I Loved To Teach

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.

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!

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.

*        *        *

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.

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.

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?

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 discovered 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.

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.

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.

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.