I Loved To Teach

Something ugly in my life reared its head again recently, and this made me realize that however distressing and perplexing your own life may become, to your family members, it is probably all about them.  If they are also in a distressing situation and you fail to meet their expectations, there is only one answer—you failed them.  You cared more for your students than you did for them.  You loved your job too much.
So I think it is the time to air an old dilemma.

During my early adulthood, I chose to serve as the minister of Charlottesville Christian Church.  The most difficult part of this job for me was the necessity of coming up with a sermon every week.  Then came a call from the minister of Greenfield Christian Church.  He wanted me to apply for the position of assistant minister to that much larger congregation.  I was flattered and excited, and it seemed like the perfect solution.  I loved sermonizing and was, I think, relatively good at it.  In the interview Rev. Harrod told me of the responsibilities I would have.  I got really excited  because they were all things I thought I would enjoy doing, and I said so.  As I was exiting the interview, he said something that changed all that drastically.  It was this:  “And you will never have to worry about any competition between us, because you will never fill the pulpit.  Whenever it is necessary for me to be gone, I will hire a guest speaker.”

I went directly to Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, where I was a student and talked to the placement director.  When I told him of this statement, he agreed that I should not take the job.  They had students who aspired to just this Junior Church and children’s choir sort of job, and they were all women.  They would not place a man who was preparing for the ministry in this position.  I never defended my actions—I was never called upon to explain them.

Fast forward a few years.  There was a job opening in the Greenfield-Central Middle School, and I applied for it.  The interview with the principal went well, and he indicated that he felt I was the man for the opening.  I then went to see the superintendent, J.B. Stephens, who, instead of producing a contract, leaned across his desk and asked, “Aren’t you the young man who applied for a job with the Greenfield Christian Church a few years back?”  I indicated that I was.  He then gave this crushing pronouncement (he was a board member of that church).  “As long as I have anything to say about it, you will never teach at Greenfield-Central

Years later, after a terrible dry period in which I had attempted to go into business, thinking that if I put the energy and dedication I had displayed in teaching into the business world, I would succeed.  I did not succeed, and soon I was desperate for a teaching job to support my growing family without Margaret’s teaching salary.  I spent a full blog talking about finding the job at Southwestern High School, where, after five years I was granted the security of tenure.  Mr. Stephens had retired (he now has a school named for him) when longtime Principal Ernest Tidrow, also a member of the Greenfield Christian Church, called my home and lured me away from job security to be able to work in a wonderful new building with a wondrous auditorium facility.  I jumped at the chance.

In that position, with my weekends tied up with speech team meets, my evenings spent building the scenery that he had indicated were desired, and carrying what I believe to be the worst classroom load of any teacher in the building, It had taken, I believe, three different subs to finish the year for a teacher who died suddenly.  I struggled with depression, student antipathy and brought home the most significant speech trophies imaginable, largely due to the same kids whose attitude in drama depressed me.  Later, when I was teacher of the year, I had to make an acceptance speech in which I referred to those years as a time in which I wondered daily ‘whatever had made me think I wanted to be a teacher.’ 

After a year of gaining acceptance and working harder than anyone else, having good evaluations and learning that I had better not think of the assistant principal as a disciplinary provider who would back me up with difficult classes, I NEVER dared send a student to the office!  I lived in fear of a day when a substitute teacher would step into my room for a day.  After I had signed my contract for a second year, I was called to the office for a conference and told that ‘they’ were not satisfied with the growth of the speech program, and that, unless things improved, I would not be returning for a third year.  I again found myself haunted with thoughts of suicide.  I knew—I KNEW—that if I lost that job, with 23 years experience, I would never find another job in the field.  I was also told that “You have an enemy in high places.”  When I mentioned that at a board meeting of the local community theater group, they were incensed.  They told me that if I was ever told that again I should say, “And you must believe that I also have friends in high places.”  This was spoken by a very successful lawyer.

So I started my second year directing one of the hardest plays a high school can select—Life with Father.  I created the finest set ever placed on that stage up till then, and perhaps still.  (I haven’t seen recent productions.)  I lived in terror of repercussions in the classroom with again, difficult classes and no support.  I was told that the auditorium manager (another of my responsibilities) had always found it necessary to leave during a class, but I NEvER felt I dared do that and I never did.

So where does the idea come from that because I did not take a day off for a crisis in one of my children’s lives that I was too “dedicated” to my job and loved my students more that my own kids?  Not, I assure you, out of a deep love and respect for me and the work ethic I learned from a father who survived the depression with seven children.  But I was living in fear, directing a difficult play that neared a performance date and was not ready, and I knew I would not want to live if I lost that job.  That job became a dream job, and for sixteen years, I served willingly and never needed to go job hunting again.

Now I realize that when a man is deployed in wartime to action far away, he is not expected to react to the inadequate pay his family receives or to serious problems that occur in the home.  This in no way indicates a lack of love or concern for his family, nor would anyone think it did.  In such cases we find alternate solutions and we survive and get over it.

I’d like to end with what I consider a memorable quote:  “You may think you have empathy, but if it’s not your own pain, you don’t really understand what’s going on.”            –John A. Rhoades

Too many kids dropped by to name them here. Rodney Coe, though, was a special kid. He and Andrew Kelley were my Vincent Mathews and Mike yonts in later days. Rodney was Horace Vandergelder in Dolly, Professor Hill in Music Man, Captain Von Trapp in Sound of Music and many things in non-musicals. He would drop by on Saturdays before Sound of Music for voice lessons to work into that tenor voice range the low tones he would need in that show.

