I Loved To Teach

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

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

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

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

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

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

*         *         *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Many times. Every time.”

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

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

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

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

*         *         *

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

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

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

*         *         *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I 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.

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.

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.)

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

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

POETRY MUSE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, duh.”

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

“Well, yes; I guess so.”

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

“I hated that stuff.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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