Monthly Archives: August 2020

1962-1966 Miscellaneous Part 1: For and About School

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Events related to Rockhurst High School. Continue reading →

Fr. Kloster in 1975.

Fr. Kloster in 1975.

Discipline at Rockhurst when I was there was strict. The principal was Fr. Kloster, SJ, who ran a very tight ship in every way. Everything always seemed to run smoothly. The vice-principal was in my recollection was the vice-principal. The path to success for students to avoid contact with any of them: Fr. Bauman, Fr. McGuire, and Brother Winmueller.

With one exception I never heard of anyone skipping school for any reason. Vic Panus once decided to skip. He had his girlfriend call the school and pose as his mother asking to excuse him for illness. The lady in the office agreed that he should not attend if he was ill and then hung up. She then called Vic’s house to verify the situation. Whoops.

The next day Vic was summoned to Fr. McGuire’s office. We did not see him all day. I know no more than this, except for the fact that neither Vic nor anyone else in our class ever tried to skip class. As I said, nearly everyone really wanted to be there, and they avoided anything that would put their enrollment at risk.

At Rockhurst a large area called the lounge was directly beneath the cafeteria and adjoined the gym. It contained dozens of padded benches. On the side opposite the gym was an open-air area in which guys were allowed to smoke. This astounded me at the time, and I would wager that it was eliminated at some point.

Before classes guys congregated in the lounge with their friends and quizzed each other about the day’s lessons. At least that is what the guys that I hung around with often did.

Rockhurst had no recess periods, but the lunch break lasted for one hour and twenty minutes. During these breaks students could study, just mess around, participate in a club activity, or play intramurals. I seldom studied during the lunch break, but I did all of the others.

If you fell for this twice, you really were foolish.

If you fell for this twice, you really were foolish.

In freshman year I often played chess in the classroom of Mr. Stehno, who supervised the chess club. We played give-away chess as often as we played the regular game. You could play more games in less time.

During my chess-playing period it never occurred to me to read a book on chess, and Mr. Stehno never encouraged the idea. I wonder if any of my opponents did.

I quit when I I could not sleep at night because as soon as I closed my eyes sixty-four red and black squares appeared on the inside of my eyelids. Seriously.

I also was in the Sodality, the precise purpose of which I do not remember. It had some kind of religious orientation. I think that the faculty rep was Mr. Apel,1 but I might be wrong. I vaguely remember that we visited a nursing home or a food kitchen.

I went on a “retreat” for a couple of days. That might have been with the Sodality. The idea was to remain silent for a couple of days, and try to get in touch with … whatever you were looking for. I had always been taught that those who were made to be priests would be called. I figured that if was going to be called, this would be it. I didn’t hear anything.

I played on some very bad intramural teams with some of my friends. When five-on-five soccer (with much smaller nets and no goalies) was introduced in my senior year, a group of us geeks gave it a try. One time our opponents showed up with only four players. This was the only game that our team won, and I scored all five of our goals. This was the highlight of my intramural career, and I could not name what ranked second.

RoyalFor some reason our class was spared the typing class. One of the smartest things that I did, not just in the high school years, but in my life was to teach myself how to type. At the time my dad was working on public relations for Maur Hill with Fr. Edwin Watson and Fr. Roger Rumery. Fr. Roger brought me a typing instruction text, and my parents let me have the old Royal portable that had been sitting around the house. I think that this occurred before the start of my sophomore year.

I wanted to learn how to type in order to prepare for debates more efficiently. Debate preparation involves recording and organizes pieces of evidence and the writing of arguments and the first affirmative speech. Typing helped me with all of those, but it also allowed me to do hundreds of things more efficiently, AND it got me much better jobs during my stint in the army. In college I was able to type my own papers efficiently. This became much more important when I was in grad school.

Nearly everyone at Rockhurst went to as many basketball and football games as possible. Attendance was vigorously encouraged by the faculty. We had frequent pep rallies, and the school supplied buses to nearby away games.

If we were on the road for a speech tournament, John Williams would call his younger brother person-to-person. Whoever answered the phone would provide a number at which the brother could allegedly be reached. It was actually a code. The exchange identified whether Rockhurst had won or lost. The last four digits were the score.

The two best athletic performances that I witnessed were both from students in the class of 1965, one year ahead of us. In the 1963 football season, when I was a sophomore, Joe Spinello was among the best very best running backs in the KC area. However, he was much less effective his senior year. I don’t know why.

Ken Mayer was elected to the Rockhurst Hall of Fame in 2009.

Ken Mayer was elected to the Rockhurst Hall of Fame in 2009.

Ken Mayer was by far the best basketball player that I saw in a Rockhurst uniform. However, the team my senior year actually did better when Kent Northcraft, the center, turned himself from just a tall guy into a force to be reckoned with. Credit is probably also do to the coaches.

We usually won, but occasionally it was excruciating. I vividly remember a game at Bishop Miege. We were ahead by more than twenty points. Then, all of a sudden we could do nothing right. With a few seconds left the lead was down to only one point. One of our players just hurled the ball in the air as high as he could. It almost hit the ceiling. One of the Miege players caught it and tried a very long shot. Thank goodness it was way short.

Apel1. Fr. John Apel celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination as a priest in 2019. His description of his career is here.

1965-1966 Rockhurst High Part 2: Senior Classes, etc.

