I Loved To Teach

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 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.”

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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 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.

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.

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.