Rodney wouldn’t mind my sharing (he told it in an interview with the Greenfield newspaper) that he was not expected to “make it” through high school because of a learning disability. I had had him in class only two weeks when I sent him to the office to get a more challenging class. I told him I was sure he would go to college, and he would need better preparation than remedial English. I did have him in speech, and later, drama. He was my set chairman, drama president, and dear friend. Margaret knew him first as a piano student in junior high.

One elementary teacher said, after seeing him in a musical, “This is not the Rodney Coe that I taught.” I suspect that I saw something in him that others didn’t see. He said that only two people believed he would graduate from college—his mom and “the boss”, Mr. Rhoades. Rodney’s first professional work came between his sophomore and junior years in college. Five hundred people auditioned for four openings, and he was chosen. True, he had a height advantage, but he could act and could he ever sing. He never lost a line onstage and was, if it’s not too trite, “cool as a cucumber” up there.

I won’t repeat the praises Rodney and his parents have lavished on me—they are prejudiced in my favor. I did not encourage even Vincent to go after work in the theater. I said, instead, “If you can envision yourself doing anything else, do it.” But Rodney seemed destined to have only one road open to him, and I pressed him toward it. I had to take him to my alma mater, Indiana Central, where he had been offered scholarships by both music and drama departments but could not get admitted. They claimed they had a special program for the learning disabled and had a big article to that effect in the Indianapolis Star. How could they refuse him admission because his SAT scores were low. What he has doesn’t TEST. I assured him that once he was successful here, he could transfer to a bigger school.

The University of Indianapolis, as it was now called used Rodney in every production for two years. In their programs they had three distinguishing marks they placed after actors’ names on the cast lists. Rodney had all three marks by his name, meaning among other things, that once he was taking subjects in his major field, he was making the Dean’s List. Then he transferred to Ball State University at my suggestion, although his mom thought it was too big. I guess he showed it was not too great a jump when he garnered a singing lead in the small cast of the first show, a Sondheim musical, his first semester.

I got a post card from Andrew Kelley one day from Italy. He wrote me also from Egypt, a long letter, and he now resides in Indy.. Andrew also went to University of Indianapolis. He had the greatest work ethic I ever knew. He arrived long before play practice, even though he carried a large job load at Wal-mart,, and set the stage so that everything anyone needed would be in its place. His own props and space he mastered during these times. Then he was the last to leave. Could Margaret go through a certain song with him a few times so he could work in his space. I think he considered himself an actor more than a singer, as did Vince. But his shining, unforgettable moments were as Fagin in Oliver and the stage manager in Our Town..

What happened to Andrew was a tragedy that removed his burning passion for theater. Portraying a vile character onstage at U of I, he was viciously attacked by a man in the audience who was off-balanced enough that he could not distinguish between the actor and the character. Help did not get there fast enough, and he was hurt badly. He tried to stay in school and to be in the next play, but he just couldn’t recapture the joy he had always felt onstage. He felt overwhelmed with fear. He dropped out of school and joined the army. I still wait to see if he will ever renew his calling and expose the greatness that I saw in him from the days of Capt. Hook in Peter Pan on..

(Let me just mention that I have been feverish and ill for a week, and if I did some repeating today, forgive me.)

I once met a young man who seemed troubled. He dropped in a few times to talk to Lori, who was a good listener. Then one day he called in the middle of the night from the county jail. If I remember right, he had stolen a motorcycle and maybe wrecked it. Anyway, he was afraid to call his mother. He lived in the northern part of the county and attended a school there, so I didn’t know the family. After I had listened to him for about an hour, he said, “Mr. Rhoades, I can’t believe you would listen to me for such a long time in the middle of the night when you hardly know me.”

My reply was, “Rod, maybe I’m just fascinated because I never knew anyone who was in so much trouble. But let me give you this advice—call your mother! You can’t anticipate her reaction to this. You’ve tried it out on me; now try it out on her. It won’t be as bad as you imagine.”

I told about the conversation in a freshman class the next day, and Jay Fleming, whose parents I knew (I had taught his mother and the Flemings were a distinguished family in the printing business) raised his hand. “Mr. Rhoades, if I ever get in jail, can I call you? Because my dad says, ‘If you ever get arrested, don’t call me!’”

“Jay,” I laughed, “it’s a deal. You call me, and I’ll call your dad.” I never got that call.

I love to get phone calls or visits from former students. Patty (Blanca) Gomez used to stop in whenever she was in town. She was a fine actress and an excellent scholar. I dropped in on her at her dorm at Indiana University in Bloomington when I was there on business. She was a Lugar scholar and active in Latino activities there. She introduced me to her roommate by saying, “This is Mr. Rhoades. He was my speech and drama teacher… Well, he’s my friend… Well, actually, he’s my best friend.”

Margaret and I looked forward to those visits even after she married and moved to California to go to law school. She taught bilingual students in the evenings and discovered that she hated and dreaded the days and lived for the evenings when she could teach. I don’t think she finished law school. She was married in the Chicago area in a long Mexican-Catholic ceremony that was charming and fascinating. At the reception dinner, it became obvious that they were concerned lest we become bored. Members of the family took turns sitting at our table and making conversation. It was a long trip back home, so the time to leave came too soon. As we left, Patty’s whole family escorted us to the door and outside. We were overwhelmed with their kindness.

A few years later, in 1986, we became parents to a seventeen-year-old Iranian refugee who lived with us while he learned English, finished high school and began college. When his relatives called, I discovered a politeness and respectful approach which exists in other cultures, but which is lacking in the hurry and pragmatism of ours.

