which Oliver sang “Who Will Buy.” This house had a garden archway that led the parading chorus off. Also on stage left was the Widow Corney’s house which opened for the indoor scene and had a tower from which Bill Sikes could fall when he was shot. Parents who were professionals at carpentering came in the evenings during rehearsals to make sure everything was safe, and Mr. Weiland’s (Jeff) sets and murals class competed admirably with them. Mrs. Hall (Sandy) created the most wonderful backdrops for the kids to paint over the years. A lot of this adult talent came as a result of children’s theater where they learned to work together.

I remember the day Jeff and his crew built the tower on SL. I was reluctant to ask the volunteers to work on it when they had just completed the house and balcony. But that evening when the men came with their tools, they took a look at the tower and said, “Next year, we want to build a tower.” Jim Padgett and his men couldn’t imagine the delight that comment gave me and gives me still.

For The Homecoming, my last non-musical, we (mostly Jeff Weiland and his crew) built a mountain to be climbed on stage right (where it could snow and Father could appear from offstage). The mountain drops surrounded the stage area, and the house had large window openings so that these peaks could be seen during every scene. On stage left we built a barn loft. My designs created things I could never build. On that last year, Jeff Wieland was taking over that job as well.

I first became aware of attitudes of censorship during the 1959-60 school year at Carthage, Indiana.  My contract had included the job of being the librarian, although I had no such training.  Bill Skinner, the county trustee, had told me in the interview that teachers “passed the job around” and suggested that the next year it would be someone else.  I was told there were no funds available when I asked about purchases for the small room across from the study hall, which took up one side of the upper hall and had a small raised “stage area” at the front, used once a year for the high school spelling bee.  The library was woefully inadequate and not much used.  I recall that there was a nearly complete collection of old National Geographic Magazines that were quickly removed after I was gone.  At the end of the year, I was presented with the 58-59 library budget, which showed purchases of $900.  Bill said, “Just make it the same as last year.”  I complied.  Then “Pop” Gardner told me that $900 was budgeted for the library and could be spent for nothing else.  So I promptly spent $1800 to make myself an honest man.  To my knowledge, none of those bills were ever paid.  They included an up-to-date set of encyclopedias.  It amazes me that the wonderfully efficient audio-librarian, Anne Campbell Ruby attended that school, although her parents sent her to a finishing school in the South her senior year.

Sometime during the school year, during which my library ‘hour’ had been supplanted with study hall responsibilities, it had become called to the attention of one religious group that there were “prurient materials” in the library which junior high boys were checking out during their study hall periods.  I was called on the carpet and asked to investigate.  What I discovered almost immediately was that they were checking out certain volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia—those volumes that had masterpieces of nude sculptures and art.  My response was this:  “If they’re old enough to wonder, they’re old enough to find out.”  (What materials might they access today via the internet?)  They did not take action to remove books or delete pages, but access to those volumes was then limited.

At Greenfield-Central when I lived in that community but taught in the small county school at Charlottesville, a book of literature was required for purchase as junior high textbooks, but before the school year began, those books were recalled and replaced at some expense because the religious community was in an uproar about its contents.  There was a section that included, I believe, “The Devil and Daniel Webster” followed by several artists’ renditions of Satan, with forked tail, horns, cloven feet, wearing red, etc.  And the book had the word ‘damn’ in one or two places.  This called to my attention the rationale behind the junior American literature books I used for several years back then—I called these books anthologies of death.  This was called to my attention at Charlottesville when for either three or four weeks close together, students were called out to be informed of the sudden death of a parent.  I recall two of the names, but will refrain from using them here.  The class became highly sensitized to any knock on my door; also the textbook became abhorrent to us, and I realized that nearly every selection dealt in some way with dying.

After the censorship issue at Greenfield came to my attention, I realized that, to avoid conflicts with those who might censor, anthologies included writing by the great authors that made no mention of sex and used no words as strong as ‘damn’ or ‘hell’.  And death was the one thing they all wrote about—death and coming of age in non-sexual ways, which often included the loss of a parent.  A few years later teachers began to use supplementary novels which enabled them to give objecting individuals an alternative.  At Greenfield-Central, I once had a parent refuse to allow his son to read Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, which I believe is built on the need, even in the most primitive of individuals, for a supporting belief system.

The most obvious censor situation was this:  during freshman lit we viewed the film of Romeo and Juliet.  When we came to the infamous ‘bedroom scene,’ I was instructed to pause the VCR and offer short-term library passes to any student who felt the scene might be objectionable.  No one ever chose to leave, but during the 1971-72 school year, two men from a local church arrived in the office and demanded to be shown the video.

Mr. Tidrow, long-term principal, had the a-v boys set up a VCR and television set in the lobby of the auditorium and insisted that the men must watch the whole film up to that point, in order to keep the scene in context.  At that time, videos were not available for rental and copies were expensive.  Very soon the librarian realized that the men were gone and the bedroom scene had been deleted.  I used the incomplete video only a few times and then was no longer assigned freshmen lit classes, so I lost track of it.  By the time the newer (DiCaprio) version came out, videos were available to all quite inexpensively.

Other than the time the superintendent at Southwestern, who had been most supportive in the past, censured me for allowing the use of the word “bastard” in a production of Harvey, and the time the Christian Book Store was included by my publicity committee on a list of billboards where the owners might encourage attendance at the play Hello, Dolly! The owner called and asked to be reassured that the words ‘damn’ and ‘hell’ were not going to be used.  I said, “I’ll tell you what.  I don’t wish to put anyone in the position of applying censorship to my productions.  Please do not advertise this play on your billboard.  Thanks for your consideration.”

Larry Andrick at Greenfield began a string of leaders. Larry was a genuine mogul who was selected by Lions Club as the outstanding senior boy. He announced nearly every sporting event, prepared lighting and sound for someone else to carry out because he was a most talented actor as well as a technological genius. I could brag about Larry’s accomplishments at Ball State, Indiana University and Hollywood, but I’ll let him write his own book! And in my small speech class that first year, a freshman kid sat sort of undistinguished from the rest. How was I to know that Sam Blanchard would “arrange” things so he could be assigned to me for something all four years. Except for Dugan Shelby, who was my “permanent cadet,” Sam was the only student I had on a daily basis for four years. When he took over Larry’s auditorium load, he became (I said this in jest) my bodyguard and friend. He remains, outside of my family, the person I feel closest to on earth—mentally in step at all times. Sam is a computer whiz, and he didn’t take much to acting part of the theater.

