High School Teachers (Part 1)

I have been thinking about my high school teachers, good and bad, and thought I should share my thoughts. I went to the same school for six years. When I started, there were about 600 kids in grades 7-12. The district expanded rapidly, junior high schools were built, and when I graduated, there were about 800 kids in grades 10-12.

When I think back about my teachers, my mind always turns first to Sarah Leonard. I never took a class from Mrs. Leonard, but knew her as she was a sponsor of activities I was involved with. Sarah Leonard was a hippie. In fact, she was the country's first hippie. She was one before the word was even invented. She was of average height, and quite thin. Her straight brown hair reached down to her waist. She wore long skirts, and vests, and Indian jewelry. She was not, to me, particularly attractive. (I can say these things, because these people are probably no longer around.) She tended to wear very big earings. (I remember one event, when her earings hung down to her shoulders. "Sit down, Mrs. Leonard", the adolescent Arthur said, "and give your ears a rest.")

There was no Mr. Leonard. I don't know what happened to him, or when. I assume he existed. She was an English teacher ("language arts", they called it). She had a daughter a few years younger than me who attended the school. And, miracle that it was, her daughter seemed to be perfectly normal.

Her room was next to Mr. Cordell's room. Ralph Cordell was a bachelor, and sort of awkward and sheepish. Sarah Leonard used to say hello, as she walked by his room, with a dramatic "Hi, there, Ralphie." Mr. Cordell would blush. Mr. Cordell spent a lot of time talking to the class perched on the edge of his desk, with his legs hanging over the side. Often, his metal waste basket was on the floor, and his legs played around the top of the waste basket as he talked. I remember the day he was sitting there, playing with the waste basket, when Mrs. Leonard gave him a "hello, Ralphie", and he turned beet red, and tried to respond to her and stand up at the same time, winding up with his feet inside the wastebasket, and the rest of him sprawled out on the floor. Even we 15 year olds felt sorry for him that day. But we didn't show it.

At any rate, antics aside, Sarah Leonard was considered a very good teacher.

And then there was George Marshall (not the author of the Marshall Plan), who was our assistant principal. He did not teach. In fact, I have no idea what he did, but I am sure he did it well.

George Marshall was on the tall side, and slender. He was blond. Everything about him was blond. His hair, his complexion, his eyes, his eyeglasses and their frames, his clothes. There was never anything about him darker than a yellow ochre crayola. Not only was he blond, he was bland. His shirts were always white, his ties were always narrow, and you would never catch him without a tie tack to make sure that his narrow tie never strayed. I never saw him smile; I doubt that he had anything approaching a sense of humor.

George Marshall was married and had, I believe, three young children. I never saw his family.

Is the picture becoming clear? Probably not, so I will continue.

One day, we came to school, and there was a big hole where Sarah Leonard was supposed to be standing in her class room. There was another big hole in Mr. Marshall's office. Sarah Leonard, the hippie, and George Marshall, blond and bland, had run off with each other. Rumor had them in Florida and, to my knowledge, they were never heard from again.

This was an event that was extraordinary. It was no more believable than if Eisenhower had defected to the Soviets. The Marshall wife and kids were left in suburban St. Louis, apparently as shocked as we were; I don't know what happened to young Ms. Leonard.

There was a lesson to be learned there. I knew that. But to this day, I have not figured out what it is.

There were two other romantic incidences that I remember. One was the equally surprising engagement and marriage of Miss Lovercamp and Mr. Doyle. They were not young. I would guess that she was about 40 and he about 50 (do you think I have overstated their ages by ten years? maybe). She had not been married before. I don't remember about him; something tells me that he had been. Miss Lovercamp was what I would call an archetypical English teacher. She was serious and to the point, she was presentable and attractive in a formal way. It was not clear why she had not been married before. Mr. Doyle was nothing like Miss Lovercamp. He was all drama. His graying hair was slicked into what I think they called a pompadour. He wore flashy clothes. If I had known what "gay" was in those days, I would have thought he was it (maybe he was?). He was always on stage. This made him a good teacher, but a life with him would have to me seemed as difficult as a life with Mrs. Leonard. And Miss Lovercamp (her name aside) was just an ordinary, typical, standard, all-American type of person.

At any rate, they got married. She became Mrs. Doyle. And life went on.

And then there was the young art and drama teacher, Mr. Striby. I spent a lot of time with him over my last three years in the school (and his first three), as he was the director of all the theatrical productions I was in. I thought I knew all about him. I knew he had come from Florida, I knew he was still in his 20s, I knew where he went to school, and so forth. It never occurred to me that he would have a girl friend or get married or anything like that. His interests really seemed fully focused on his job, and on us.

One day, senior year, I saw him playing ping pong with Miss Grueb. Maxine Grueb was young and fairly attractive. She was a women's phys. ed. teacher, so I had absolutely nothing to do with her. I knew nothing about her.

Now playing ping pong is no big thing, right? But it seemed so out of character for Mr. Striby to be playing ping pong, that I immediately got suspicous. And, lo and behold, one ping pong match led to another, they got engaged and married, and (like the Marshall/Leonard combine) moved to Florida.

Were there other faculty romances at my high school? Who knows? I clearly was not attuned to such things, as these three each caught me totally by surprise.

And, the pairings were so strange. Who would have put Leonard with Marshall? Why would Marshall leave his family for Leonard, and why would Leonard, the hippie, pick the least hip person imaginable? Why would dramatic Doyle go for staid Lovercamp, and why would she want to give up what must have been tranquility for his theatrics? Why would Ms. Grueb, the physical fitness professional, choose Jim Striby, who looked like he might not be able to run around the track? And why would he choose someone who would want more activity than an occasional game of table tennis?

What was it that I did not understand about the world? Would I ever figure it out?