Under the topic of censorship, I mentioned Miss Ethel. When Terri Lantz was a senior in Miss Ethel’s class, she chose to write her term paper on the Bahá’í Faith. Miss Ethel revolted and disapproved. Terri, an actress of some merit, knew how to be obstinate when she felt something was unfair. She came to me, reporting that Miss Harlan had said I was influencing our students. My response was, “Oh, I hope so! I hope so.” But to Terri I said this: “If you are serious about investigating the Bahá’í Faith, talk to your parents about it and invite me to your home, and I will tell you what I know about that religion. What I cannot let you do is use my religion to drive a wedge between me and the colleague I most respect. If you pursue this, that will happen and your experience will be a negative one. Please, Terri, choose another subject.” And she did.

Several years later, Terri showed up at a rehearsal for Harvey way down south at Southwestern, probably fifty miles from her home. She just wanted to help me any way she could. And I let her help. We also used her voice for the offstage singing in act I—“Mrs. Tewksbury’s voice certainly is fading. Oh, she’ll sing an encore. I know Mrs. Tewksbury. She’ll sing an encore.” Terri warbled “Sweet Little Buttercup” into the tape recorder just the proper amount off-key.

About fifteen years after that, I got a phone call and recognized her voice at once. She was calling from Oregon. She said her husband insisted that she call me. “You talk about that man a lot, honey. Why don’t you call him and talk to him.” We talked a long time. She was diabetic long before I knew her, and by this time she was legally blind. She didn’t tell me what else, or that she didn’t have long to live, if she knew that. She was remarkably upbeat, and whenever I mentioned the length of the conversation, she said it was okay. I should not worry about it.

She had met her husband, she said, while hitchhiking some years before, and they were a great match. He was very kind. I would like him. We reminisced some, and then we parted for the last time. I had no doubt about the role I played in her life.

Terri had an older brother Mike who played character roles. He was good at doing bizarre things I suggested and carried them off with aplomb, as did Terri. I don’t know that Mike belonged to any other group, and at that time most of the guys were athletes. Tom Barton was my leading man that year. I remember him saying at tryouts, “Where’s Lahntz (they pronounced it that way, I think, affectionately.) Why isn’t Lahntz here? Let’s go get Lahntz.” And they did. I once got a call from him too, asking if I remembered him. He knew I would, and said he wanted to call because I had played so important a role in his formative years. He had been, he told me, in the Marines; been a bodyguard to several Hollywood stars; and tried his hand at screenplays.

What students most often told me when they dropped by or called was that the conversation had been wonderful. “It all comes back.” Linda Harrold told me that at a play practice. Rob McCallister said it (Atticus’ son in To Kill a Mockingbird, Friedrich in Sound of Music); Wanda Hill said it (Mother Abbess).

Mike Mazak, doing stand-up comedy last I heard, appeared at my door just before Christmas with a plaque that was engraved “To Mr. Rhoades—teacher, director, friend—Mike Mazak. Mike came to us with a heap of troubles. Hard for me to believe from the young man I knew and loved.  He was out of control and neither his mother nor his father and step-mother wanted him to live with them, so he was living with an aunt. In the circle one day before a play he stood beside me, and when I said, as I almost always did, “Tonight, especially, you must be aware that we are a family… “

And I heard him say, just for me to hear, “Better than any family I ever had.” I hope, Mike, it’s all right to tell that. Mike went on to be a drama club officer, to play such wonderful characters as Ali Hakim, the peddler man in Oklahoma. He went from abysmal grades to straight A’s.

When he told me after the fall play his senior year that he was going back to his mother’s, because his step-mother couldn’t handle his weekend visits any more and he needed space to get away from the problems of his foster family (relatives), I suggested that if he needed to get away, he call me and come to stay with us for the weekend. He was Danny’s age. A few days later he stopped by the room to tell me that he had decided to stay, that this was where he wanted to be. And soon he found a family that wanted him with them.

There was Jim Held, never in drama, but he took to me. He brought me a book of Poe’s complete works—saw it in a bookstore and thought I had to have it. Ben Hawkins from my Charlottesville days brought me his own book of poems and ask me to keep a copy in a safe place.

Many years later I went to a nine-day summer institute for Baha’is, members of my newfound religion. When I first heard of the institute, I had laughed and said, “Who could possibly give nine days to spend at a conference of any kind?” The reply that was fired back caught me by surprise, and I recognized the challenge. “Well, school teachers could, for example.” The institute was held at a beautiful camp surrounded with pine trees and a small lake. From this time of purification I came to see many things in a new light. Two large posters designed for my classroom that summer introduced my new Classroom Rules. Rule #1 was “Please, please, please BE HAPPY!” Rule # 2 was “Please, please, please DON’T BE UNHAPPY!” These were the rules that had worked so very well at the institute. I adopted them for my classroom. They work!

I embraced a number of concepts at this institute. Study sessions required that each group sit in a circle with a facilitator at the head. Absolutely everything was addressed to the facilitators. A frequent reprimand during the early sessions was, “Please! No cross-talk.” In this manner, everyone was free to express his/her thoughts freely without fear of interruption or judgment from others. I know the attitudes during these sessions were tempered by the vast amount of time each of us spent in prayer during those nine days. No one criticized another or told him he was wrong in his thinking, yet in the course of these sessions, each individual displayed impressive, even awe-inspiring growth.    One very shy young lady that I had dubbed “little bird” in my mind was at first very reluctant to speak and obviously intimidated by the male members of the group.  As she blossomed, I realized that people don’t need to be told what they are doing wrong to enable their growth.

The other principle required that, in studying scripture, one analyze one word at a time. Of course, all of the scriptures originated in languages other than English. The book we studied was revealed in Persian. There were Iranians in my group who understood English to varying degrees and who followed closely in Farsi/English dictionaries. Their explanations of the subtle differences in the two languages in most cases shed light upon the intent of the passage, even when the meaning seemed obvious from the outset. All shadings of meaning were considered as language became revered and mystifying. There could be no end to discoveries made in the practice of meditation.

