I Loved To Teach

I think a major reason for the high success ratio in small schools was that the parents and community members were so involved in the children’s lives. We “wasted “ a lot of time in English classes planning ways to raise money for the senior trip and finalizing details for the prom, and they all worked on those things. The major downfall that I see in the system was that so many of the “mill kids” dropped out after the eighth grade. My eighth-grade classes both years were in the high forties. Only half of any class would finish high school. That’s appalling to me. A few eighth graders couldn’t read at all. I remember one boy who just made what he thought looked like words on a spelling test so no one would know he was illiterate.  Of course, they didn’t look anything like words.  To hold his attention during spelling tests, I told him to listen to the initial sounds, and if he got the first letter right, I’d count that.  He never got beyond four or five out of twenty.  Our education system has come a long way, I think, in making opportunities for kids like these, although many still fall through the cracks for one reason or another.

Another member of the class of 1961 who stands out in my memory is Judy Kennedy, whose strong will and keen mind have enabled her to overcome the tragedy of polio. When I arrived at Carthage, Judy was a junior, and the only juniors I had were in my study hall. She first attracted my notice when a student rushed into the library to tell me that… “Judy Kennedy has taken a fall in the hallway near your door, and she won’t let anyone pick her up. She said ‘Get Mr. Rhoades.’” So I picked her up; we checked out that she was unhurt, and with the aid of her crutches, she went on about her day, as did I.

But the story I remember best was the next time I picked her up. We were on the senior trip in New York City, and the class had assembled to wait on the subway train. Judy began to cry a bit and whimpered, “My doctor said I am not supposed to ride on the subway.” I had a choice to make—abandon the rest of the class, already loading, or insist that she get on the subway. I decided on the latter. By this time the others were finishing the boarding procedure, and it was our turn. I held her right arm, but as we stepped into the opening, the door began to close. I put my right foot out as one would for an elevator, but this did not deter the left door, which closed on her foot. I pounded that door by reaching across her back, and it miraculously opened meekly to allow us to get on. Every eye was on us as she sobbed loudly. Her foot was bruised only slightly and the skin “skuffed,” but she was wailing, “My doctor says I am not ever supposed to ride on the subway.” I was sure all passengers thought I was pretty incompetent, as did I.

I sat beside her to calm her down after I had rubbed the bruise and determined that the skin was not broken, nor were any bones. Soon it was time to get off the car. I had learned my lesson. I made the others wait while Judy and I got off first. Soon we realized that the only way out of this dimly lighted place was via a long escalator. (These were pretty new in 1961, and of course, Carthage or nearby Knightstown—even Greenfield and Rushville, the county seats—did not have such a thing.) Judy neared hysterics as she wailed, “But my doctor says I can’t ride on an escalator.” Those disapproving spectators were close behind us.

Again, I chose to ignore her doctor’s orders. (Was there an alternative?) I lifted her onto the bottom step easily and felt relaxed until I looked back as we neared the top and realized that we were at the head of a mob that would run us over as soon as we reached the street level. I had never seen an escalator more crowded, probably because people who are used to them climb instead of standing still. It was lucky that the escalator was a long one. That gave me time to collect my wits beyond thinking, “Jack, you idiot, you should have waited to load her until last.” As we reached the top, I took her by the waist with both hands, saying calmly, “Just hang on, Judy.” Her metal crutches were the kind that fit over the wrist and hang, self-supported when at rest. I lifted her easily to our left at the top of the escalator and watched the crowd swoosh past, staring at the youthful teacher and the tearful young girl (who in reality looked older than I did—no one in New York believed me when I claimed to be the sponsor.) After that, Judy traveled everywhere by taxicab, accompanied by the first-year business teacher who chaperoned the girls because Margaret was too far along in her pregnancy to travel.

At the class reunion there was one man, Joe Foust, that grinning, blond, blue-eyed kid, who insisted that we sit with him and his wife. I had really liked him as a senior in composition class, and I must have told him several times a week that he would have to learn to spell in preparation for college. He would always insist that he was not going to college. My answer was always the same: "Joe, you can’t possibly know that."

Joe Foust was, by the time of this reunion, the president of two corporations in Dallas and had flown to the reunion in his own jet. You see, he did make it to college after all. He had told me in church once that he could now spell nearly anything; he was in pre-med at that time. I saw him later in a hospital where he was working. He had not gone to medical school, but was still hoping to. He told my sister-in-law that night that he felt he could not be the person he had become if our lives had not crossed at that important juncture in his life. In her inimitable way, she told him he ought to give me half of his salary. But it was quite enough for me to know that my being a teacher had made a difference and perhaps had enabled Joe to realize the potential that I knew was there before he did.

But Mike Watkins wasn’t there. I had hoped to see him. One of the sad things about the teaching game is that most of those kids just leave and you never see them again. Some of the others who weren’t there I have seen from time to time. It’s not so much a matter of how they’ve changed as realizing how much we are the same.