My mention of a bodyguard brings up a story I love to tell from my last days at G-C. One senior boy was removed from a senior English class, taught by a first-year teacher he intended to drive insane. When she could no longer live with the situation, it was decided that he could be put into my drama class midstream. By this point we were in rehearsal, and all the parts were cast. The group had established a rapport, and there was little anger, ever. One day this young man came in, slammed his books on the desk and uttered profanities. As I started up, one of the students said, “Just let him go, Mr. Rhoades. He just had a fight with his girlfriend. . . “

And there was more profanity. When I told him I could not tolerate his behavior, he started toward me in a threatening manner. “Just stop right there!” I ordered him firmly. “There is something you don’t know that you had better learn fast. I have never had a fight in my life, and I’m sure you could easily mangle me. But there are people in this room who would fight for me… “

And as I said it, Joel Grissell got out of his chair (he was quite a muscular “lifter” for the cheerleaders, among other things) and said, as he towered over the angry lad, “Mr. Rhoades, I would fight for you.”

“I know you would, Joel.” And the anger dissipated as the kid slid down in his seat, ready for class to start. At the end of the hour as students were filing out, two other senior men went out of their way to pass my chair and say, “Mr. Rhoades, I would fight for you.” These were not students in the drama program. They were just “my kids.”

This class was last period in the day. The play was Mash, and it was not too unusual to have a boy who had been absent all day show up for class because he didn’t want anyone else doing his part. “Do you have a pass from the office?” (late arrivals were required to check in there.)

“Aw, Mr. Rhoades, just don’t tell ‘em I was here. Okay?”

When that handsome, popular kid arrived at my door each day, he paused and waited for our eyes to meet, and when I grinned at him, his eyes would light up.  I think if every teacher had a student or two whose eyes lit up for him, we’d have many much better teachers.

The year after my retirement and move to Kentucky, I was in Greenfield visiting and took my car to a large car wash/lube place to have my car’s oil changed.  As we were waiting, a young man came into the waiting room from the shop.  “Mr. Rhoades, I heard you retired.”

“Yeah, several of us retired last year.”

“Well, I’m just glad I went to school when the good teachers were there.”  And with that, he ducked out.

I turned to the few others who were waiting and said, “I think I’ll take that as a compliment.”

One day I had been standing outside my downtown home on Highway 9 talking to my Baha’i friend, Ron Yazel.  As students went by, they’d honk and yell, “Hey, Mr. Rhoades.”  (I didn’t often stand out there.”  When the sixth or seventh kid honked and yelled, Ron looked at me, smiled and said, “Jack, I hope you don’t think this is normal.”  Well, it was for me.

In Charlottesville while we were building our home in Bowman Acres in Greenfield, the board at the Christian Church had asked us not to move out of the parsonage where we had lived since moving to town.  I said, “Well, we’re building a new home, but we really wouldn’t like to have to move after school started.”  Surely enough, two weeks before school started, they found a new minister, and he wanted the parsonage residence.  We had to move at a time when a new business in nearby Knightstown had squeezed the rental market to the limit.  Ralph and Marie Zapf had an old, old house near the parsonage and across the street from their home that came open.  I stopped to talk to them, and Marie expressed a reluctance to rent to a schoolteacher because she feared pranksters.  I told them we had never had an incident, although we often had students in our homes.

That older couple became valued friends.  Someone said, “You can’t be serious!  You’re moving into Marie Zapf’s house.  That woman is the nosiest woman in town.  Well, let me tell you, she was aware of what went on at our house, but we never felt she was intrusive.  She’d call and say, “Jack… this is Marie.  What are you and Margaret having for supper?”  And I’d tell her.  Then she’d say, “We’re having ______.  Why don’t you bring your stuff over and we’ll put it together and eat out at the picnic table out back.”  And we would, and we played Parcheesi , which they called “playing marbles.”  Ralph drilled holes into a laminated board and made us our own game of marbles, which we used together in our new home for several years.

One time when our front door was left open, and the phone rang…  “Jack…  Marie.  This is driving me nuts.  What is in that sack on the top of your refrigerator?”

“That’s the glasses we used as table decorations at the prom with colored water and floating candles that threw a pattern of shadows on the tablecloths. We thought the kids would buy them for souvenirs.  They were cheap, but they didn’t want them.”

“Well, bring one over when you get a chance.  Maybe I’ll buy them.”  And, believe it or not, she bought them all!  Now, why would I find that offensive?

I’d like to share a few random poems from my past.  While I was teaching at Southwestern, I decided to enter the Walt Whitman poetry contest.  There was a minimum number of poems required, so I began to write up lots of little things that happened at that time into poetic format.  When I had enough for the minimum, I sent it off.  Robert Penn Warren was the judge, and I think my slender volume was beneath his notice.  There was no access to computers for the general public in the mid-‘70’s, so my manuscript was carefully typewritten.  I carefully retyped each page to have no crinkles, and only stapled it together when it was complete.  I had learned to do this in seminary and grad school after I realized that quite often they were not marked on or even glanced through.  The ‘A’ was because the paper was carefully typed and beautifully footnoted, making it stand apart from many of the others—no erasures allowed.

This made me quite aware, when the manuscript was returned that it had been among the entries not up-to-snuff.  If they had read only one or two at the beginning, I had not placed what I considered to be my best in that location.  Anyway, here are a few entries from that manuscript, the preparation of which was an enriching experience in many ways.

     *Note: These poems were written to incredibly remarkable students over a period of years (mostly   labeled) as rewards for unwavering loyalty, brilliance, genius of several sorts. It should not be surprising that the subjects of these poems, along with a small multitude of others who rose up from the ranks to insist they were not just to be my students. They proved to be the kindest, most generous and thoughtful friends any man I know ever had the good fortune to make. We slaved together onstage (most of them) after school with scenery, in the evenings and weekends at play practice, and during the day in classes that sparkled with talent and wit because they were there and not because I happened to be the teacher. If “love” means something to you other than the force of life that I intend, these may arouse your suspicion or seem too bold, but these recipients knew my mind too well to doubt my intentions. I hope you enjoy the insights they give into some important teacher relationships from my past.

I included an alphabetical listing of titles, a table of contents, which listed poems in order of appearance, and an index of first lines. My first selection is from a class exercise given in a textbook I once used.  I entered it in several poetry contests because those events limit the number of lines you can submit, and most of my poems could not be so condensed.  They always offer to include it in a volume if you agree to buy the book (and subject yourself to other vanities.  It was sincere in its message, and I still like it.  I wrote it for Vincent’s “Memory Book”, and I doubt if many seniors across the country had messages from a teacher that were so well-thought-out.

                   MESSAGE FOR A MEMORY BOOK

BOY
Nearly man
Thinking, dreaming, striving,
Brim full of kindness–
YOU

MAN
Not parent
Pushing for perfections,
Guiding, listening, loving you–
ME

FRIENDS
Two persons
Interacting with joy,
Respecting each other’s short-comings–
US

SEPARATION
Inevitable consequence,
Constructing meaningful lifetimes,
Retaining shared concerns
APART

                                WITHOUT YOU                                                                                          

Dark here                                                               
Without perspective
without vision,                            .
Without love,                                                                   
Without you.
                                                           .
Cold now, 
I am weakened;
I am frightened;
I am diminished;
I am alone.