I have never felt my dreams were significant enough to remember afterwards. I had, however, often awakened with a solution to a difficult construction problem that had been puzzling me for days. This outing was a time in which no television or newspapers were allowed and during which no visitors from the outside interrupted the flow of events. We were, however, permitted to call home from time to time. We refrained from sharing events from these calls. We were separated from the world at large. There was an Iranian hostage situation during these days that none of us knew anything about at the time.

Our daily schedule began at 6a.m. with dawn prayers in a circle in the meeting hall. Offering a prayer was optional, but on most days, everyone participated. After breakfast an hour for individual meditation and prayer preceded the morning group session. The small campus in northern Indiana known as La Lumiere was owned, I believe, by a private Catholic school. The tall pine trees, row upon row, inspired reminiscences of a Washington state visit just a few summers before. I claimed for my afternoon prayers a spot on a small island, reached by a long, narrow bridge, where I could be alone, yet enjoy the water, the earth and the sky.

During this solitary, prayerful hour of preparation for the second study class, events of the morning class loomed large for me. After the afternoon session, there was mingling time before dinner. Some people took naps during this time. After the evening meal there were various activities. Each group planned an inspirational act to present one night. Another night featured a sharing of talents. Spirits ran very high, so that often I felt elated when I went to my lonely bed. Rooms were private, and lights out left just enough time for a quick shower.

After a few days, I began to feel the need to commit some of the revealed Bahá’í prayers to memory and decided to use the ‘island’ devotional period for that purpose. I have mentioned dreams. I have sometimes listened to spiritual persons telling of a dream or a vision and enviously wished I could have such an experience (and perhaps doubting their authenticity). On the day I wish to share, I was learning to recite the prayer for the departed so that I could offer it up instantaneously anytime I happened to have the inclination upon learning of someone who had departed this life. I would say, “This is for my mother.” Or “This is for my brother Shirley and his wife, Louise, and their daughter, Gloria.” (He was my oldest brother, Gloria was their oldest child, and I had lost them and my father within a short span of time.)

Now I am going to share one of the kind of stories I promised myself not to drudge up, in order that you might understand that this experience altered some well-established impressions I nurtured.

I think somehow my father was simply amazed that one of his seven children attained the brilliant successes Danny has realized; Dad was inordinately proud of that fifth son. Many times I heard him declare that his children were his wealth, and he carried himself as if he were a very wealthy man. The year Danny left Indiana Central for Yale, I invited my father to come to Indianapolis for Dad’s Day, and I took him to the football game, thinking it would bring some happy memories from his short college football career.  (I never heard him talk of college or football, but there was a photo in the attic of the team at the small Ohio college he attended for, I think, only one year.)  As soon as the game was over, Dad spotted President Esch in the bleachers nearby. I could not dissuade him from moving in for the kill, so I tagged along reluctantly. He stepped in front of Dr. Esch, held out his hand and said, “How do you do, Mister Esch, I’m Danny Rhoades’s father.” Dr. Esch kind of looked startled, moved his head very deliberately to direct attention to me—after all it was my Dad’s Day we were celebrating.

The attempt was wasted on Dad. He was scoring on Danny’s success and wished to talk about it. Never mind that I had just directed the very successful Geneva Stunts, a student fund raiser involving more than 150 students that had raised the most money in the school’s history of that event. Never mind that I was editing the school newspaper or that Dr. Esch had arranged for me to be admitted to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and knew my father had barred the way. And it was Dr. Esch who approached me working in the kitchen of the president’s mansion to ask delightedly, “Well, Jack Rhoades! Are you coming back to Indiana Central College? You know, I think you should.” And so I had.

I could tell other situations in which my father stepped on my heart as he reached out to praise Danny. But I’ll refrain. Suffice it to say that I erected a wall of impersonal demeanor which remained intact until that day I fell asleep saying these words:

“Verily, we beseech thee to forgive the sins of such as have abandoned the physical garment and have ascended to the spiritual world. O my Lord! Purify them from trespasses, dispel their sorrows, and change their darkness into light. Cause them to enter the garden of happiness, cleanse them with the most pure water, and grant them to behold Thy splendors on the loftiest mount.

Bahá’u’lláh has written that God gave us dreams to assure us of the spiritual life that follows this one—in dreams we see clearly without using our eyes, hear without using our ears, and move from place to place without leaving our beds. In my slumber I had a dream in which I was holding a beautiful baby boy that, though I knew it was not Danny or John, somehow belonged to me. I had loved this stage of infancy with each of my four children, and I was making my child smile and coo. I was loving it abundantly when the realization struck me and I became aware that this child was my father—an infant (I thought upon awakening) in the spiritual world. I knew I was being told that I must let go of those old feelings of resentment because no one could feel enmity toward a baby.

I believe I should avoid the temptation to gloat over any kudos I have received over the years, but I must share one more here. Probably everyone who was ever a teacher has such “warm spots.” I had resigned from Eastern Hancock and was working with a new community theater group called Hoosier Heartland Repertory Theater. I designed , constructed and decorated the set for the first show, a Neil Simon comedy. I realized that I needed something I could easily borrow from the stock of things at Eastern, so I stopped by there one summer morning, just as the high school band was coming off the football field. I tried to scoot away in time to miss them, but one girl, a sophomore by then, ran to catch up with me, and as she put her arms around me, she began to cry. “Oh, Mr. Rhoades, what are we going to do?” was all she said, but the name Julie Wilson etched itself on my memory in that moment.