One fascinating fact that I should like to share is that so many of the students in that now-defunct, seemingly very insignificant little school have gone into the world and made a difference. There were only about twenty-three graduates in each of the two graduating classes, but they became teachers, executives, farmers, good citizens, and one became a Broadway actress (Pam Hunt had been our next-door neighbor; she and Jeannine Terhune, both to be seniors in the fall, stayed with a very pregnant Margaret while I chaperoned the senior trip in 1961). Among other things, Pam directed the Hasty Pudding Review at Harvard for many years. Because David Ruby had been his personal page for several months, Birch Bayh, then a state senator, consented to give our commencement address for his class. David, Marvella, Birch, Margaret and I sat together at the senior dinner.

*         *         *

It was customary at Carthage to make sure the senior play had a part for every student in the senior class, so I found one that did. (If it didn’t, the sponsor had to write in parts.) Now, Billy Muir was ever so outgoing on the basketball court, but he simply could not get up in front of a class. Mrs. Lord (Latin and English 11) told me that she once got him to give a speech by having him come in after school and turning her back to him while he gave it. I did something similar. The first week of rehearsals it seemed as if he would not take any part. David Ruby and Jimmy Ellis tried to shame him by asking if he wanted us to get someone from the junior class to do his part. He was sure he didn’t want that, and he began to convince himself that he could do it. One week of rehearsals were in a basement classroom at school. During that week, Billy stayed in the hall and listened.

The next week we moved into the Community Center auditorium. The whole cast stayed onstage most of the performance. It was a courtroom drama, and Billy sat on the jury. We thought he might want to sit in the first row of the audience and give his lines from there for a few days, but he knew that would mean that everyone would be facing him, whereas if he sat behind the jury onstage, he would be safe until there was an audience. And I believe almost everyone in Carthage came to see that play because no one could quite believe that Billy Muir would come out onstage, much less say a word. Did he fool us! He must have realized that the best way to be inconspicuous was to do what everyone else was doing. And after the hand he got on opening night, the second night was a cinch. There were several couples in that class that married and have remained together all these years. Billy married Judy Harrold, a vivacious, talkative, delightful girl. She was, I believe, his girlfriend for years. I remember the horror of walking into the typing room one day to find her unconscious on a bookkeeping table. She remained unconscious for several days, in part because her doctor, (Dr. McNabb—in those small towns, the doctor was a folk hero, trusted and adored) went to Florida on vacation without putting another doctor in charge. When they figured out her problem, they put a paper bag over her head to make her inhale her own carbon dioxide; and she carried a paper bag with her at all times for awhile after that.

In the early days of Hancock County Children’s Theater—actually, right after the performance of our first show, Peter Pan—I was approached by the once-terrified child who had to overcome his fears in order to fly and whose parents had both been "my kids," Phyllis Wisehart Addison, who had won best actress award in my first musical, Lady in the Dark, and Dwight whose best actor award came after a comedic class play called Mumbo Jumbo. As he looked up at me with admiring eyes, young Scott said, "And this is the man who did it. This man right here made it all happen."

His dad confided, "He loves you, Jack. He really does. They all do."

I protested, "I don’t know how they could. All I do is yell at them. There is so little time and so much pressure that. . . “

"Well, they know your heart is in your work; it gives them heart, and they love you for it. I know we always did."

*         *         *

Thinking back to Harry Woodard, I guess it’s unfair that I should have thought it strange that he removed his shirt. Many of my students must remember a similar thing about me. When I was thirty-three, I bought a very expensive toupee. It made a drastic change in my appearance, and I wore it for three years. Then I deemed myself old enough to be balding and took it off for good.

I made a grand entrance wearing my “hair” for the first time one Sunday morning at the Wilkinson Methodist Church. I had warned people to be expecting it. The first person I saw was an older elementary teacher who exclaimed, "I love it! It makes you look twenty years younger!"

"Thanks a lot," I moaned, "That makes me nine."

Later she apologized, then asked if I was really only twenty-nine. I confessed to being thirty-three, saying, "So that makes me thirteen." But I assure you I was glad to look twenty years younger.

Somewhere near the beginning of each new class my practice was to take off my hairpiece, showing them how I really looked, and giving a simple ‘speech to inform’ on the subject of toupees. We laughed together about it, and I suppose I felt that they would then be less inclined to laugh about it behind my back in a way that didn’t include me in the humor. I think the point I’d like to stress is that I felt driven to be myself in the classroom since it was to be my daytime home for so many years of my life. I don’t recommend scowling. Being yourself does, however, add to your vulnerability. I have shed tears and I have shown anger. But I always follow through if I threaten, and I always apologize when I feel I might have been wrong. I heartily recommend those actions.

*         *         *

I would like to give some examples of positive reaction to apologies. In the Carthage school the office secretary was Gloria Plank, good humored, kind, efficient. One day I was in the office when she explained some regulation or procedure that I felt was unjust or shouldn’t apply to me. I sounded off and stormed out of the office. About fifty feet down the hall, I caught my bearings, turned around and retraced my steps. I think I caught her off-guard when I said, “Gloria, I owe you an apology. I know you don’t make the rules, and I know you have to enforce them. My anger was misplaced and unfair, and I had no right to speak to you the way I did. I am really sorry, Gloria. There is no good excuse for it. You have given me every reason to treat you with respect and I promise to do that in the future.” Her instant tears were a confirmation that I had hurt her feelings deeply and would most certainly have damaged our relationship had I not realized and admitted my error. We occasionally meet, after years of leading very different lives, and it is always a delightful occasion.

