Larry Toy
Trish and Ann, thanks for rekindling the early memories of Ash Street School in KIndergarten (Bob Reinach reminded me that he and I were in the same Kindergarten class.) And Mrs. Shower (that is how I remember speilling her name!) and the big Santa Claus we made in 2nd grade in Forest Blvd. School. Don't know whether we learned much academically, but we certainly learned cooperative and team building skills, way before it was fashionable.
I never had Mr. Janota - Mr. Matheny was my biology teacher. Nice man, but several years later I learned that the human cell had 46 chromosomes, not 48 as Mr. Matheny taught. Bert Gray may have replaced Matheny within a year or two. Bert was my brother Alan's favorite teacher and he took Alan and a bunch of his classmates on an extensive camping trip in Canada, if memory serves. A few years later Bert and his girl friend visited our family who had moved to Connecticut.
Our classmate, Henry Lehmann had it in for Mr. Janota, and I remember several occasions that he called I.C. Pizza to make a late night delivery to Mr. Janota's home. After a few times, they would call Mr. J to check whether he had actually ordered the pizza. I guess that almost had the same effect - waking him up with a late night phone call, instead of ringing the doorbell.
We got a bit of revenge on Henry in the spring of senior year. He had been accepted at the U of I to major in art, and I asked our classmate Steve Tang, who had moved to Champaign Urbana when his father changed careers to become a professor of architecture there, to mail me a few pieces of stationary from his father's department. I then composed a letter from an imaginary administrator, saying that Henry's admission was being reconsidered because of a letter they received from his high school biology teacher. I sent the letter back to Steve to mail from Champaign. Of course, I told his parents and sisters about the prank well before it happened and they thought it was hilarious and might even teach Henry a lesson. Anyway, it worked! Her mother and sister told me later that when the letter arrived, Henry started stomping up and down and letting loose a stream of cursing, until they finally told him it was a prank. When I saw Henry in Quebec back in 2008, a year before he died, he brought up the prank in our reminiscences, blaming Steve Tang for it. I admitted my guilt, but it seemed that Henry didn't hear me. Pearl said that Henry was one of a very few people who talked even more than me! One year later he was gone.
My remembrance of Jesse Owens' visit to Rich was when Principal Metcalfe introduced Owens, he said as a reward for his Olympic triumphs and public service, the State Department sent him abroad. Of course Metcalfe was oblivious to the pun. There was some tittering in the audience filled with adolescent boys.
Larry
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