Many years ago a very needy student committed suicide. This boy seemed friendless, and every day he watched from my second-story window for me to come into the school parking lot. He would then hurry to meet me on the stairs and walk me to class, sharing with me the new joke the kids were telling that morning or the latest news. I felt I should have detected his despair, and my guilt took me to his funeral, although at that time I did not know other members of his family. He had removed the food and shelves from the refrigerator and climbed in. In those days there was a catch that left him with no way out, and the inside compartment was battered by his efforts. There he lay in a pauper’s casket with a filmy cloth draped over it to make the bluish tint of his flesh less noticeable.

One always has the feeling that one should go to pay his respects, but sometimes, for a teacher, it leaves scars on both parties. I mean, what could I say to them? That I was fond of him? He always wore a suit coat and the same dingy white shirt and tie to school. He was buried in that same recognizable uniform. In later years, when I have had his brother, his sister, and much later, his nieces, I felt that if I had not gone to that place on that occasion, they would have been more comfortable in my presence.

His younger brother had come home, seen all the food on the table and opened the refrigerator door to a horrific sight.  Later, when I had that boy in a junior lit class, we were to have read “The Fall of the House of Usher” in which someone was buried alive—a favorite theme with Poe.  We skipped that story, although I had once, upon realizing that a very weak senior English class was not retaining the grammar we were studying, decided to make a departure from the textbook for a time.  We Studied the “House of Usher,”  plotted the movie by scenes, (I had learned to do that in a summer audio-visual course at Purdue) and went on location for filming them.  Video cameras were just then available, but we didn’t have one yet, so we filmed with my 8mm movie camera, sent the reels off for developing, and I spliced and edited before showing it to the group.  The class was small enough to travel in two cars, and they were treated like royalty at each destination, always close enough to be back in time for their next class.  The film was quite a hit at the county teachers’ conference that year, and several of those students later told me that was their favorite class of all their school years.

I also realized one time, as I was beginning to read “The Tell-Tale Heart” that there was a boy in the room who had been orphaned by a case of murder/suicide, in which his father had been the shooter.  When his head dropped to his desk, I hated what I was doing to this very intelligent young man.  I knew that if I stopped, the kids would ask why, so I continued, but that was the most lifeless reading I ever gave of that classic story.  You never know for sure what life has brought to the students who sit before you every day.

Although the circumstances were quite different, there are similarities I could compare to a situation at Carthage when I worked at the funeral home because Frank Hampton of Hampton’s Mortuary had become my best friend. In a small town there were only occasional funerals, but Frank and Marie and their boys could never leave town without someone to stay at the mortuary and answer the phone. There were not such conveniences as answering machines or answering services. We would move into their apartment above the funeral home from time to time. I learned to come at once for ambulance calls or death calls.

On one occasion Frank called and asked me to help him pick up a body from a home in town. In a flash we were on our way. The family was grieving in the adjoining room. I looked at the abandoned shell of the father of the household. Cancer of the esophagus had caused him to bleed to death, gushing blood from his mouth. His fourteen-year-old son had been alone with him, and a glance at the wastebasket filled with blood and Kleenexes brought an instant vision of the death scene. We quietly put the body on the gurney and Frank put the shroud in place. As we wheeled the gurney to the door, loud weeping swelled in the adjoining room. When I passed that boy in the halls thereafter, I knew from his face that my presence had caused him to revisit that nightmare and to be very sad.

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.

On the last night of “Hello, Dolly!” there was a group of people who could not get in due to the sell-out but who wouldn’t leave.  Finally, they were allowed to stand at the back.  Due to an unforeseeable, potentially tragic accident in which one of our close, dear friends from the Zapf family was trapped in their grain bin and in danger of suffocating.  He was being rescued as those dear family members stood by in helpless terror. At intermission, the standees in the audience were allowed to take those empty seats.

A year passed, and when, at the end of the school year, I sought to tender my resignation to go into business, the principal talked me into delaying my decision for a year. (Principals really should advise teachers in such instances to take a year’s leave of absence rather than resign.) He said the school board had told him, "Well, Ed, your job is to talk him out of it!" I’m sure that Leon Wilson had told them my comment from the last time I had left. That was all it took. I postponed my leaving for a year—a very important year in the scheme of my teaching life.

During that year I changed my teaching style. I relaxed. I expressed my feelings of friendship more readily with the kids I worked with after school nearly every day. I took off my toupee when my scalp began to sweat and put it back on in time for play practice. One evening as I was putting it back on, someone said, “Mr. Rhoades, maybe I’m speaking out of turn, but I like the way you look better without that thing.” And I left it off for good. Also, I removed some of the artificial barriers I had erected for self-protection. I was in my mid-thirties by then, and they were no longer necessary. And if I wasn’t going to teach any more, why should I be in fear of a mysterious “somebody” lurking in the shadows to discredit me and cost me my job. Hey, America” Don’t you realize that you require more and more performance from teachers and you are giving them less and less protection as children get more and more street wise? I always knew, and twice in my teaching days I experienced the ramifications of it, that one angry student who sets out to discredit you can soon enlist the aid of his/her parents and their connections. Anyway, I felt I had arrived at a point where I could be more free (not loose—I wouldn’t know how to do that).

Our big show the year before had been Brigadoon with Jeanie Crider and Laura Jarrett playing opposite Jeff Hewson. As we were cleaning up from scenery work and preparing for rehearsal to begin, the stage door opened and Laura, ghostly pale, ran into my arms crying, “Oh, Mr. Rhoades, I had a wreck!” Then she was unconscious as I lifted and I carried her down the long hallway to the sick room where I called for an ambulance and notified her parents. Neighbors told me that they had approached her to offer help, but she screamed hysterically and ran from them as if she thought they intended to harm her. Somehow things like this and the tornado that hit the next year work to draw a teacher more closely into the community.