“My bad,” is what the kids say now. When my restored 1982 Lincoln Towncar with its reconditioned motor and brand new paint job was totaled by two of my students who went through a yield sign, hit me twice broadside and sent me off the roadway onto a patch of ice, and into a house that sat, on that day in 1995, too near the street. The driver approached me as I got out of my vehicle. “Are you all right, Mr. Rhoades? My bad. My bad!” I tried to calm him down a bit and asked him if he was alone in his car. “No,” he said, “Dane is with me.”

I hurried over to his lightweight car, which had gone into a chain link fence after the collision. There was Dane, unconscious on the passenger side, with blood trickling from his nose. Dane Isner was a children’s theater graduate and was in the cast of Hello, Dolly!, which was in rehearsal at the time. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t heard the ambulance siren just then. They took us all to the hospital. I was limping but essentially unhurt, but I couldn’t leave until they let me see for myself that Dane was all right. What a night!

*         *         *

The second example happened to me in the G-C cafeteria. I felt I had been overcharged and demanded an explanation, a breakdown of prices. I was angry and she knew it. By the time I had finished lunch in the teachers lounge, I knew I needed to apologize to that person who had to face me almost every day in that line, unless I avoided her and went to another line. Ours was an impersonal relationship, but she was a parent and a colleague of sorts and she deserved to be happy at work. When I walked up to her register, there was no longer a line. She said that she had figured wrong and handed me a quarter. I said something like this: “Well, thank you, but I didn’t come to complain. I came to apologize for treating you the way I did. This meal is a bargain. I couldn’t get it for this price anywhere, and there is no excuse for my being angry with you. I just had a talk with my students last period about their apologizing to people when they had been wrong or offensive, and I think I had better listen to my own advice.” She too had moisture around her eyes, but I’m sure she let go of the hurt I had caused. I had a reputation for being a kind person, and one needs to live up to his reputation.

On one occasion in a difficult class, I had assigned a set of speeches, trying to get them to think about their own images as they projected them to others. One girl seemed to be haughty and I felt she was sniggering at others while unprepared herself. When I felt she had overstepped the bounds of allowable behavior, I sent her out. The assistant principal, who had never once given me backup in a difficult first year, sent for me to hear her side of the story. I learned in the office that she had done nothing offensive, that her laughing was not at me or another speaker but at someone clowning across the room, and she had been prepared but just had said she wasn’t because she didn’t feel well. I took the response I had learned to use in that office with that man. I said something like this: “That is very different from what I thought was happening when I sent you out of the room. If what you say is true, and I assume it is, I owe you an apology. I make it a practice as a person as well as a teacher to be fair and just. It appears that I have been unjust to you, and I really regret that. Tomorrow I will apologize to you in front of the class for this injustice. However, if I was right and you are setting me up, I will know it, because you will not give your speech, and I will be made a laughing stock.”

In class the next day she gave a good speech, and true to my word, I made a serious attempt to set things right before we went on to the next speaker. The next speaker had asked to use the microphones in the auditorium for a musical presentation—something I encouraged. As we passed through the hall, the young lady was suddenly beside me, saying softly, “Mr. Rhoades, you didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to be fair,” I said, and the contention between us was gone. If she had been mocking me in class, the members of that class would know it without my insistence upon the matter. If I had been wrong, they would also know that. Do you think I did the right thing?

*         *         *

Another time, much more recently, I taught a girl who seemed pleasant enough but was full of anger. There was a new school rule against drinks being brought into the classroom for any occasion. When I seemed surprised as she pulled out a Coke can and began to sip openly, she became confrontational. I insisted that she put the Coke can away and stop arguing about the matter. She was sent to the office, not because of the rule she broke but because she would not stop arguing and allow me to get on with class. As she went out the door, she was still arguing, “Oh, sure. You can overlook it when John and Jim (not real names) drink in class, but not me. I’m a special case. I get kicked out of class big time.”

No sooner was she gone than I asked, “John and Jim, is this true? Have you brought drinks to class?”

“Yeah, but at least we hid them so you couldn’t see them.”

I was immediately out the door and heading down the hall after my student. I stopped her and explained that what I couldn’t tolerate was the way she abused the dignity of the classroom verbally. But I really felt, knowing others had gotten by with the drinking offense, that I should give her a second chance. “Why don’t you just come back to the room and we’ll start over.” She came with me, glad not to have to deal with the Mr. Jackson, who always gave me great support. After a brief statement about everyone’s obeying the rules in the future, I gave an assignment and put them to work. When she had had ample time to cool down, I attempted one on one to reestablish rapport. We came to friendly terms and I have enjoyed seeing her as a graduate of GCHS.

