What's in a Name?

    Other than being an important piece of my development as a person and a teacher, and some nominal connections to current faculty, especially those who are also former students, I really feel little connection to The Place any longer. That’s kind of sad, I guess, and was perhaps unnecessary, but it’s hardly a feeling that presents any danger of my spiraling into an abyss. My exit turned out to be a blessing. (Details elsewhere on this blog)

    But I’ve noticed a change that, well, irks is too strong so let’s just say bothers me. The high school I loved has changed its name. Okay, it probably didn’t change itself, being an inanimate object, even if one imbued with a soul. Somebody decided it should no longer be Hancock High School, but Hancock Place High School. 

    As proud as I am of what a dedicated group of teachers accomplished there during those four decades, as previously noted I have little connection and even less influence over these things, so I can assure you I’m neither losing (even a little) sleep nor preparing one last charge at a windmill.

     Still, here’s the thing. The DISTRICT is Hancock Place, a moniker attached because its namesake, the esteemed Civil War general, W.S. Hancock, donated land for the first school. When people asked about the school’s location, they were told, "It’s down by the old Hancock place," directions apparently good enough for the time before Siri and Alexa. 

    As the area population grew and schools multiplied, they were all named for the general, plus political/geographic markers. The elementary schools were Hancock Wards 1, 2 & eventually 3. The junior high was Hancock Junior High. When the high school first came into being, closing in on about 150 years ago, it was named Hancock High School, a pretty good legacy for a man who ran for president and lost. How many other losers have that many schools named for them? 

    Don’t believe me? Just look at the picture at the top of the blog. Revisionist history is all the rage, I know, but I spent my 37 years at HANCOCK HIGH SCHOOL in the School District of Hancock Place, NOT at Hancock Place High School in the Hancock Place School District. I’m not thrilled about having that history, and by extension, my history, erased because, well, maybe there is a reason, but I can’t (or won’t) come up with one that I am going to agree qualifies as GOOD!

New Memories Under Construction

Forgive the over-long hiatus. It’s embarrassing to admit just how quickly I forgot how much work is the art of teaching. I’m currently filling in on a maternity leave at Lindbergh High School (where Hancock connections show up almost daily). I will probably have comments about this experience on my other site (Don’t Get Berndt), and will then resume this memoir, as well.

Thanks for your patience.

Let's Get Physical

As I was discussing her need for a sports physical with a potential player this morning, my mind drifted (aimlessly, as it is wont to do these days) to the (ancient) requirement that teachers needed an annual physical before they could teach. I’m guessing this was probably a state rule, not a district requirement.

Hancock actually had a contract with a local physician for the first two or three years I was there; we could go get our physical at his office (on Telegraph, I think) at no charge. As near as any of us were able to tell, making it to the office and continuing to breathe was the essential component, although Jerry Schloss did apparently have it noted on his “permanent record” that he suffered from hearing loss because he asked the strongly-accented doctor to repeat a question he couldn’t understand. The requirement was in place for several years, but I quickly decided it was a rule I didn’t need to follow. I did get the TB tests, but having a doctor certify that I was alive seemed downright silly.

However, back in those days, teaching certificates were lifetime things, so perhaps it was important. Now, of course, teaching certificates are only good for 99 years, a change implemented so that politicians could claim they had eliminated lifetime certificates. Thus I’ll no longer be certified to teach English, French, or social studies after I’m dead. Apparently, though, I will be able to continue counseling students until 2102. Given my opinion of most school counselors, that sort of makes sense. I’ve never thought you really needed to be actually among the living to occupy that office.

Anyway, like clockwork, every October for those many years, Mrs. Bernice Warren would call me to tell me that I hadn’t yet turned in my physical and that my paycheck would be withheld were it not in by whatever date was required, usually within a week or so. She probably wrote it on her calendar when she got it: “Call Berndt for his physical.” I would scamper over to Little House on (Conn) the Prairie and get the requisite form. Miraculously I would be able to get an appointment and turn in the form with the undecipherable signature the next day. Bernice would always laugh and inquire how Dr. Carolyn was doing. “I like getting physicals,” I would tell her.

In her defense, Carolyn was never comfortable doing that, but I was incorrigible. She and Bernice were both relieved when the requirement disappeared.

Just a Riff on Place Names

Imagine my surprise when I learned that the Hancock in Hancock Place wasn’t Founding Father (and noted smuggler, rabble rouser, and black-marketeer) John, but Winfield Scott, the Civil War General who was the beneficiary of the ill-fated charge at Gettysburg from his former best friend, General George Pickett of the CSA. (Modern conspiracy buffs would no doubt suggest, and have the “fact” go viral via social media, that the fix was in and Pickett didn’t really die but lived out his life comfortably in Iowa or somewhere.)

But I digress. So the namesake of the School District of Hancock Place was General Winfield Scott Hancock, apparently the only person of note to come from the area, or at least have an interest in education, because the subsequent elementary schools were named, 1, 2, and 3 (surpassing Dr. Seuss's Thing 1 and Thing 2 by 50%), and thus ensuring that the Hancock name wouldn’t be overshadowed by some Johnny-Come-Lately.

