I Loved To Teach

Chapter 6

“The Tell-tale Heart”

I can’t remember when I first read "The Tell-tale Heart" to my classes as a dramatic presentation, but I do know because of the following incident that I had already arrived at what is now quite routine by the time I left Carthage in 1961. I had learned that the much-loved story by Poe took exactly twenty minutes to read aloud, even with all the dramatic pauses I could muster. So I always started it exactly twenty minutes before the final bell for a class. I think I perhaps felt I was having some difficulty reaching the seniors at the new school in Charlottesville, and I decided to hit ‘em with my best shot—so, only four weeks into the school year, I found myself watching the clock for the moment to begin. I turned my necktie askew, mussed my hair, pushed my glasses down on my nose, arranged the front of the room so that a chair sat just in front of my lectern with empty space in front of it where I could emote on the floor—killing, dying, pantomiming and grunting when I wasn’t tapping my fingers on the hollow lectern behind my back to simulate the beating of the heart.

I concentrated on vocal variety, strange eyes, especially using a high chin to look both egocentric and, with much white showing in my eyes, quite mad; and, to make what I felt was the slow-moving section more captivating, I twitched one side of my face with increasing fury. I smiled my sweetest smile as I told of dismembering the body. I lowered my voice to a whisper just before my loudest shriek, “Ha! Would a madman have been as wise as this?”

Finally, just before the bell, I fell to the floor in an exhausted emotional frenzy, and as the bell rang, I stood and bowed amid polite applause where there had been raucous approval in the past. Then a frozen silence, followed with slow and orderly movement out of the classroom—any way out that kept them from passing close to me. This made me realize that they were not sure the new teacher was quite sane. I think it was at least a month after that before any student in that room stayed after class to ask me a question. Since that experience I have waited to read that story until the students in a class have come to know me quite well. Then, just before fall break, near Halloween, I gave a bit of a preface and called it the only gift I could afford for all my students.

*         *         *

In 1971, when I was firmly entrenched in the brand new classrooms in the new Eastern Hancock building, there was a convocation featuring the swing choir from Lapel High School, where I had taught for one year four years earlier.

The eighth graders at Lapel, now seniors, comprised the best class it was ever my privilege to teach. Their basketball team had never lost a game in three years of competition, and the top seven athletes all had straight A’s. They also were in choir, and we used them in the chorus of Lapel’s first musical, Brigadoon. During that previous summer, the janitors had destroyed all scenery stored under the stage at the end of the gym because it was a fire hazard. It was made of plywood and 2×2’s, and I would never have used it.

Mr. Roudebush, the principal, asked me to build new scenery in time for the senior play (directed by someone else). Mr. McKamey, the band director, helped me a lot by matching my hours, bringing band kids to help, and taking me home to eat Mrs. McKamey’s good cooking. I designed a very complicated set so that it would include every set piece I would need for Brigadoon in the spring. Several years later Jeannine Terhune told me that a new principal decided they should have scenery that was professionally made. The old was destroyed and new was ordered. When it arrived the kids exclaimed, “Hey, that’s just like the scenery we got rid of.” But, of course, it didn’t have layer upon layer of paint on it. Had I been there, I would have simply replaced the canvas.

Anyway, back at Eastern, Jeannine Terhune’s smartly dressed and highly polished swing choir had wowed the entire school with their assembly program and their astonishingly good looks. After lunch while I was teaching a freshman English class, the visitors were being given a tour when the door opened, and a 6’3” red haired boy named Meredith Ray walked to the back of the room and sat down, saying, “This is the part of Eastern Hancock I want to see.”

The girls were agog. “Well, Meredith,” I grinned, “what would you most like to see?”

Without the slightest hesitation, he asked, “Mr. Rhoades, have you read “The Tell-Tale Heart” for these kids?” I had not, so I did it then. When I had finished, he walked to the front, shook my hand, said, “Thanks a lot, Mr. Rhoades.” Then he was gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*         *         *

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

*         *         *

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

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

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

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

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

*         *         *

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

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

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

*         *         *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*         *         *

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

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

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

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

*         *         *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My teaching career had become firmly established.

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

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

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

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

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

MARLA’S FAREWELL

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

MESSAGE FOR A MEMORY BOOK

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

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

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

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

AN ANSWERED PRAYER

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

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

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

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

*        *        *

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

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

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

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

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

*        *        *

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

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

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

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

*        *        *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re dern right.”

*        *        *

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

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

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

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

*        *        *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t understand.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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