In this present,                                                                 
Aimlessly circling,
Denied happiness, 
Lost in darkness,
What future exists? 
                                                       
All hopes merge                                                           
Into one hope—                                                            
To live
In the past
With you…

I am with you 
And have perspective, 
Light and vision 
And your warm breathing 
Upon me.

Warm then
And tall then,
Strong then
And fearless,
I conquer all.

Who am I  
In this tunnel? 
Where is the me
That I was
In this place–

This dark place
Without perspective,
Without vision,
Without love,
Without you?

"How in the dark live people are… They’re all shut up in little boxes." from Emily’s graveyard soliloquy in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

I rewrote this poem so that it would fit into the 20-line format for a contest.  It then looked like this.

                  WITHOUT YOU

Dark here—without perspective,
Without vision, Without love, without you.
Cold now—I am weakened; I am frightened;
I am diminished, I am alone.

In this present—aimlessly circling,
Denied happiness, lost in darkness—
What future exists? To live in the past with you…
I am with you and have perspective, 
Light and vision, and your warm breathing upon me.

Etcetera, etcetera.  You get the idea, and, I hope, a sense that something is lost by giving up the terse, tense feeling of the original.  This is not a poem about death, although it could have been.  It was about the separation that takes place between young lovers, going off to college and having to live in two separate places.  I felt that at my age in my late thirties, I should not be able to realistically feel the emotions of young love; so I borrowed the emotions from two who were so young.  How old was Shakespeare when he wrote Romeo and Juliet?  (Not that I am comparing my meager efforts to the master.

I once set this poem, among some others, to music and recorded them for fun.  I have no idea where that tape got to, but I set this poem to a dirge, and when I played it for a friend and neighbor, she said emphatically, “I don’t like that poem.”  She had immediately assumed it was about the separation of death.

 I think I will include one other poem here that is about death and, for me, the loss of a good friend who never played in the neighborhood again.  I too was twelve when this happened, and I believe that having written in kept me, at the lowest financial ebb of my life, from acting out my depressive compulsions.

          YOUNG CARPENTER

LAUGHING
As one laughs who knows the joy of making things
And seeing them stand finished,
Proud, you left me.

HAMMER
Swinging at your side to tick the seconds
Of the block that took you homeward,
Boldly you trod.

SIDEWALK
Taut as wire, quivered at the careless tread
Of one who knew not
Danger lurked there.

SOMETHING
Once inside the door, told you all was not well,
And fear gripped your shuddering senses.
Frozen, you listened.

SILENCE
So deep that you could not have heard a cellar moan
Or known it was your father’s throat that made the sound,
Icy, it cut you.

TREMBLING
You explored the lower depths in haste and found there
Rope from the beam, chair, and him,
Eyes glazed, life nearly gone.

SHOULDERING!
And while you held him, grunting, weeping, strong boy of twelve,
To rid the noose of awful weight, he died
And left you, a living Atlas.

SOBBING
You bore the weight that had been his to bear,
Afraid to let him go and run for help until you knew
It was too late and all your pleading, loving words
Fell on deaf ears.

DRAINED
You climbed the stairs that once were friendly
And knew there was no turning back into the pit
Where you had left a father and a childhood
And emerged, with eyes of steel, a man.

This event occurred somewhere around 1947, but the poem was written for a poetry class in grad school at Ball State University in 1967.  I was asked to read it to the class, and it left them stunned and, I believe, abashed.

I rarely start with the idea that I have to make a poem rhyme.  In fact, I often get down the main thoughts and then go back to work out the rhymes.  Sometimes students feel that a poem is completed when they put down their pen the first time, and it’s difficult to convince them that they need to “hone” their words.  Often much later, I see a word and wonder if another would have said more clearly what my thought process intended.  In “Katy’s Afghan”, for example, I still wonder if the last line—“And something else” should perhaps be changed to read “And something more.”
For today’s blog, I chose three poems with rhyme, although not in strict meter or strict verse.  What I really worked on in these poems was the extended metaphor and other poetic devices.

I once overheard two English teacher in the lounge discussing Poe’s “The Raven.”  They were wondering if his inspiration had come from an actual incident with a bird.  I had recently been in the Yale library when they had a display of Charles Dickens’ artifacts.  Among them was a stuffed raven and a letter to Dickens from Edgar Allen Poe.  In it, Poe commented on the use of a talking raven in a Dickens’ novel (I think it was Barnaby Rudge.) He felt Dickens had missed a real opportunity by not emphasizing the symbolism that the bird suggested to him.  My third poem, “Metamorphosis” arose from a comment a student made about a dream he’d had, and I saw a possible metaphor there for the latent peacemaker that is within each of us.

My poetry professor would always write in the margin, “What is the genesis of this?”  The first poem, which mixes up the muses of poetry and music, took its origin from the fact that our house at that time had a fireplace in the room where the Baha’is often held “firesides”—open discussion forums about the teachings of the Baha’i Faith.  When we bought that old house, someone had stuffed rags in the iron cover that hid the grate, and we were told that the fireplace was not usable.  We removed the rags and found the damper had been left open, which caused a draft, but otherwise, the lovely marble fireplace (we discovered when stripping the wood that the scrolls on the pillars were ivory and very hard to stain to resemble oak) worked admirably; so there was often a fire for the fireside.  At a yard sale, we had found a 3/4-sized violin for $25, and decided it would fit nicely between the two electric sconces over our spinet piano.  The piano room across the hall had a baby grand and a fireplace that hid a radiator inside. Actually, the bow was hung above the violin, but that didn’t rhyme, so…

          POETRY MUSE

Sense suffocating loneliness, gloom,
Silent as the violin on the wall of the fireside room,
Strung, but out-of-tune,
Out-of-reach, untouched, a boon,
Yearning, like the bow,
Neatly slanted a few inches below.
Feel the tremors within it moaning,
"Take me down! I will not consent to being ornamental,
An embellishment, a turn, a grace note merely–NO!
Tighten a turn or two the horsehair bow,
And render into tune each string;
Rosin generously and let me sing!
"Caress cold ebony of my chin piece–bright,
Black curves reflecting a bold fire’s light.
Grip me closely, pressed against your shoulder.
Release soft melodies which soon grow bolder
As resonance fills the chambers of my chest
And the music of the muses swells your breast.
“O, stir my strings with nimble, tremulous touch.
Vibrate into life silent pages with passion such
As only prayer, music and poetry can proffer–
Pain and happiness your fleeting memory must offer.
Place your cares like logs upon the fire across the room
And warble sacred mem’ries from your journey to the tomb.”
Replace the bow with care upon the wall when done–
In the probable event another such a one
Stops here for warmth with sagging soul so coldly grand.
Loosen its strings and leave the rosin close at hand,
And, just as you might close your fondest book,
Hang the fiddle quickly back upon the hook.
It is not soundless, though muted now like a melancholy word
Upon an unturned page, awaiting reader, lonely, and unheard
.