My final anecdote on this topic has a slightly different turn.  In the classroom one day I realized that I needed some forms, and I needed them immediately. I sent a student to the office to get them. The student returned without the forms, saying that Mrs. Reason would not give them to a student. Teachers had to get those forms themselves. I thought she could have sealed them in an envelope. Also, I really did not think I should leave this particularly testy class, and the office was at the other end of the building. Now, I should explain that I had taught Nancy McDaniels Reason at Eastern Hancock, as well as her older sisters, Sally and Mary, and her husband Roger. She had played the lead in Twelfth Night, my first attempt at Shakespeare on the high school level. But I was “ticked off, man”. A biology teacher, John Rihm, was standing at the counter, talking to Nancy in a conspiratorial manner. Without a word I stormed behind the counter, went to the appropriate cabinet and took out everything I thought I might need in the next millennium. When I looked up, they were both holding their sides. “Did I miss something funny?” I snapped with crisp sarcasm.

Mr. Rihm spoke for them both as he chucked, “I’m sorry, Jack, but neither of us has ever seen you angry before.” I was almost at the door before I too felt I had to laugh at the situation and with the laughter, the anger was dissipated. I think the need for any apologies was thrown out with our seeing the humorous side of the situation.

Believe me when I say that Miss Caruthers was an altogether different story.  She made sixth grade a misery for many—none more than me. When Bill Denny took my love note away from Sarafay Landis, whom we both loved, and gave it to Miss Caruther, explaining that he had found it, she called me to the front of the room, put her rigid, bony arm around my shoulder to keep me from squirming and made me read that note aloud, pronouncing the next word for me at the slightest pause. It was a lovely note that was very hard to read in front of the whole class because it was so personal. It said great poetic things such as “I love you. Do you love me? Remember, you promised to marry me.” I don’t think I ever forgave either of them. I did my worst work for Miss Carothers. She taught math and gave me a terrifying ‘D’, my first ‘D’, convincing me that I lacked mathematical sense. I sat frozen in her icy classroom. My other memories of her include that although we heard rumors of her retirement every year, she never retired. I bet she’s still teaching. One day she sang for us—finally, something I knew I was better at than she was. She sang America, the Beautiful, I think, and her ancient voice sometimes cracked. I felt everyone exhibited a bit of a crooked smile as she warbled, proud of her vibrato, and everyone worked to squelch the desire to explode with guffaws, included the portrait of George Washington that hung on the east wall of her room. I never cared for history much, or politics, but I felt a kinship with the ‘Father of our Country’ after that. I love that particular portrait. It is as if he and I will always have this great secret at Miss Carother’s expense.

*         *         *

In the eighth grade at James Whitcomb Riley High School in South Bend, Indiana, I had a math teacher named Harry Woodard. I remember that he was extremely hirsute, and he proudly removed his shirt in class one day to reveal his chest and back. I remember thinking, “I can’t believe he’s glad that he’s so hairy.”

One day in class we had a very difficult problem. I was still positive that math was my weakest subject. Anyway, Mr. Woodard from his seat at his desk called up and down the rows asking for the answer to the hardest problem. I knew my answer was wrong because several other people had proposed it. When he got to me, he skipped to the next person. Finally, he had gone all around the room and no one had the right answer. Then he said, “All right, Jack, tell them the answer.”

When I gave my answer apologetically, he banged his textbook on his desk, saying, “You think you have one person who knows what’s going on and even he doesn’t know!”

I thought, “He can’t be saying this about me. I’m not good at math.” I felt so bad about letting him down that I never again set aside a page of problems he had assigned until I had checked and double-checked the answers. By the end of the semester, I was the best math student in his class, I did know what was going on, and he recommended me for accelerated math classes in high school. Math became my best and favorite subject. I sometimes become convinced that my students don’t hear what I say, even if it’s spoken with intensity; however, when I least expect it, I hear them quote me about something they felt was important to them. Aha!

*         *         *

When my two oldest children were small, Roy Trowbridge of Charlottesville became a friend, and his wife became our baby-sitter while Margaret taught school. Irene was wonderful. Our children’s grandmothers were in far-off cities, and she became that figure for them on a daily basis. When we went to pick the kids up, she would be sitting in her rocking chair holding the baby to give him ample time to awaken slowly. Our kids would never eat toast at home in the morning. Irene would ask them if they had had toast, and if they said no, she fixed the best toast in the world in a toaster that popped up to lay the bread right out on the table.

When Roy passed away, I preached his funeral sermon. I thought I could remain in control of my emotions because I had done a lot of work onstage that required control. However, when I said, “Roy was not only an elder in my church, Roy was my barber. He cut my hair every week. Roy was my friend, and he loved my children,” The last four words were choked and tearful.

What that taught me as a teacher was to notice how much more supportive parents of students became when they knew that I loved their children. If I could give young teachers only one piece of advice, that would definitely be it—love the children entrusted to you! You can’t fake it.

I wonder whatever happened to Marilyn Moran, whose father taught at Notre Dame and who gave me the feeling forever that I was not a cute kid when she told another girl within my hearing as they walked behind me after school, “Jackie thinks he is so-o-o cute, but he is ugly!” I guess I was over-confident because I had been singing into a microphone since I was three and had to stand on a chair to be seen by the congregation on Sunday nights.

