John R. Rogers

Jim Forsythe--Role Model History Teacher

Teachers are influential or memorable for a number of things to their students -- lessons learned, idiosyncrasies, character traits, good or bad moments experienced in their classrooms. Jim Forsythe was one who had all those. I was one of those who spent my junior year in his classroom in the portable behind the band room.

He had that brillo pad tuft of hair, which was graying. A little bulb-like nose that would be cute on a girl or good as a Santa Claus impersonator. Always wore a white shirt with tie, sleeves rolled up--two rolls up. The most characteristic accouterment was the yellow pencil he had in the crease where his left ear was attached to his head. It remained there throughout the class, removed only when pencils are ordinarily used, and then, only
briefly.

He would usually conduct class by sitting on a tall stool behind his lectern, which was sitting on top of a desk or table, I don't quite remember which. The stool was the kind he probably appropriated out of Mr. Chapman's drafting classroom.

Like all teachers, he would assign homework assignments from the textbook, but maybe because I liked history so much that I became a history teacher myself, I enjoyed the assignments. He was creative enough, though, that he would assign special projects, usually reports. Occasionally, on a Friday, we would bop on over to the main building, second floor, to join forces with students in Mr. Mabbot's class, two students hip-to-hip, sharing the same desk seat. We were to take notes of those films--you must remember them-not for the content, but the films always being black and white with one of those stentorian-voiced narrators. Real sleep-inducing films, so boring that unlike my own students who always thought classroom films were a welcome break from having to do anything strenuous, I thought they were the low point of the week.

Occasionally, Mr. Forsythe would launch into a stirring lecture on commemorative days. I remember one in particular, it must have been on what was then known as "Armistice Day," not because of anything he said, which I can't remember a bit of that, but how much it stirred us, generating an increased flow of patriotic blood through our veins. Indeed! I clearly remember after that class a bunch of us guys went to lunch in the cafeteria, bantering about how we were ready to enlist to fight for God and Country as we stood in the chow line, waiting for our chow to be dished up by Lita Larsen's mom. Maybe that kind of talk influenced me to stay in the advanced ROTC and actually choose to become an infantryman. How else would I have lost all common sense?

As I recall, after some 45 years, he was big on giving a weekly quiz to find out if we were paying attention to our studies and him. They tended to be those little ten-question quickie-quizzes, popular with teachers of all generations because of the ease of grading. The questions were even the most simple to answer/grade: true-false, or, and this is what's most memorable, what he would say after asking the question and telling us how to answer, "true or FLASE." He would occasionally explain that he said "flase" because of the number of students who would turn in quiz papers, falsely, or should I say "flasely" spelling the word false.

Two of his character traits stuck with me and used in my own 31 years of teaching--I, too, always had a pencil stuck in my ear crotch. And, although I rarely ever asked T-F questions, preferring essay (or "eshay" as I would use my own word-play, calling it "slushtalk") when I did give Forsythe type quizzes, I, too, would say "flase," but with my own touch of saying, "TURE OR FLASE," since I noticed that some of my students would misspell both words.

Mr. Forsythe wasn't the history teacher that influenced me to follow into the same career path...that honor goes to my 8th grade teacher at Logan, Mrs. Cunningham. But, Forsythe kept me on track. And that ain't a bit flase.

- Wyatt Newman