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.”