But this is an “embarrassing moment” episode later in Miss Carbeaner’s class, grade five. Miss Carbeaner was an excellent young teacher who had us prepare a newspaper about the Civil War period and paint a mural for the classroom that period.  I painted Stephen Foster sitting at an upright piano. About all the grammar I was exposed to by the time I entered college I had learned at that early age under Miss Carbeaner. Marilyn Moran and Patty Kish were in Miss Burke’s grade two class with me. Could they also be in their seventies? That’s incredible! When my son Danny was three and we were in the hospital waiting room because Margaret was there with her first incident of blindness with MS, Tammy’s grade-school principal, Lloyd Penrod, who was married to our home economics teacher, Mary Penrod, struck up a conversation with the kids. When he asked Danny his age and Danny told him, he replied, “You know, Danny, I used to be three.” I loved that line so much I sometimes use it myself. Well, Patty Kish used to be ten. And when we were eleven, Miss Carbeaner asked us each to tell the class our “most embarrassing moment.” When it was my turn, I just said, “My most embarrassing moment was when Patty told you about hers.” And I let my face turn red (I can do that at will, even today) and went to my seat.

This is Patty’s story: “I sat on the aisle at a front table in Miss Burke’s room, and Jackie Rhoades was her pet. I knew he was sweet on me, but you know how it is in second grade? You’re always in love with someone? Well, I was in love with someone else. One day Jackie went up to Miss Burke’s desk on some flimsy pretense, and on the way back to his seat as I glanced up at him, he just kissed me on the lips. (Ooh’s at this point from fifth grade boys who hated the thought of kissing a girl.) That’s right,” she emphasized, “right here on my lips. Well, I rushed up to the teacher’s desk in a huff and said, (and here she whined plaintively), ‘Me-uss Burke, Jackie ke-ussed me.’ And Miss Burke just smiled as if that pleased her and replied, ‘That’s nice.’ YUCK!” (Applause and laughter from all but me. I don’t remember doing that, however characteristic it seems. But I just felt certain that Miss Burke would have given that reply.)

At that time Miss Carbeaner said we could submit a poem for extra credit.  This was mine:

                                              WHO OR WHOM

Who or whom?
I do not know
When they come
Or when they go.
Who or whom?
That’s quite a question.
I don’t know.
Do you have a suggestion.

Miss Carbeaner thought it was too short for extra credit, so she had me read it to the class.  They voted unanimously for the bonus points.  Today, I might add a few lines, thus:
Now he and him do not confuse,
So I’d just substitute the he’s for who’s
And him’s for whom’s and then I’d see
The choice was easier for me.

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.”

A few years ago one of my students noticed that I diisplayed student art work in my room. I told him that most of it had been rescued from trash barrels on the last day of school over the years—art work rejected by the artists themselves. He set out to design his next project with a place in my classroom in mind. I don’t think he realized how pleased I was or how much I would cherish it. It was an unusual papier maché sculpture that won an award at an art show at the mall. He called it “Motley Crue,” but to me it was the masks of comedy and tragedy from the Greeks. When he brought it to me, I offered to let him keep the piece, since it had won an award, but he insisted that he had made it for me. It had a pink, marble look to it without the sheen. He kept the blue ribbon. Probably such an award should have stayed with the artwork, but I did not suggest it.

*         *         *

In the second grade my teacher was Miss Burke, a kind elderly teacher who met her demise driving the wrong way on the new divided highway between South Bend, Indiana, and Chicago. I believe she had never heard of a divided highway, and although nearly every car flashed its lights, honked its horn or both, she drove on toward her destiny. She loved me. I knew it. Not because she had loved my brothers, although she may well have done so, but because she made no attempt to hide it. She would call me to the front to lead the class in a song, and I have her message of delight on a faded old report card. “Jackie sings like a bird.” She also cherished my art projects. She seemed to feel that nearly every art work of mine was so good that she couldn’t bear to part with it. It would be an example for future classes. So she’d ask me if I would make a second one to take home. I didn’t make the second with the same delight as the first, which had been an act of love for my mother. Do you think I ever offered Miss Burke an art work of mine? Heck, no! I wanted all of them myself. I liked Miss Burke a lot, but I was selfish—especially, I wanted that Santa with the curled paper beard, so much like the one on her door which children passing out would inevitably run their hands over in a downward motion to make the beard of white curled construction paper strips flip back into curls again.

My junior English teacher, Miss Grace Lushbaugh, doesn’t quite fit in chronologically, but this is where her story jabs my memory.

*         *         *

Miss Lushbaugh wore a lot of black—a black coat that nearly reached the floor, black masculine shoes, and a black derby-style hat that was held on by a black scarf tied neatly at her chin. She moved a bit like a steam roller as she plowed through the hallways. Get out of her way! Eccentric! That’s exactly what she was, and emotional. She had her hair piled on her head and held in place with large dark plastic pins. I only saw it down once. When Evangeline rode her horse along the stream in one direction while her lover floated downstream in the opposite direction, she became Evangeline (in a pig’s eye). She let her hair fall across her shoulders and straddled her desk chair as if it were a palomino, and, reciting from memory, she galloped across the front of the classroom, tipping back and forth on the legs of that wooden chair.