         FACING A NEW CLASS

I wonder–
How often will we know the joy
Of laughter that envelops every surly boy?
Will there be moments when the anger flares?
Wounds that only time repairs?
Will there be sadness that we know
Because we’re thrown together so?
And, looking back when the year is run,
Will we cherish the things our class has done?
I wonder!

          METAMORPHOSIS

I dreamed that we were children, playing
As children play, and we were saying
What we would become someday,
And suddenly we found a way
To make our deepest wish come true
And become anything we wanted to.

It was with foolish, childish mirth
We sought to overwhelm the earth.
You decided I should try
To turn into a butterfly.

My simple dream became a thriller
When you became a caterpillar
And, quick as you could bat an eye,
Were snatched up by a passerby.

I told the man he couldn’t take you
When violently he began to shake you.
And to my horror, as he shook,
You head came off–I couldn’t look.
I cried aloud with such a scream
I woke myself out of that dream.

I’m quite afraid it won’t be worth
The cost to tranquilize the earth.
I think perhaps I’d just as soon
Stay wrapped up in a warm cocoon
And let the world remain at war
As centuries of men have done before.

And yet I sometimes try in vain
To dream the dreadful dream again.
I know, although I don’t know why,
That I must try the butterfly.

Many people have tried their hands at substitute teaching at their local schools, and many have expressed their frustrations to me. My own experiences from 1995 to 2006 were varied and inconclusive. I could not think of those years as teaching years—there is little semblance of teaching in most classrooms when a substitute is in the room. Most subs don’t stay at it very long, and are thinking it might be a stepping stone to a full-time teaching job, but this is rarely true if the sub has anything but the lowest price tag.

We once had a wonderful sub who finished the year two different times.  She had been Teacher of the Year in another state and was highly qualified, but when it came time to find a teacher for the next year, she was passed over.  I think it was because her husband was a high executive with Eli Lilly, so they hired someone cheap.  When that teacher left after one year (oh he was qualified—he had worked as a reporter at the local paper) he left the yearbook with a $2000 debt.  I stormed into the office and demanded an explanation as to why the highly-qualified person, who was dedicated to our community and extremely efficient might not readily be assigned to this position.  She was hired, and I can never know the part I played in that, but I was concerned that the drama fund was too flush , and when that had happened before, I was told that all groups were being tapped to assist in the cost of something primarily to assist the athletic department.  To avoid a repeat of this, and because I felt it was a just thing to do, without consulting the officers (they would have agreed anyway) Drama Club paid off the yearbook debt.  No kindness of mine ever paid greater rewards!

Indianapolis (IPS) told me when I had a masters’ degree and fifteen years of experience that they would never hire me, although I had top recommendations and had retired to go into business at an inopportune time. When I found a job, I had to be willing to travel to the job, accept classes that were out of control when their first-year teacher’s transcript arrived, showing that she was not qualified to teach English classes—her major load.

By the time I showed up, there had been subs without lesson plans for a month, and, when she was there, a teacher who was depressed and suicidal (three attempts, I was told by the grapevine.)  I simply could not be myself in that classroom until I had gained control, been treated with disdain, but miraculously, arrived in a good place with loving students. Finding a teacher with two degrees and fifteen years experiences who was willing to accept those conditions was a major coup. My reviews were very high, but it ranks near the top of bad years of my career. New teachers are always tested and often fail to hit the mark.

Sometimes a sub is available because she has retired from that system and is well known. Wonderful!  Sometimes a sub can get by for awhile by being casual and ignoring the lesson plans left by the teacher. It helps if the teacher leaves a seating chart so that the sub can call students by name. As a sub, I went prepared with blank seating charts so that I could fill in the last names quickly as I called the roll. As time permitted, I added the first names.

Sometimes a teacher schedules a film to be watched—weak, because it is usually not possible to see it in its entirety on one day, and with the block system, the class meets every other day. A strong suggestion—it always worked for me—follows:

I used the white space left by the names on the seating chart and explained the process to the class, saying they would receive a grade on the quality of the attention to the assigned work, a film, even if they personally had seen it before.  A brief quiz over content doesn’t work!

On the whiteboard I’d place a square to represent the day’s grade book square. I told them how I would be grading their effort to stay on task by continuously working my way around the room. If they attracted my attention out of order, their mark went down immediately. All a student must do to receive an ‘A’ for the day is watch the film.

Each time I assigned a notation, it was one of these: + for being on task; a check (B) if they had a pen in their hand or an open book; a check- (C) for trying to communicate with another; a – (D) for a quiet disturbance; and a 0 (F) for sleeping, etc. At the end of the period, I would add up the marks in their squares and assign a letter grade the teacher could use. Usually there were about six marks per square, and, unless the film was a poor choice, their interest was caught by the start of the third mark. I hope some readers will try this!

My own experience taught me to be in the classroom if at all possible. I only had discipline problems when there was a sub in the room, and it usually happened in the speech classes. I allowed the sub to hear the speeches and assign them grades according to my suggestions. One problem was that students wanted me to hear their efforts and assign their grades, so they would decline, and then there was a time-filling problem.  Once a sub was offended by the topic of a student’s humor, and she gave this talented boy (a great comic actor) a ‘C’.  He didn’t complain, but everyone else did.  “You would have loved it,” they said.  I asked him to redo the assignment, but he decided to take the ‘C’.  I just averaged his grades without that one.  That young man, Eric Davidson, got a job right out of Ball State in Hollywood writing scripts for TV.  Don’t know what he’s done since.

Kids intent on taking advantage of a sub will try to take over the class by asking personal questions of the sub—are you married? Do you have children? Grandchildren?  How many?  You have an accent; where did you live before? And on and on. A simple statement that there is an assignment and “This isn’t about me” will often not dissuade the “characters.” Then an ornery class will try to run you out.

As a sub, as with my teaching, I kept the room clean, sometimes picking things up as they worked on an assignment, and leaving nothing on the floor or desks between classes. The opinion of janitors/matrons is important, and they love a teacher whose room is easy to clean. If, as I once did, the floor tiles got broken, I talked to the maintenance folks and replaced and sealed them myself when they brought me materials rather than fixing it quickly. If you don’t do this, it becomes a huge problem very quickly. The same is true of carpet. The cheap stuff gets caught in the vacuum, and students will find a string to pull and destroy. I kept scissors handy and kept strings cut off.