That was also the year that Jeff Hewson went off to college. He was a handsome kid who had had an operation to correct a club foot pitch when he appeared at his first tryout and pitch problems when I first cast him in a leading role, that of Tommy in Brigadoon. I remember that I would often stand behind him in rehearsals and try to be inconspicuous when I sang along softly to keep him on a truer pitch.  By performance, he was very good, and no one mentioned pitch problems—mostly they said, “Wow, Jack, I never realized Jeff Hewson was so darn good lookin‘!” When he returned the next year, he sang even better because he had begun to sing at weddings and to have other opportunities to use his voice. Jerry Davis and Steve Harding, for example, were so busy with athletics and editing the yearbook, etc., that they didn’t sing from one musical to the next although they had natural gifts. When I was called to the phone at school one day, I was surprised by Jeff’s calling to say that he had “made” the Purdue Glee Club. “I wanted you to be the first to know, because you are the person who taught me to sing.” (Well, I drafted him into it anyway.) That was the first year that the Purdue Glee Club was featured at Radio City Music Hall where they were a sensation for several years. I have lost track of Jeff since he left the QVC shopping network on TV. I used to turn it on every once in a while for a few minutes just to feel as if we had had a visit.

*         *         *

I also should mention Ronnie Breece, who died some years back in an auto accident. Ronnie was small of stature, but he played with enormous heart. He was a champion wrestler in the lightest weight class, senior class president, and working so many hours a day that he fell asleep on the carpeted aisle between his scenes when he played the role of Scrooge in the first musical on the new stage. In addition to Pappy Yokum, which we brought him from the junior high to do because Danny Cupp was hospitalized, he was a wonderful Artful Dodger in the production on the small stage at the end of an old gym where Darlene Speer, Steve Harding (as Bill Sikes), Jerry and Ronnie got our first standing response.

Once when we were preparing To Kill a Mockingbird and Ronnie was playing the villain, Mr. Ewell, I invited Penny Riddle, an African-American friend with a theater background to a rehearsal to advise me on sensitive racial matters. Ronnie could hardly get out the vile epithets with her there, and I told her that. She said, “I LOVE that kid. When I first saw him as Scrooge, I thought, ‘Am I supposed to scale down my thinking to that degree?’ But by the time he began to leap and cavort, I had completely forgotten his size. He just mesmerizes you.”

One of the things a director treasures about an actor is having his/her complete trust. During Mr. Scrooge a young teacher offered to help out and began to attend rehearsals. Scrooge had a line in a song that referred to himself, once he had been transformed into a dancing dervish, as “the fairy on top of the tree.” Suzanne took me aside and informed me that we just had to change that lyric. “How about “the angel on top of the tree?” I stopped the song and relayed the message to Scrooge himself. “Well, Mr. Rhoades, what do you think? It doesn’t bother me.” And as I found it rather more delightful, we left it in. I loved his willingness to do that for me.

This might be as good a place as any to include a poem I wrote that mentions all of my children. The occasion for it, a policeman shot down in the line of duty, is described in the poem.  Our home in Bowman Acres in Greenfield, the one we brought Tammy and Danny home to when they were born, was beside a creek that ran along the side and back of the yard.  On the other side of that creek was a much larger house, home to the hospital administrator and his family, the Morrises.  Barry Morris was the director of A Delicate Balance, in which I played Tobias, the main character.  This event followed closely upon the death of my father, Earl McKinley Rhoades of South Bend, Indiana, at the age of eighty-five.

           BED CHECK

The day is done.
Each task is set in its place–
   Completed
      To be done tomorrow
           Put off–
And I can take my rest.

I climb the stairs and know that all is well
But, just the same, out of habit,
I check each bed to see that my little world is quite secure:
Tammy looks serene but takes her mask of seriousness
To her land of dreams.
Lori leaves it all behind and seems to sing.
John looks pale–he wasn’t well today.
(He’s hardly ever ill, but this new flu is relentless.}
Danny sleeps untroubled
As if remembering that tomorrow he’ll be master of a new cat–
His only birthday wish since ‘Shakesbeard’ went to sleep a week ago.

Margaret waits up for me, and she shuts out the light.
As she drifts off to sleep, I sift through troubled thoughts.
I tiptoe into the baby’s room
To look at tiny Lori, first and only then–
My first "bed check" upon awakening in the night
And wanting reassurance.
She seemed a miracle, breathing all alone
Her faultless motor never missed a beat.
Knowing all was well and full of pride and joy,
I went to bed again. Soon I slept.

But tonight, though everything is right here,
I can’t escape my thoughts.
I see Jerry and Barry’s father but a few years past
Checking the beds in the house next door,
And I snap to wakefulness!
His children are grown and have lives of their own;
Yet one bed must be forever empty, a hero’s bed.
How dare anyone murder the boy next door!
(Though we have moved, he will forever be the boy next door.)
This villainy haunts my bed-check hour!

I scarcely know I’ve slept, but somehow in the magic of slumber,
I am a boy again, in a house long since torn down,
And I awake and am afraid at night.
I slip to the floor to run to the safety of another bed nearby
And stop and see I am a man, at home now, standing,
All the glory of my day set aside, grieving
For I cannot, even in my dream
Run off to my daddy’s bed. He’s gone!
His bed forbids me come to it.

What was it about my father?
He was there! That’s what it was!
He was always there: like Tammy, too serious; like Lori, serene;
Like John, rarely sick; and like Danny, the master of his world.

O grieving Earth,
What loneliness wells up in you at bedtime!
O divine kingdom,
What treasures we give up to you
O Thou merciful God,
Refresh me now and let me sleep,
And Mama too, and Barry, and all those
Who, in the freshness of parting,
Cannot sleep at bedtime.