She always told us we were to enter the classroom quietly and take our seats. However, one morning she was not at her desk as usual. Students took advantage of the situation to socialize a bit. The bell rang and out she sprang from a very small closet at one side toward the back of the room, crying, “Aha! I caught you!”

We were not surprised to read in the yearbook that she had her degree from Notre Dame, an all-male university at that time. We wagered she played halfback or tackle. But the most memorable experience (indeed, I have forgotten all the rest) came during the study of Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables. She assigned a two- or three-page paper on the character of Hepzibah Pincheon. Alas, we did not understand the vital importance of perceiving the depth of this woman’s soul. The day she returned the themes (the first such paper I had had to write in high school) she was a very disappointed woman.

She began to write a list of wonderful characteristics on the board as she expounded them, sometimes so emotionally that she was unable to hold back the tears. It was then that I captured the truth of the situation. There were events in her life so like those in the novel that she felt a strong kinship to that great, strange lady. I took notes galore. We would, I was certain, be asked to write this paper again with some passion.

What I gave Miss Lushbaugh the second time around was precisely what she had hoped to get. Her own ideas, juggled around a bit to disguise them, and a smattering of Miss Lushbaugh’s idiosyncrasies blended in. On the day she was to return them, she came to me with glistening eyes. Could she keep this paper as an example of a good theme? (There were no copy machines to assist one in 1952.)

I always thought it was ironic that I, who was to become an English teacher, studied under eight different teachers—a new one each semester—with lazy students who convinced each teacher that we had not had this material before. The effect was that we did the same introductory grammar work over and over. But in math, where I was hardly ever to use the material again, I labored under the same demanding teacher all four years, grateful to a degree because Miss Murphy was the best.

Now Reid Jones, the other government teacher, was another story. We sometimes clashed, and I was never very good at keeping my contrary opinion to myself. I recall that after one test Reid was relating in the teachers’ lounge that Karen Miller (top student, great musician, actress, drum major, etc.) had put some of her answers in the wrong spaces on the answer sheet, and Reid, a stickler for precision, had counted nineteen answers wrong. Livid, I rose from my seat, stated irreverently that “I, on the other hand, prefer to test my students on how well they have mastered the material, rather than on technicalities.”

And I left the room, seething.

*         *         *

Reid Jones had directed the last class play at Charlottesville High School before I appeared on the scene. My leading lady became very upset that people were unsure of their lines. She scolded me by saying that I would have to do what Mr. Jones had done the year before—tell them that if they didn’t have their lines by a certain time, I would cancel the show. You know, just really crack down on them.

My reply was that I hated to disappoint her, but that just was not my style. They were going to do this play in front of an audience no matter how unprepared they were. I chose to direct plays because I love to direct plays. I love everything about the theater. Everything that was my job would be done. Learning the lines was their job. She was angry with me and no doubt discussed it with Mr. Jones, but that play was quite good.

I also ruffled Reid’s feathers because I did not appreciate tradition. The class he had sponsored had chosen for their senior gift a set of grey-tan cyclorama curtains on a sliding rod and a standing door and a hanging window. No one would ever have to mess with scenery again. My response that I “loved making scenery” incensed him, and he insisted that the door must not be painted. It was finished plywood—natural, no stain—ugly, in my opinion. So I built two doors and painted them white.

Their only lighting was a six-bulb footlight that sat in the middle of the stage and two rows of fluorescent lights onstage that flickered the way such lights do. I wouldn’t have it. I sent two boys out to the wood shop to saw the footlights in two so that they could be balanced below the sight lines on folding chairs and aimed to a better advantage at both sides of the stage, not just at center stage. Onstage we hung yard lights and were able to switch them on and off.

The lights came back uncut. Did I have permission to make this change? So I brought a saw from home and cut them into two parts myself. If anyone objected, I never heard of it. One of my early musicals was at Charlottesville in that gym. I’m sure someone who had directed a class play to, say, one-hundred or so parents would be appalled to see the parking lot full and cars parked blocks away on the nearby streets. Even the bleachers were full.

There were several actors in small roles who just would not use a gym voice no matter how I pleaded and cajoled. That show, my first Oliver, got my first ever standing audience. The next day Reid approached me with these words: “Just three things—I couldn’t hear _____; So and So might just as well have stayed home; and ______ used little or no expression.” As he started to walk away, I said, “I feel sorry for you, Reid, if you could watch that difficult production with its many technical problems to overcome and have only those comments to make. Don’t you think I told ____ and ____ to talk louder every night? Couldn’t you see that even a monotone was a stretch for that bashful kid? You saw nothing to praise?

And he made that comment I have come to recognize as a left-handed compliment, “Well, the scenery was good.”

I didn’t know that I loved Reid too until he became ill one year in the new building and missed a lot of school. I ached when I looked in each morning to see if there was a sub in the classroom next door. Reid and I were so much different in our approaches, but Reid was, I believe, a “born” teacher. He taught with fervor and was a change factor in many lives.