In one classroom in Lexington, KY, I saw many pencils stuck in the ceiling tiles of a high ceiling. I spent my noon hour that day standing on desks, swinging at the tiles with a rolled-up poster, and collecting pencils. Never got a word of thanks, but I felt good about it, and no one could think it happened under my watch. In both Kentucky cities, Lexington and Winchester, I got contracts to fill in for classes where a teacher was needed. In Huntersville, NC, I taught in a special ed classroom with an efficient aide for six weeks at the beginning of the year and, another year, I finished the advanced Spanish and French classes for a teacher who left to start a non-teaching job. She made the plans, picked up their work, and assigned their grades. I didn’t know either language, but each student had a classroom laptop and worked hard every day. Those kids reported that I was the best sub ever. I never imposed myself into their lives. 

When the person who contacts and assigns subs values your work, you get classes that appreciate you and you get to work for teachers the students respect.  These persons are never teachers, though sometimes (rarely) administrators.  If they look at your credentials and think, “This guy can handle a difficult class that would run out a young sub,” you’ll get depressed fast.  If you find this happening to you, complain loudly.  It isn’t fair.  The best subs should get the best assignments.  I once knew in advance that I was to be gone, and the sub was in the building, so I had the chance to go over the assignments and talk to the sub.  On the day I was gone, the chorus teacher was suddenly ill.  Now that’s an easy sub job—carefully selected, they’ll sing anyway or watch a video of their recent performance.  Little wonder she opted to go there and leave my sub floundering.

Ultimately I stopped subbing when I reached age seventy, saying, “I was treated with respect my whole teaching life, and I always went to school happy; and I just can’t abide the thought of ending my ‘career’ with dread and contempt” because I was getting the difficult assignments.

           THE WRITTEN WORD

If there are moments in a day
That give one’s soul a flight of joy,
He may then hunger for a way
To save what Time might well destroy.

If poetry captures what he feels,
Perhaps he can relive the glory,
Though Time may turn upon his heels
And others make him doubt his story.

If when shared the treasure glows
In glaring strokes of poet’s pen,
With common thoughts another knows,
He gives his fellows pleasure then.

When one reads over words thus written,
Lines having heat or pain or cold,
However love and life have smitten,
Retain their youth as the man grows old.
                                         December, 1977

In the classroom one day after reading some Emily Dickenson poetry, students tried their hands at writing a poem.  We had taken looks at some modern poets who tried some experiments.  This is one I tried that day.

          LETTER TO EMILY

T
ONIGH
T

we witness

T
WILIGH
T

and a

W
ILLO
W

blend their

S
PLENDOR
S
                   1968

And I came up with this one, which is rather silly, but it was something that seemed to happen rather often because this teacher talked too much.

          CLASSROOM CONUNDRUM

As
(a
be
ll
ri
ng
s)
si
gn
me
nt

                  ANSWER: A bell rings in the middle of assignment

And how would anyone remember what we had for lunch that day in 1970 or that an extra sandwich cost fifteen cents if I had not penned this quickly scribbled down statement in poetic form.  Was it a poem?  Well, maybe not a very good one…  but the students and I were doing something creative.  It was a small class, and each kid read his poem aloud and we showed our appreciation.

          SCHOOL LUNCH

The spaghetti today
was somewhat like
The spaghetti we had last year
   and the year before
       and the year before
          and the years before,
But smaller portions
And not as filling.

The sauce was just as red
And lacked the taste of meat
That Mother’s has,
But I have grown to like it!
And that is why I wished it was a sandwich
So that I could pay my fifteen cents
And get some more.

I was so hungry
That I ate my salad,
Every drop,
Even though I dislike
watery salads
And there was
no dressing
that I could taste.

I even ate
the plums
(as small as prunes)
Both
    of
       them,
And chewed the stones for flavor
Till the lunch hour was up
And I went back to class
to sit
and write
About the plums
    and lettuce
       and spaghetti
that I ate!
                                      1970

And I suppose one might add, but who would care?  Maybe only I find a little pleasure in remembering that day in the old, old building in the little town of Charlottesville, Indiana.  I also remember that the school lunches we had each day were prepared with care by farm women who knew how to cook, baked real pies, cooked whole turkeys, baked chicken pieces they had cut up, and perhaps, whistled while they worked.  At Lapel High School, they set out the left-overs from the day before in large pans to be added without cost to anyone’s lunch.  They also had large slices of pies that could be purchased cheaply as an added dessert.  The ladies saved the pie money to use for holiday lunches so they could go all out.

In today’s schools, the cooks rarely put out anything they could say they cooked.  Even the French fries were frozen and poured from a bag.  I sometimes told my students that they didn’t have to attract a great deal of public attention or earn a great deal of money to be successful.  All you have to do is work at making your labors a service to others, and you will stand out from the crowd.  This last poem expresses how the Baha’i principal that work done in the spirit of service to others is worship before God.

          GIFTS

My gift to God of thankfulness
For the wondrous gifts He gave to me
Is every perfect jewel I can find
To place upon the Altar of the Arts.

And every song, each scene,
That makes the grade
Is an act of worship
From the soul of one
Who does the labor
As an act of love for Him
Who gave these gifts to His creation
That he might know
And worship Him
In just such acts as these.

                   June 18, 1978

We live in a somewhat friendly neighborhood in southern North Carolina, where, as a general rule, folks are friendly. Once in awhile one encounters a rude driver when, after waiting at a T-road to gain access to traffic on the far lane, you see a chance to pull out, and the oncoming driver takes umbrage and shows it by driving aggressively. When this happens, I am afraid I have to admit I respond in kind by just slowing down for a short stretch to let him know he doesn’t own the road. However, it is much more common to encounter kindnesses on the road and elsewhere. I believe there are friendships waiting to be formed just around every corner, often in unusual circumstances.

Today I am thinking of one particular friend—Helen Morrison, formerly of High Point, NC. We had bought a small retirement home in Huntersville in a neighborhood that featured a pool, a playground, a walking course, sidewalks on one side of every street and lots of inclines. Margaret likes to walk more than I do, and although our doctors have encouraged me to walk, I rarely do. Helen was an older neighbor who lived down the block with her daughter, Betty. As Margaret walked past one day and waved at Helen, that friendly lady asked where she was going. “I’m just taking a walk,” she responded.

“Wait a second, and I’ll go with you,” was Helen’s reply, and a friendship began. Sometimes Margaret would invite her in for coffee plus, and sometimes they stopped in at Helen’s. When I was at home, I joined them at the table. (I do that more eagerly than I walk.) When we moved two neighborhoods down the road, we kept in touch. Helen had a widow friend who passed away shortly after a big shopping trip, and as Margaret was that friend’s size (and I was her friend’s husband’s size, Helen offered us an assortment of new garments with the sales tags still attached. My gift was a very high quality black leather jacket. I have many coats and jackets, but I wear that fine jacket more than all the others put together.