*         *         *

Probably the most successful play in the new auditorium at Eastern Hancock was Hello, Dolly! Shortly after the sold-out run of that musical, I attended a school board meeting for the first and only time during those thirty-seven teaching years. I suppose if I had not happened in, I might never have known their feelings. What item of business they were discussing when I entered, I will never know, because when the president realized that I had taken a seat among the visitors, he said, "Gentlemen, Mr. Rhoades is here." Whereupon they all rose and passed me around their conference table to congratulate me upon a spectacular performance. The architect, I think of him as Gloria and Mary Camplin’s father, had once told me that he regretted that he had not been able to give me a "working stage."

My reply had been, "I hope you’ll come to Hello, Dolly! to see how we make that ‘non-working’ stage work." Students had helped me hang pulleys to I-beams and build wagons to make the show move the way it was designed to.  My counterweight, as I recall, was a paint can full of cement, of which I had read in a stagecraft book.  I wouldn’t advise that!

I should not move on from there without remembering Susie Davis. She was Dolly. She was the reason the show was sold out. As a freshman she had tried out for the children’s play, The Sleeping Beauty. She had talent; I could see that. After the others left, she asked me if maybe there could be a part for a fat fairy. I didn’t react, but I thought there was. Her older brother, Jerry, a bright kid who could sing and act and was soon to be Fagin in Oliver, was a senior. I asked him what he thought about Susie’s idea. He said, “Why not? If she’s up to it.”

I told him that I thought that anyone who was acting all the time really ought to have some training. What I meant was that Susie was a natural comic and people liked her. She threw the shot put too. So she became the yellow fairy (the most unbecoming color for a large person). Once she began to lose weight in preparation for Dolly (her determination, not mine) during her senior year, I brought out and showed her that fairy costume to inspire her. It really was very large. Anyway, as each fairy arrived, she was announced by a page at the top of a “cake” staircase that I had had the students carpet. As music played, each fairy did a graceful turn and then floated (fluttered?) down the staircase, flitting as a fairy might. When the yellow fairy appeared, she did an awkward, bumbling turn and fell down the staircase as all the fairies, now posed on the steps, caught her to let her seem to bump each step of the way.

On Saturday night she told the other fairies, “Don’t catch me. It’ll be funnier if I am not supported.” It was certainly hilarious, really proved her sense of comic timing and began a career of endearing clowning that gave her terrific audience reactions to something as simple as a lifted eyebrow. What she hadn’t taken into account, and what I certainly didn’t dream was a possibility, was that in the center of that staircase, hidden in the fabric that covered it, one side of a long staple was waiting to dig into her leg. It left a scar about fourteen inches long. It was the worst accident I ever experienced during one of my plays, and I learned to look for every possible accident before it could happen. Anyway, Susie was also an artist, and she and Rick Ray led the after-school scenery group in a delightful romp that brought a rough vision of beauty and color to the stage.

I’d like to mention at this point that in Dr. Sutton’s poetry class at Ball State University students were required to write a paper about our poetic experiences each week. I have no idea what other students in that class did for that assignment, but I chose my favorites from the pages of poetry assigned that week and discussed what they meant to me, and I composed some poetry of my own. For two days I tried to look at everything I saw on my way to and from Muncie, taking the back roads when I could and looking at the countryside with the eyes of a poet. I stopped many times to write down something that I thought could be the basis for a poem some day. One of the items was a broken windmill that was moving a little in the wind. I wrote the poem several years later. Beside the list Dr. Sutton had written, “What will you do with these?”

One of the items mentioned on the list was a huge dead ‘possum’ that someone had picked up and draped over a country stop sign. The temperature was in the high ninety degrees and few cars were air-conditioned. My Volkswagen needed all the windows cranked completely down and the sunroof wide open, but, after one trip, I learned to stop quite a distance ahead of that stop sign, roll up windows and close the sunroof against the awful stench. I wasted no time getting off that road onto the highway. If that was poetic as I suggested, I have yet to use it in anything.

The last item on the list was a huge fire at the northern edge of Greenfield. A construction company was burning trees they had bulldozed down and dragged beside and on top of a white bungalow which seemed to be being burned as it stood in good, usable condition. It was raining as I stopped to make a notation. The next week I submitted this poem, which he then asked me to read aloud to the class.

        FIRE DANCE

The grove is gone!
Those stately oaks that marked the spot so many years
Are mowed as grass is mowed
And burn in two gigantic grass fires.
The grove is gone!

In time the water tower for which it bowed
Will stand as tall
And mark the spot another way.
The stumps are burning and the great oak logs.
The grove is gone, and gone each trace
That might have told one who has not, as I have,
Watched the pace of mighty ruin,
"This is the place where stood the grove."

The flames, like passionate, red-skinned women,
Leap and bend
And, in an elemental rite,
Send smoke signals to their rain god
Whose power will not concern the folks
Who build this tower for more dependable supply.

The dancers bow low,
And through the shimmering vapors of their heated passion,
The slowing passerby can see among the logs
A hulk of a house that once was there,
A restful haven beside a grove of trees.

The grove is gone now–and the dwelling.
A swelling of the flames quickens the tempo.
Pain of intense heat reaches the roadway.
"Move on!"
The honking, hurried motorists protest.

Their blatancy disturbs my meditations,
And as they speed toward destinations,
Their whirring tires splash road mud in my face.
The drumbeat of the wipers is a witness
To the ritual my mud-streaked windshield
Hides from view.

A single, singing tone of invited air,
Higher and higher,
Marks my return to the pace of the moving highway.
I dispel the drummers with my thumb upon a knob.

Awareness awakens!
Only there on that short stretch have droplets come,
A blessed benediction upon the barren plain–
Cooling rain.
The grove is gone!