Chapter 4

Some Insights from a “Born Teacher”

At Southwestern I had a student who was full of anger. He had been placed in the home of a prosperous family, but he was rebellious and his attendance was “spotty.” I gave him a failing grade in English 11. The next year there he was on my class roster again. I hurried to the guidance office to complain and demand his removal. Obviously, since I could get no work out of him whatsoever, he needed a different teacher. The other two teachers who had English 11 classes were very strict. I recommended (nay, insisted) that he give this boy to one of them.

“But he was really adamant in insisting that he be in your class,” the counselor offered.

“Well, that’s tough! He just wants an easy class. He is surly and he despises me. And while we’re talking, I want you to look at my class list objectively, look me in the eye and tell me that these were assigned randomly. I have not one student I had hoped for. I’ll tell you what. You take this list and give it to either of the other teachers and I’ll take theirs sight unseen.”

“Let’s stick with the matter of Wade. I don’t think you’ve assessed this right, Jack. He’s in a tough place in his life. Maybe you can help him.”

“How can I help him? He ignores me. He has never spoken to me voluntarily, I’m sure. But if you think it’s important, I’ll go along with it.”

“And you know I can’t change the class lists.”

I had been promised a job in Indianapolis at Howe High School and had informed the administrators that I was going to resign. When I went in to IPS to ask when I would be signing a contract, I was told there was no job. At this point in the Southwestern discussion, I read to Mr. Farris the following poem which I had written about that experience. It seemed appropriate to the situation.

A DREAM NOT GRANTED

The promised job, so right for me–
Why did I speak so blatantly
And dare to lift the reins of hope,
Accepting every feature, like a dope?

Do something physical, big man, so tall,
To make your power conceivable to one so small.
Don’t make me stand here wounded—you must know
I bleed from hurts I dare not show!

Step on me! Please don’t seem kind!
Kindness and lies I find
Vapid and ineffectual when
I know it was your pen
That made the fatal stroke,
Your booming voice that spoke.

You gave another what belonged to me,
And I must not become angry—
May not seem to be annoyed
About the dream you have destroyed.

From all the applicants inspected
I was, alone, approved, selected.
No job? The man downtown would have no say?
Well, tall man of power, you’ve had your way.

I’ll love the job I have been given,
Teaching my second choice—driven,
Heart and ego scraped and sore,
To ask for little more
Than to be man enough
To give dedication to the little stuff.

God, make me learn to see the worth
Of every little soul on earth.
And let me know it is Thy will—
That greatest Power—so I may thrill
To know that it is victory I meet
Because I walk this modest path—
And not defeat.
July 2, 1978

Wade moved to the back of the second row as soon as I had learned all their names and let them choose their seats. He moped. He had heard so many of my stories (and did I tell stories—especially in lit classes!) But one day in the hallway he caught me by surprise. He was standing beside Jeff, a graduate who had been a fine athlete. I had nodded a greeting to Jeff briefly when this young man stated rather bluntly, “I used to be an athlete. I was pretty good, too. Wasn’t I, Jeff?”

Jeff affirmed that he had had much promise in many track and field events. I felt somewhat elated as I walked away—as if I had just broken some invisible barrier.

The very next day the boy was in an auto accident on his way to school and was on the absence list. Later in the day I saw him in the hall outside the office and approached him to ask details of his wreck and inquire after his condition. He was expansive. When it was time for his class, he was not there when the bell rang. Soon he came in, and with all those junior eyes watching him, the only senior, he walked to his rear seat, started to sit and then said, “Oh, I forgot. This is for you.” And he walked back to my desk at the front of the room and handed me a carnation.

I was more than a little surprised, but I thanked him, went deliberately to my cupboard and took out a vase, crossed the hall to the water cooler and then put the flower on my desk. Class began and I forgot about it. That flower was a parting gesture, though I failed to recognize it as such at that time. I never saw Wade again.

Many years later in Greenfield, a tall senior boy in one of my speech classes came to my desk one day toward the end of the semester. He showed me a photocopy of a yearbook page and asked if I knew anyone on that page. I did a double take, “I know everyone on this page. Who do you know?” He pointed to the picture of the boy I just described and indicated that Wade was his father (though the last names were different.)

“Well, I lost track of him and always wondered what had become of him.”

“I’m not supposed to see him, but every once in awhile I go down to Shelby County to visit him. He remembers you. He’s had a really hard life. He’s only thirty-five, and already he has had two heart attacks. He said to tell you ‘hi’ if you remembered him.” And so I shared with the son the story I just told you.

Somehow, with the passage of time, I have slipped somewhat in my ability to draw out former students names on the spot, but I took care to know more than their names by rows. In high school I had a teacher (a Mr. Rhodes) who knew the names of the seats, and students soon learned that if they changed seats, he would call them by the wrong name and not realize it.  They did this often.)  I once gave a lecture in Richmond, Indiana—a long way from Shelby County—where a thin man with a full beard approached and asked if I remembered him. I responded with his name. “How do you do that, Mr. Rhoades?” he queried. “No one recognizes me. I was a fat kid in a wheelchair. I now walk without crutches, have lost eighty-five pounds and have a full beard.”

“I’m not sure, Steve,” I responded. “I guess it’s your eyes that haven’t changed.”