Our usual outing, about once a month, is lunch together—sometimes at one of our preferred restaurants, sometimes at our home, sometimes at hers. For her eighty-fifth birthday last summer, we went with her daughter Rita’s family to High Point for a celebration at which Helen wished to share her friends with us. It was a lovely buffet luncheon, and we discovered faces and personalities to go with the names she often referred to. She has a great assortment of deep friendships and relatives from a lifetime in that community. We already knew her two daughters because they lived so close to us for a few years. In fact, her daughter Rita, a realtor, assisted us when we sold our small three-bedroom ranch home and purchased a five-bedroom two story. Helen and Betty had gone in Betty’s car.

When we picked her up for lunch last week, she handed me a gift card for Panera’s, saying, “Do you know this place?”

“Oh, yes. They have a lovely lunch menu.”

“I got this gift card in the mail the other day from Rick and Angelica in High Point.” So we enjoyed soup and sandwiches from their generosity. She asked us then if we could go to lunch on Saturday in the same restaurant we had visited last summer. We explained that we had plans and courteously bowed out, thinking that was the end of it. Lunch conversation drifted to thrift-store shopping, which she knew was a favorite pastime of ours, and we decided to stop into the upscale Salvation Army store on the way home.

I dropped the ladies off at the door and then parked the car. When I entered the store, Helen was sitting in a very nice Bentwood rocker. She fairly glowed when she asked me if I liked it. It was very fairly priced, but the cashier always recognizes us and offers discounts, so I asked. Helen didn’t quite have enough cash to swing it, and we just thought we’d pay the difference, but that nice gentleman said, “How does 25% off sound?” It sounded like it was exactly the amount of cash in Helen’s purse if we didn’t buy the large pillow that made it so comfortable—that price tag said $4.99. When an employee offered to load it for us, I told him we hadn’t bought the cushion.

“You want it?” I looked at Helen and could tell from her expression that she did.

He just tossed it in. That chair will sit near the TV and give Helen a lot of pleasure (sort of like that leather jacket I have so enjoyed.)

That was Wednesday, and on Friday, Betty called to make sure the chair hadn’t cost us anything and to thank us for our friendship—and what about Saturday?

It was so important to Helen, who felt she might not see these folks again, but Rita was not well, and Betty had obligations but would cancel them. We didn’t really have any obligations, so I found myself promising to take her.

I have often noticed that the things we thought we were too tired or too busy to undertake always turned out to be memories we cherished later. So with over three hours of travel time and two hours visiting and eating, we watcher our friend shed years of age and become a charming friend to a room full of people, all younger than she. She was using a cane, but she stood longer than anyone else and could hardly settle down to eat (while I, of course, stuffed myself). I sat again with her brother-in-law Bill, who had played basketball for a nearby college in the early 1950’s, and with Rick (of gift card fame) talked about Volkswagen memories of the past.

In the car on the way home, while Helen was beginning to feel pain in her swollen legs, she relayed the news she had picked up and reported her past connections with the different people, all of whom had expressed their appreciation for your having made it possible for Helen to attend. One of her friends is a wonderful professional artist whose gift painting graces Helen and Betty’s kitchen, and that lovely lady who had come from Pennsylvania to visit her daughters, surprised us by paying the tab for everyone there. Betty had insisted on buying our gas, so our total investment was about six hours on the day before Mother’s Day. (Both our dear mothers have been gone for many years.)

Now, here is what I wanted to say about friendship: if you want friendships that you can cherish, you have to be a friend. It’s always worth the effort it might take!

I saw a picture on facebook today, and it made me wonder how I could have failed to mention a family that was a powerful influence on my life and upon theater at Greenfield-Central..  First there was Mary, the oldest of the three.  Mary became a nun.  I first saw her as she performed on the stage before I arrived at GCHS—powerful, quiet strength.  Then, for a time she came to the house for voice lessons, and later when she was a nun, I heard that she appeared in the nun’s chorus of The Sound of Music and was thankful to have that opportunity.  When I was hired to teach at Greenfield-Central and direct the plays in 1979,  Martha, the middle sister, was a dominant force in the group and an officer.  I had a  very difficult time with acceptance those first two years and often asked myself whatever made me think I wanted to teach, but the talent in drama blew my mind.  I was not surprised, however,  that for several years when I did shows I had done elsewhere, the new shows did not compare favorably although the stage and equipment were far superior, and I knew that until my opinions were valued and actors worked first and foremost to please me, I would be responsible for shows that left me disappointed.

My first show was Harvey, and Martha was delightful in the female lead.  It was a show on which I had worked so hard.  There was not one piece of usable scenery, so I had to work for at least a month with one fairly regular helper to tear apart scenery pieces made of cardboard because I needed the lumber.  I had constructed a really complicated reversible set that went from the back wall to cover the apron and the thrust stage.  There were no funds (we started the year $200 in the red) and few showed up to help with the sets because in the past they had been excused from classes to work a full week on unimaginative scenery and were angry that all the work was now to be done after school and on weekends, so I had no choice but to continue working on the sets during the rehearsal period.  Two adult friends of mine came in to finish building the fireplace. There were period costumes which only got finished because Martha Schwer was dedicated and talented.

The next year amazing talent remained.  We did Life with Father, again with no funds because, after depleting the treasury to buy trophies, they spent the final $200 into the red to give themselves (officers) gifts.  But that fine set was perhaps never equaled while I was there.  I remember planning it one day with Larry Andrick, who did all the tech as well as carry leading roles.  He and I had gone to an auction at the Black Curtain Dinner Theater in Indy, which had closed, and we got some incredible things quite cheaply.

The middle show was Our Town, which I had also not done before but which did not require a set.  We heard audience comments to the effect that “Rhoades got a little lazy on this one,” not realizing that the play had been a milestone on Broadway because it was performed on a nearly bare stage with the light bars lowered to be seen throughout.  I was proud of the whole cast, but Martha Schwer set the tone for the pantomime that is so much a part of the show, and again, she was in charge of costumes. I had chosen Our Town because a wonderful young man, David Arland, was so well suited to the difficult role of the stage manager.  When Larry Andrick, David Arland and I went to see the play at a fine community theater up north, the role was played by a thin man who looked a lot like Larry, who had just played the wonderful part of the father in Life with Father, which made the boys certain I had Larry in mind, so when the cast list went up, both boys were somewhat surprised.

When I announced to the officers that I had chosen The Matchmaker, also by Thornton Wilder but which I had done before at Southwestern High School, Martha objected.  “We have already done two period shows this year, and I am just not up to doing costumes for another period play.”  And because the music personnel had refused to participate with me in musicals, and my dependable talent was not made up of singers, and I knew that I did musicals with inferior choruses for which I was the inadequately prepared music director and choreographer until Gail Noland arrived and lifted that awful weight from my shoulders, providing us with brilliant choruses that danced with grace and skill and Jerry Bell provided us with a pit band for accompaniment whenever I asked.