*         *         *

I sometimes think school boards and administrators don’t realize what simple creatures we teachers often are. They may choose to deal with us in devious ways. In 1967 when our Tammy was born, I left Charlottesville–by then called Eastern Hancock after its consolidation with Wilkinson High School in the northeast corner of the county—for a job nearer Ball State University where Margaret and I would be completing our Masters degrees. The time seemed right for a change because Margaret, who was always reluctant to make big changes, had taken a pregnancy leave of absence for a year. And while Mr. Glenn, superintendent, was in Europe with Ball State University classmates, the board decided to fire him and set aside all plans for a new building. I immediately resigned my post to accept a position at Lapel High School, where Jeannine Terhune from Carthage was teaching vocal music. The job paid $1000 more per year, which was a large increase in 1967.

A few months later a member of the Eastern school board asked me what had most affected my decision to leave that place. I answered, “I believe the most significant factor was that no one asked me to stay.” I loved that place and its inhabitants. Mr. Ed Knarr, perhaps the fairest man of power I ever knew, had become principal. Mr. Orahood had moved to a middle school in the Greenfield-Central rural area (the “Central” part of the name came from Hancock Central, which had recently consolidated with Greenfield High), where he served with distinction until his retirement. The next principal, from the outside, was there for only one year. Ed was a biology teacher and coach who had called me for advice when he was offered the principal’s post while I was teaching at Lapel. We had been neighbors, and he thought my perspective as an insider/outsider would be valuable.

The school’s most valuable asset was that team of sisters, Victoria and Ethel Harlan, who had served long terms in the Wilkinson community prior to the bitter consolidation. They were firm, and Ethel often spoke for both of them. She had nearly convinced Ed that the only hope for an end to the nasty political nature of this consolidation was to bring in someone from the outside and definitely not to hire a man from one of the two schools.  I felt, however, that an outsider would flounder and be cremated and useless before his first year was over. This would be our fourth principal in four years. Ed, I ventured, would know of all the enemies; his wife’s influential parents were natives—an enormous plus; and Ed was all backbone (and nose—behind his back he was known as “Nose Knarr.”) I once went into the first floor boys bathroom and discovered someone had created a caricature of Mr. Knarr’s head. Subsequently, student had added length to his nose until it went all the way around the room. He was short of stature but his skin was tough. He may have known it was there. I doubt that he ever knew I mixed matching paint after scenery work one night soon after and painted it out. Obviously, he took my adviceand accepted the job and proved me right. He was a dedicated fixture there for years until a heart attack took his life too soon, far too soon.

In the late nineties, a member of the class of ’60 tracked me down at my home in Lexington, Kentucky. Richard and his wife, Brenda Grigson Jackson would be celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and they wished to reenact their wedding and renew their vows. All their attendants would be there. Would the minister who married them consent to do it again? He knew how to tie the knot ‘real good.’ I consented and enjoyed another reunion. Brenda was younger than Richard and was, I believe, a sophomore at Charlottesville when I left Carthage and first taught her.  It was so enjoyable to be a part of this remembrance.

A few years ago my older son, John, had car trouble on the other side of Indianapolis. It was only a few miles from the home of one of the closest friends I ever had–one who taught me a lot about open acceptance of people. I mentioned him in the preface to this book. While John and a friend fixed the car with parts I paid for, I called at Dick Merritt’s home.  As it turned out, he was at work on a summer painting job, and his wife Pat wouldn’t let me leave before he arrived. We hadn’t even talked on the phone for over ten years.

When he got there just before dinner, he let out an exclamation of happy surprise. Then he said, “This is so strange, Jack, but…” and then he stopped.

“But what, Dick?” his wife urged.

“Oh, nothing. You wouldn’t understand.”

“You started this. Now spit it out. I hate it when you do that.”

He said, "Well, when I said my prayers this morning, I said, ‘God, it sure has been a long time since I’ve seen Jack Rhoades.’ And here you are. I can’t believe it!"

I guess when a friendship is strong enough to last for eternity, God makes us move on, knowing we don’t have to nourish it any longer. These associations, I think because they are marked with mutual deep respect, pick up where they left off without any doubting or proving. When I walked into a crowded room years later for his party of retirement after forty years of teaching and being an athletic director, he had been gravely disappointed that his aged father had not made the trip from southern Kentucky, and he had no idea Margaret and I had planned to be there. Instant tears glistened in his eyes. Dick Merritt had been my best man in June of 1958; I was his best man in August of the same year. My poem, "Broken Windmills," written in l977, was about this friend during a difficult time which he handled well and about adversity, which he overcame.

          BROKEN WINDMILLS

My dear best friend from youth,
May I just speak in truth
About the shock you gave
When you appeared so grave,
Feeling life was rotten–
You who’d often gotten
Stern when I was passive,
And put your arm, massive,
On my slender shoulder,
Making me feel bolder
In the face of trouble
That seemed more than double
What it was really worth.

Deep-rooted in the earth
You were a source of pow’r–
My awesome windmill tower!
Now pains of deepest wrong
Have left you less than strong.
Still, quick to smile, bracing,
Turning windward, facing
Life squarely in the eye,
You muster strength to try.
Water yet is there
And wind enough to spare.
And you, sad and broken,
Your two blades, a token,
Do the work of many,
Hardly pumping any.

But there is life in you
If someone only knew–
Some carpenter who’d care
Enough to make repair–
And polish ev’ry blade
And whirl it, unafraid.
I listen, weak,
To hear you squeak
And cry in pain.
I wish again
That with a snap
I could just scrap
All that’s been done
And put some fun
In your bright eyes.
With clever lies
That, meant to tease,
You’d naught but please.

Then you, grand tower,
Would generate power,
Would be once more
The man of the hour.