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Tracy Walters -- Did He Really Speak French?
It will be 47 years this Spring that I first turned out for track
my freshman year. Since I didn't inherit genes to make me
swift-of-foot, I was relegated to the distance-running crew. To be a
distance runner as a freshman in those days limited us to a mere 660
yards. We were either weaker in those days or adults thought we
couldn't handle a longer challenge. I don't remember much of the
bespectacled freshman track coach other than he would line us up,
say "Go!" click his watch and give us our time at the
finish.
Ah, but the sophomore year, thanks to PE teacher Fred Brown, I was
assigned to the cross-country team rather than my choice of
football. (More on that fortuitous happening in a later
installment.) It was then that my 3-year association with cross
country/track coach Tracy Walters began.
Walters was a man of intensity. He didn't just speak, he blurted his
words, just like an Army commander giving orders before the attack.
He walked fast, as though he was late for something. Everything was
quick-quick, snap-snap, bark-bark. Since track and cross-country
involve being spread out, it helps if the coach has a voice that
could be heard from Rogers to Shadle Park.
While we messed around on the football field inside the track
waiting for him to show up and get the practice going (we were
supposed to be warming up) he wasn't one to mess around. He'd
suddenly show up, blow his whistle or bark a command, a signal to
get into the bleachers as though we were going to watch a game take
place. He'd stand in front of us with his clipboard with his list of
Daily Orders, like a commander. He'd go over the previous meet, the
upcoming meet, citing some individuals for one thing or another,
invoking humor which often was funny to all except the mentioned
butt of the humor, and when he really got riled up, he would use a
tiny little "damn" or emphatic "hell!" always,
and I mean ALWAYS followed by, "Pardon my French." In
those days, damn and hell were swearwords, and it wasn't seemly for
teachers to swear, so I guess this was designed for Walters to
excuse himself. I often thought about that expression, being rather
naive wondering how damn and hell might be part of the French
language.
He didn't concern himself with namby-pambyism, sensitive egos or
emotional development. In a sense, he prepared me for the Army,
which came only a short 5 years later. No, if we didn't pass muster
in his mind, he'd let us know.
Once, after a lethargic (a word I had to look up in the dictionary
after I ran a poor race and he told me I looked,
"lethargic") cross country meet at Shadle Park, which we
lost, we all piled into the bus, and someone started us singing the
Old School Fight Song, "Hats Off to Rogers High." Walters
got on the bus, (he also served as the team bus driver) yelled at us
that we didn't deserve to sing the fight song, as we hadn't run like
Pirates or words to that effect. We got the message. The trip back
east on Wellesley back to Rogers was as quiet as a meditating group
of Quakers on a field trip.
The most memorable pep talk occurred as we were seated in the old
gym the day before a big meet against Lewis and Clark. He urged us,
no, commanded us, to "Beat those South Hill bums!" Fiery
language worthy of a Patton directive, sans cussing adjectives.
I sneezed vociferously one day after practice, hard enough to pull a
muscle in my lower back, making it not only hard to walk home but
certainly made running the next few days impossible. Naturally, when
I asked Walters if I could be excused from practice because I pulled
a muscle when I sneezed, he announced it to the whole track team
(I'll admit the excuse sounded like a shirker's) and he named me
"Sneezey." If a red face is another way of laughing, I
guess I was laughing along with everyone else.
Another time, Norm Cooper, a fellow track rat, and I had signed up
for Saturday morning dancing lessons at the Y. One weekend we had an
oh-oh conflict, a Saturday practice that would make us late from our
dancing lesson. Even though Norm and I were trying to learn the
modern steps to amaze the girls at the next dance, Walters announced
to the team, as we showed up late for practice hoping no one would
really notice, that we were
taking ballet lessons. Two red faces, up!
I don't think he had a mean streak, though. I guess that was part of
learning that being a guy you had to keep a sense of humor because
guys seem to enjoy finding a way to poke fun at other guys...an
advanced form of teasing, I suppose. It was early preparation for
treatment received in the Army and from administrators in my
teaching career.
I saw him in the school hallway while attending the Jubilation in
1983. I had my family with me. I had, without so choosing, adopted
his hairstyle, the naked pate look. He remembered my name! No. Not
Sneezey.
- Wyatt Newman |
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Mrs. Maude Schofield
Mrs. Schofield was my first teacher at Rogers. Her freshman English
class was the very first Rogers class period that I attended in our
freshman year. In today's psychobabble, I felt
"conflicted."
I was tired of grade school. I had never liked school after
kindergarten. I wanted a change, but was a little nervous because
I'd had a pep talk from Kermit Rossmeir, the older brother of Chris,
my longtime Cooper School classmate. Kermit told a bunch of us boy
scouts that there was no handholding in high school. "You do
bad work; you get an F, no questions asked. It's up to you."
That first school day in September 1956, the bell rang after my
first 10 minutes at Rogers in Mr. Stumpf's homeroom (class of '60
male M's and N's - typewriters everywhere). I found my first period
class somewhere on the third floor. I sat near front right field.
The bell rang again. A middle-aged professional-looking lady
introduced herself as Mrs. Schofield.
She doped out the semester plan. "In this course we will …"
I don't remember the end of the sentence. I fixated on the word
"course." I knew that word. I'd heard it on TV and in
movies. Yes! I was in a course! I'd never been in a course before. I
was in the big show, but I recalled Kermit's words.
We waded through boring stuff. Words such as "object,"
"verb," "subject," "adjective,"
"adverb," "conjunction," and "gerund"
flew through the air, but they missed my head. We even diagramed
sentences.
My English skills grew despite the dry material. I got fairly good
grades on tests where I had to identify a correct construct, but had
trouble when I had to explain why it was correct. I usually knew bad
English when I heard it, but I couldn't explain why it was
incorrect. Mrs. Schofield quietly pressed on. She was a
professional. I began to like English and understand grammar.
Now I classify Mrs. Schofield as the English department equivalent
of the math department head, Mr. Ostness. Each was a quiet
professional who influenced my future.
I have coauthored three books, written trade articles, mentored
corporate clients, taught courses, and written courses for IBM and
other corporations. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, being
neither Shakespeare nor Einstein. I owe my resume to a teaspoonful
of English, a lucrative skill, administered at Rogers by Mrs.
Schofield in 1956.
I swim with young fish in a technical sea that is their domain, but
barely mine. I've found that communication skills can trump
technical skills or deficiencies. I survive through modest
communication skills that derive from time I spent in Mrs.
Schofield's classes. My peers are more intelligent than I, but they
don't seem to have a Mrs. Schofield in their backgrounds. Mrs.
Schofield communicated communications skills.
-Ed Mauget
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