My reaction to Martha was that I hadn’t considered the costume factor and would be responsible for the costumes, but before they gave the show the death nod, I’d like to explain.  Very few members of the talent pool were thin people.  With the exception of Larry Andrick, the real powerhouses were sizeable. I felt that Dolly Levi was one of the finest roles I knew that could be best carried out by a lady of size (powerhouse Martha Schwer).  I then explained that if I used a robust Cornelius Hackl (powerhouse David Arland), I could avoid having to give the hat shop girl, Irene Molloy, to a svelte actress who was not up to the role, and I had felt all year that Beth Gabrielsen deserved  larger roles.  Larry would play Horace Vandergelder.  “But if you don’t realize that Dolly Levi is a role to die for, we’ll choose another show.  Help me find a play with great roles for our best people.”  We did do The Matchmaker; Martha was a terrific Dolly, and she did do the costumes again, as well as the make-up, a special talent of hers.

I did not really come into acceptance with the students at GCHS until the year Tammy Rhoades, Ruthe Schwer (now Ruth), Julie Sharp (Now Julien), Bill Bettler and that group arrived.  Ruthe was an enormous powerhouse onstage, and I did not really direct her very much because she worked so hard at developing her character.  I recall telling her that when you were the best—and she was simply the best—you must learn to compete with yourself.  In double-casting, I simply refused to remove a person from a role because they did not stand up to their counterpart, and the students did not understand that I wasn’t building a reputation for myself, I was training talent.  But I came to realize later that I needed to be very cautious in giving an extensive part to an unknown.  At Greenfield, it was necessary to try actors in small roles, because with a dependency on marijuana (that was the main reason) one could not memorize lines. And I can only think of one actor who managed to overcome the inability to memorize by ad libbing and leaning on the memorization of others onstage.

When Ruthe was a sophomore, I held tryouts for the very difficult musical, Lady in the Dark, a show I love that was my first experience with directing a musical comedy years before.  There was a wonderful role for Ruthe as well as for Jim Atkinson, who had the finest voice I had ever worked with, and Shannan Williams.  But the tenor who was to play the second male role got the idea somewhere that the Danny Kaye role was gay and refused to play the part.  There was no one else capable or willing to take it on, so I was forced to switch suddenly to a show I could do without months of new preparation.  I recast the kids into Brigadoon, which gave a role to everyone except Ruthe, whom I cast by changing Harry Beaton’s father to be Harry’s mother.  It was the most unfortunate situation in all of my years at GCHS, and Ruthe, while she remained steadfast in her contributions to the group and was a wonderful friend to both Tammy and me, chose never to audition for another show, saying that she had played all the “mother roles” she could stand.

As a special project that gave her training in an area she hoped to pursue in college, Ruth began to record rehearsals and drama events on 8 mm film, and she was fairly often onstage with bright lights filming unexpectedly.  Once she had edited those efforts into a striking film, it became the highlight of that group’s award ceremony their senior year, leaving hardly a dry eye in the house after a year that featured stellar performances in The Diary of Anne Franke, in which Tammy Rhoades, Dugan Shelby, Rob Volke, Karen Feasel, Kip Cone, Laura Eagleston and Danessa Dudley shone, as did the entire cast.  The musical was again The Sound of Music, which I chose because Julie Sharp reminded me so much of Mary Martin, who played the role of Maria on Broadway, and I had always had Marias who reminded audiences of Julie Andrews.  Ruthe Schwer was drama club president that year, a big responsibility.  When I wrote a recommendation for Ruthe to Tisch School of the Arts, where she planned to study film making, I had not yet seen her fine documentary—only two very simple films, so I said that I could only speak for her talent for interpretation onstage, which was, I felt, enormous and should be used in some manner, although she preferred not to do theater.  However, I was certain that this young lady would be a standout in any avenue she chose to pursue.  She had rather amazing success with their speech team competitions, and I always hoped I had played a small part by writing that recommendation, although I’m sure that when she walked in to an audition of any kind, she stood out with her perfections..

Throughout thick and thin, the Schwer family supported my work and helped me survive the difficult years and begin about ten years of happy acceptance in that community.

Today’s blog will require a bit of study. I suggest you give it a glancing once-over to see if it’s something you might use. Just the other day (2010), I got a note from a former student who wrote, “And I still remember my prepositions the way you taught them.”  I worked several hours just on the scanning and am not pleased with the results, but we will be away from this computer until next Tuesday, and I want this out there before that.  Have a nice, interesting weekend.

Below is the list of prepositions in (almost) alphabetical order, grouped into sections:

A’s
aboard about above
across after against
along among
at

B’s
before behind
below beneath
beside besides
beyond but by

CDDEFF
concerning down during
except for from

I’s
in inside into

EXTRAS—LN
like near past since

O’s
of off on out outside over

P,S (above)

T’s
to toward through

U’s
under until up upon

W’s
with within without

(In the process of scanning, the word BY didn’t show up on left margin.)

C-D-D-E-F-F

These prepositions are CONCERNING, DOWN, DURING and EXCEPT, FOR. FROM.

At this point, I tell a story: There are two imaginary students in the class—DAWN DURRING and FRED FRUMM. Now I’m going to send Fred Frumm out of the room while I tell a story about our wonderful Dawn Durring. “Bzzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzz—got it? Isn’t that wonderful? Now you know the story concerning down during.”

In fact, everyone knows the story CONCERNING DOWN DURING EXCEPT FRED FRUMM—ER…FOR FROM—YES, THAT’S IT (ALTOGETHER IN RHYTHM NOW,) SAY

“CONCERNING DOWN DURING EXCEPT FOR FROM” AGAIN (and I say it in a rhythm with finger snaps on every third beat:

            snap                          snap                  snap             snap
CON-CERN-ING, DOWN, DUR-ING, EX-CEPT. FOR, FROM

Again, but jazzier! Snap those fingers. Don’t be so uptight. Just do it!

Concerning down during (beat) except for from—3 more times (and as I say these, I bounce and move around and look up the rows as if to say, “DO THIS!”

CONCERNING DOWN DURING, EXCEPT FOR FROM (“Louder”)

CONCERNING DOWN DURING, EXCEPT FOR FROM (“Again”)

CONCERNING DOWN DURING, EXCEPT FOR FROM

GOOD! Oh you are getting it! Good! Good! ( You get the idea.)

Now it’s time to review the whole list up through ‘F’. The ‘A’ and ‘B’ groups are on the board with arrows. I point to each ‘A’ word, and I move to the lectern for the ‘B’s.

Aboard, about, above (pause) across, after, against (smoking cigarette gesture and finger ‘L’ and ‘M’ in a rhythm) ALONG, AMONG (BIG CIRCLE) AROUND (AND POKE AT THEM) AT.