But I didn’t see the wheelchair. I saw the boy gaining confidence. That speech class performed Hello, Dolly!, and Steve was assigned the role of the drunken judge, probably because he could brace himself with the lectern and stand without his wheelchair. He had recently undergone an operation during break and was secretly learning to walk. He confided that, although he would not do it in rehearsals, he was sure he could walk from behind the curtain in the wings to the lectern. His parents did not know he could do this. (Reminds me of Heidi, you know.) So I had seen him walk two times—in performances. Of course I would remember him. He was one of the kids who tried for me to do things no one thought they could do.

*         *         *

Because I attended other school’s offerings of my favorite plays, I often knew every line that was altered or tripped up. This made me feel very reluctant to make more than subtle changes to scripts lest there be someone in the house that knew the script as well as I did, or as my students did when they went to see a show they had been in recently (and they loved doing that.)

This presented a real handicap when doing Shakespearean drama. Even professionals shorten them drastically. I tried to make the language “sound” Shakespearean when I simplified it, but I was reluctant to alter any well-known soliloquy. For this reason audiences often had some difficulty understanding the dialogue.

After my first attempt at Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, in 1969, Nancy McDaniel’s father met me at the door, “Mr. Rhoades, I thoroughly enjoyed that play—I didn’t understand it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.” The Shakespearean clowns carried the show for the groundlings in Shakespeare’s day, and for almost the entire audience in mine. I wouldn’t even consider attending a Shakespearean play without giving it a fresh reading first.

*         *         *

So I had become the minister of a small-town church, a job for which I lacked preparation, having been reared in another denomination altogether. This church membership was made up of persons with two different loyalties and understandings. Nonetheless, there I stood at the rear of the sanctuary to shake hands with each one as he/she left. When Margaret Smith, retired English teacher and world traveler, approached, she asked with some perturbation, “What are you doing here?”

I answered blankly, “Why, don’t you know? I’m the new minister here…:

“I know that!” she replied, But what are you doing here?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

At this point she leaned very close and looked deeply into my eyes, “Don’t you know that you are a born teacher?” And with a little nod that seemed to say, “There, I’ve done my duty,” she hurried away.

I believe the soul has the capacity to recognize truth instantly. Something in me was dumbfounded at the realization of what she had said and what steps I had taken in resigning my post. I remained as minister for only two years, but after the first year, I returned to the classroom because I missed being with teenagers so desperately.

I ran into Margaret Smith some time later when she had just returned from the Orient. She introduced me to her traveling companion as “the most charming man this side of the Mississippi.” Boy, the kid who grew up in a large poor family of hearty, hungry boys could hardly get through his dinner at the Brown County Inn lest some slip in manners would give him away.

Thinking of Margaret Smith brings to mind Miss Ethel, who also told me I was a born teacher. Before Charlottesville Schools consolidated with Wilkinson to the north, Ethel Harlan had been their librarian and senior English teacher. She was demanding and careful not to make mistakes. She taught me the fine points of grammar—she was a linguist who knew several languages—and in all the time I knew her I only found one instance when she erred. We were talking across the circulation desk when she brought up the subject of “Hoosierisms” in the plays. I mentioned a few of the most commonly distorted words, such words as “git”, “cuz” and “jist.” Then she casually approached the criticism she was aiming at. “I notice you let them say “wuz.”

“Wuz? How do you say it?”

“It’s “waz” (rhymes with Oz).

I looked alarmed as I went to the unabridged dictionary on its stand and looked up the word. Then I muscled the thing to the counter to show her the only given pronunciation. She was a bit taken aback, but she said, “Well, I’ll never say that again.” And I would be willing to bet she never did.

Miss Victoria was Miss Ethel’s sister, hence the use of first names. “Vickie” (only behind her back) taught Latin and government. She also was firm, but somewhat softer in her approach. I often shared class sponsorships with one or the other of them. I tell this only to show how precise they were. On one occasion Miss Ethel had left her billfold at school. A student found it and brought it to me. After I had locked up the building, I took the billfold to our custodian, Mary Powers, who lived nearby. When I got home I called Miss Ethel to tell her where it was. She was both grateful and appalled that she had driven home without her driver’s license. In a few days I received a thank-you card with, I believe, seventeen cents taped to it—precisely the cost of the long-distance call I had made.

Teachers used to be responsible for filling out the students’ permanent record cards on records day. Miss Ethel and I were often teamed up to do the seniors. I would take half of the alphabet and she, the other half. It required putting on the card 5 to indicate the number of days per week a class met and 55 in every square to show that each class met for 55 minutes. One’s hand felt ready to fall off very early on; so I, believing this to be a stupid waste of time, put a capital S in each square on the grid. She, however, would make the bottom part of each 5 figure, lift her pen and go back across the top (as we were taught so carefully in first and second grades. Of course, I would finish the A’s through M’s before she got to the Z’s—long before, and would offer to help her with her stack. Not only did she feel the need to complete her half herself, but she would stay to go over all of mine in case I had made mistakes in my haste. How I loved them both!  They were born to teach, did it with authority and loved doing it.

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.”