Not to be outdone, the junior high was named, yes, Junior High and, when it came into being in the mid-20's, the high school was named, wait for it, High School. All to honor a guy who ran for president — and lost. Following tradition, when the three elementary schools were merged at the old Mt. St. Rose Hospital/Sanitarium in the 80’s, it was christened, naturally, Hancock Elementary.

You may wonder where the “Place” came from in Hancock Place, how a district populated with salt-of-the-earth families ended up with such a snooty name. General Hancock donated the site of the original school, on Military, and, as schools were wont to do at the time, it became kind of the center of the community. Hancock was a celebrity (even if he didn’t run for President as a Missouri favorite son), so, when people asked for directions to the school, they were told it was down by the old Hancock Place. Ta-dah!

(Oh, and according to my father, Mehlville had nothing to do with the author, which makes sense because they are spelled differently, and should be pronouced Mail-ville, he having been friends with progeny of the Mehl family. Without contradicting him I did suggest that this might an instance of where being right didn’t keep people from looking at you funny.)

Thanks. I’m here all week. Tell your friends.

First Impressions, Part 1

Hoping, perhaps, to lighten the mood and offer a diversion from the disturbing events out of North County (Ferguson), let me share a couple stories from my first year at The Place.

You have to understand that Lemay was something of a culture shock for me. My parents may have been South City kids (Idaho and Osceola Avenues, Cleveland High graduates), I was not quite 5 when we moved from Nottingham to Webster Groves. My school districts had been Webster (8 years), Lah-de-dah-due (Ladue, 2 years) and 3 years of high school in Brussels, Belgium. College post-high school was more than the norm where I grew up, it was the default. Even when I left Hancock 37 years later, almost every graduating class had 5-10% of its graduates as the first in their family to finish high school.

My first Assistant Principal was Siegfried Messner. For some of you, that should be enough to send your mind careening down memory lane with your own stories. My first actual contact with the 5x5 bowling ball who moonlighted as a bar bouncer was one morning as I was headed up the stairs to the third floor of the West Wing. By contact I mean literal contact. A blur blasted past me on the left (I had properly used the “Up” staircase, Up the Down Staircase having been a recent bestseller). A couple seconds later, as I reached the top of the stairs, came a significantly larger blur brushing (fortunately) by me and launching itself in a flying tackle of the offending student. There followed a wrestling match. Lee Warren was otherwise occupied with his Wrestling at the Chase duties, apparently, but the outcome was quickly determined. I’m guessing Siegfried enjoyed a close to 200-pound weight advantage.

Later that year (or perhaps the next) a student offered a rather unflattering opinion of me (standing up to announce, “You're a J-off,” to which I calmly [and for those who knew me later, calmness was something of a gradually acquired attribute] replied, “And you're gone.”). It is a sign of how dramatically times have changed that the student took himself to the office and reported the exchange. Anyhow, the next morning Mr. Messner called me to the office.

“Come in here,” he said. “I want you to see this.” I entered the office to find the offending student (Yes, I do remember his name, no, I’m not going to tell you.) waiting inside, trembling.

“Bend over!” bellowed Siegfried. The student complied, grabbing a chair or desk with both hands. To be fair, students were always offered the choice of swats or a suspension, so I guess he knew what was coming, at least in a general sort of way. Messner then proceeded to take down the leather glove he kept on a nail next to his prominently-displayed paddle. Slowly he flexed his hand into the glove, testing to make sure there were no wrinkles, I assume. 

Messner then took the paddle, rocked back and forth a couple times and, literally, I swear, launched himself at the skinny butt, repeating the force of the 300-plus pound blows twice more. That young man was a lot tougher than me, I’ll tell you that, but, then, he was a Lemay kid.

    Having finished, Messner then ordered the offender out of the office. “Get out of here!” he choked. The poor kid was lucky he didn’t get another blow from the door as Messner couldn’t get it closed fast enough so that he could fall on the floor, rolling in laughter. “Did you see that?” he chortled. I assured him that I had. I also never sent another kid to the office for years. I don’t know if my student was traumatized, but I certainly was.

Introduction

It was about this time in 1971 that I was trying to get ready to start the adventure that became my teaching career. That career sent me to places I could never have imagined, introduced me to people of such diversity that I will never be the same, and made me a better person. 

Perhaps that journey is not yet finished; perhaps it will never finish. But it began in a small inner ring suburban district in South St. Louis County that was bordered by the Mississippi, River Des Peres (really more of a drainage ditch than a river), Interstate 55 and other, seemingly random, border lines. I had never heard of it, a K-12 district that always totaled fewer than 2000 students, K-12.

This new blog will reflect my memories of those times. I stress that these will be MY memories, and yours of the same time and events may be different, because we all view the past (and even the present and future) through our own lenses. 

It is not meant to be self-congratulatory, nor to solicit compliments or gratitude. Neither is it meant to dredge up painful memories or settle scores (of which I have almost none, quite frankly). Feel free to follow or comment or ignore. Like most of what I write, this is for my own satisfaction and amusement.

The story of my years at Hancock, this collection of random memories that float around in my brain and bubble to the surface for seemingly no particular reason, will always be, at its heart, a story of love and gratitude.