Oh, that was good. Do it even better now: (Pointing at the board)

Aboard about above (pause) across after against

Along among (no cigarette, just hand ‘L’ and ‘M’) around AT!

(At the lectern now) before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, (“YoYo”)

beyond, but, by.

CONCERNING DOWN DURING, EXCEPT FOR FROM

CONCERNING DOWN DURING, EXCEPT FOR FROM

Now I take out torn pieces of paper and pass them out—NO LOOKING AT THE BOARD!

REALLY TRY TO SEE IF YOU KNOW THESE 25 PREPOSITIONS.

If they can do it without looking, they’ll be a bit amazed and proud. If they can’t, perhaps they’ll get into the swing of it for the rest of the 48 on the list. EXPLAIN THAT THEY WILL BE TESTED WITHOUT THE AIDS THEY NO LONGER WILL NEED FOR A BRIEF PART OF TWO CLASSES RUNNING UNTIL THEY CAN ALL DO IT—THE A’S WILL HELP THEIR GRADES!

Now for the rest—almost alphabetically I’s, LNPS, O’s, T’s, U’s, and W’d

These aids will help: I put the waste basket and a paper wad near the door (and light switch), (optional) a large arrow by the waste basket, and sticky notes around the clock like this: (If the clock is too high, on the wall, just draw one on the board and write the words on the board beside and around it.

And I move to the clock saying, “Now the four U’s at the clock, starting at the bottom”—UNDER UNTIL UP and UPON

(And clapping my hands and shrugging as if to say, and of course) WITH WITHIN and WITHOUT. “We’re done. That’s WASTEBASKET, LIGHTS, DOOR, ARROW, CLOCK and the W’s”

And we go through them once more before turning over the slip of paper and writing the final 23 prepositions. This takes a good part of the period. Just leave it for them to memorize the 48 prepositions in any manner they chose for a test tomorrow.

The day after, give a paper numbered to 48, review them once through my way, asking for a volunteer to lead them through it (if you like). Those who learned my way should get all 48. You will know the stubborn ones who hated the exercise because they can’t get all 48. My former studen

And I move to the clock saying, “Now look at  the four U’s at the clock, starting at the bottom”—UNDER UNTIL UP and UPON

(And clapping my hands and shrugging as if to say, and of course) WITH WITHIN and WITHOUT. “We’re done. That’s WASTEBASKET, LIGHTS, DOOR, ARROW, CLOCK and the W’s”

And we go through them once more before turning over the slip of paper and writing the final 23 prepositions. This takes a good part of the period. Just leave it for them to memorize the 48 prepositions in any manner they chose for a test tomorrow.

The day after, give a paper numbered to 48, review them once through my way, asking for a volunteer to lead them through it (if you like). Those who learned my way should get all 48. You will know the stubborn ones who hated the exercise because they can’t get all 48. My former students tell me that even 25 years later, they can always recognize a preposition.

My daughter Tammy was not in my class, but her class was learning prepositions near the same time, and they learned them by wrote. She recalls someone trying to say them at lunch and if they paused after one, my students would rattle off the group—of I’s say, or O’s, etc. They all were fascinated. She urged me to share this with my blog, so now I have.

Margaret and I moved to Lexington, KY, on July 4, 1995, to assist our daughter Tammy, who had moved to Lexington to dance with the Lexington Ballet Company and started a store that carried dancing supplies—Dance Essentials, Inc.  Deanna was six months old, and we became baby sitters as well.The money we got upon retirement we invested in the store, then located in downtown Lexington near the Opera House and on the same square as the ballet studios. I suppose it was inevitable that I should at some time find myself employed by the ballet. 

I was told upon my interviewing that no matter how good my ‘high school’ experience had been, I was not qualified to be the technical director of Lexington Ballet. This comment came from the lighting master at the opera house, whom I think almost single-handedly nudged the Ballet toward financial ruin by making sure his lighting plots used nearly every lighting instrument the opera house owned, taken down after every performance and installed by stage electricians before every show, when much more simple lighting would have been appropriate for their performances.

They hired me anyway, and for their first show, I worked in a storage building that felt like a bake oven. In a month I had lost 25 pounds. Because I didn’t have training in settings for ballet, I overbuilt the set for Firebird and ended up not using many of the pieces I had slaved over because I didn’t take into account the many “slots” to the wings needed for entrances and exits and the use of lights on poles at each of these “slots.”

When I denied their offer to work a second year, I was asked if it would make any difference if they told me no one had ever done the job as well as I had. I said simply, “No, this job needs a younger man. Last week alone I laid Marley floors for six performances on the road and, as if that were not enough, I took up seven. I visit a chiropractor every other week, and I am not tempted, as much as I loved the dancers and the experience, to continue for another season.”

When Margaret and I went to a performance of the musical, Annie, in Winchester, the ticket seller said they were sold out, but there were two seats that were not together. We took those, and kind patrons arranged for us to sit together anyway. After the man, Bill Oliver, who was to become our dear friend, looked at me askance and inquired, “Aren’t you the man I heard of who lives in Lexington and directs plays?”

“Well, I used to.”

“You own a store there, a cheerleading store?”

“We own Dance Essentials with our daughter and her husband.”

“That’s it! Would you consider directing for us here at Leeds Theater?”

I quickly produced my card and said, “Call me.” We thought the Annie production was lacking in most ways. I never heard so many children sing so badly off-key, although the leads sang well. The sets were non-existent, and the blocking lacked inspiration.

Bill called and I went for an interview. He asked if I would direct a show for a pittance. To which I replied, “I miss directing so badly I would do it for nothing. I don’t know what you paid the director of Annie, but I really feel I shouldn’t work for less than someone with less experience, less talent and less dedication than I have.” He doubled the offer, and I took it. And a happy partnership was born.

The Winchester Council of the Arts decided which plays would be produced, and they chose from a list I provided, The Sound of Music to be my first show. I’ll write about each show in some detail later, but just let me share the list here: next came Hello, Dolly! Then came The Wizard of Oz; then On Golden Pond (a wonderful relief from the musical format). A man who did the lead in any Lexington show that called for an aging actor came to that show and talked to me afterwards. He had performed on Broadway, I knew, and he praised my set. He asked to be informed of dates of future shows, and I was duly puffed up. The leading man, who was doing the show for a second time, announced after the final curtain: “I did this role with another community theater, and the director ranted and swore as he pushed and prodded. Jack directed this one without ever raising his voice or expressing doubts. Guess which show was far superior to the other?”

My final show was Oliver. The leads came from all over central Kentucky, and the directing was a delight. When we had decided to sell the store and the house and join Tammy and her family in North Carolina, we were told to let them know when we wanted to do a show, and they would put us up in Winchester for six weeks to make it possible. It just never became possible to do that.