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Getting ready for college. Continue reading →

I took my first and only science class, physics, in my senior year at Rockhurst High. The teacher was Fr. Borer, SJ. No one was ever more aptly named than he.1 This was the only class that I took at Rockhurst that really aggravated me.

The textbook was great, but the classes were nearly insufferable, at least for me. Maybe Fr. Borer sensed my attitude. He really seemed to have it in for me.

John Immele had a round one.

John Immele had a round one.

After only a few days of class he administered a test on the use of the slide rule. Almost everyone else in the class had taken chemistry the year before and was familiar with it. I did not do well on the test, but I got very high scores on the other tests. Nevertheless, I received my lowest grade of any subject any year in the first quarter.

Later we were assigned the task of writing an essay about a famous physicist. I picked Johannes Kepler, and I did quite a bit of research. My essay emphasized the motivation for Kepler’s work, which was primarily to emphasize (often incorrectly) the balance and orderliness of the universe. I got a bad grade. Fr. Borer criticized my “purple prose.” What really upset me was the fact that I was certain that some students got A’s for copying encyclopedia entries verbatim.

I mastered the subject matter without any problem, but my final grades did not represent my standing among the other students in this regard. They were dragged down by the slide rule test in the first semester, and the essay in the second. It was probably a case of “sour grapes”, but I avoided the sciences for the rest of my (very long) academic career. It also made me wary of writing papers. In my undergraduate years I avoided them like the plague.

Fr. Purch would approve of Susan Graham's Dido in Les Troyens.

Fr. Purch would approve of Susan Graham’s Dido in Les Troyens.

The senior Latin class was taught by Fr. Puricelli. The subject this time was Virgil’s Aeneid. The only specific thing that I remember about this class was Fr. Purch’s insistence that Dido had blonde hair. Carthage at that time was founded by refugees from Tyre, a Lebanese city. Lebanon is not exactly famous for producing Aryan types, but what do I know?

Fr. Purch also insisted that of all musical instruments the violin sounded the most like the human voice. As usual he supplied no evidence or reasoning.

I took two Advanced Placement classes, English and calculus. These represented a new set of offerings for Rockhurst. Our class was one of the first, if not the very first, to participate in the AP program.

The English class was much better than the first three that I took. Mr. Cummings, SJ,2 was a good teacher, and we read a lot of really good books. The two that I remember the most clearly are The Brothers Karamazov (in English) and Absalom, Absalom.

I argued with Mr. Cummings about his interpretation of Ivan’s role in Dostoevsky’s novel. His position depended upon one word in a very lengthy novel, but I could not refute it. I always wondered what the actual Russian word was. I could have looked it up when I took Russian the next year at Michigan, but I never did. Now I don’t even remember the issue.

AAMy other vivid memory was when a photographer came to our class to take a posed photo of our class for the yearbook. I held my book as if I were reading it,but I deliberately had it upside down. Nobody on the yearbook staff noticed, and the photo was published.

Yes, it might have been a sin, but certainly only a venial sin, and I have amassed plenty of indulgences over the years. If you need a primer on indulgences, you can find one here.

I remember one specific writing tip that Mr. Cummings offered. If you have an adverbial clause and a main clause, he recommended putting the adverbial clause first. I followed his advice in the last sentence.

In the calculus class I at first had a very difficult time with the chain rule. I did poorly on the test that we had on this concept. Disconsolate, I went to Mr. Murdock3 for advice on what to do about it. I had never dropped in on a teacher, but I was in a real bind because I had already taken the alternative math class, probability. I did not know what to do.

Murdock2

Mr. Murdock did not help much, but the very next day John Immele was asked to show on the blackboard his solution to a chain rule problem. He used Leibniz notation (dy/dx) to express the derivative of y with respect to x as opposed to xDy, which Mr. Murdock used. The chain rule, expressed in Leibniz notation is dy/dx=dy/du x du/dx, which looks just like the rule for multiplying fractions. A light bulb lit in my head, and all of a sudden I could easily do chain rule problems.

Mr. Murdock ran a Kwiki car wash during the summer. He famously wore a banlon shirt every day, and seldom or never wore a jacket or coat.

Late in the year we took the Advanced Placement tests. I passed both of them. My recollection is that most but not all of my classmates also passed.

SATWe took lots of tests. I was disappointed with my scores on the National Merit Scholarship Test and the ACT tests. However, I did quite well on the SATs: 714 on the English part and 752 on the math. A few guys did better on one or the other, but I don’t think anyone outscored me on both. I also did quite well on the proficiency tests: 790 in Latin, 800 in math level 1, and 756 in the writing sample.

I applied to four schools: St. Louis University, Marquette, Iowa, and Michigan. Marquette and SLU are Jesuit universities; the other two are, of course, public. It is hard to believe, but I some how received an acceptance letter from SLU only two days later. The other three acceptance letters came within a few weeks.

I was accepted into the honors programs at all the schools except U-M.

My parents probably would have preferred that I attend a Catholic school, but I thought that twelve years of religious education was enough. Iowa and Michigan had the two most prestigious actuarial programs in the country, and I had convinced myself that I wanted to be an actuary.

Actually, I wanted to study classical languages, but a conversation with Mr. Rothermich changed my mind. He told me that if I majored in the classics, I could teach Latin somewhere, but the degree was useless for any other job.

My dad had said that he would foot the bill for college. I might have been able to get a scholarship somewhere, but he would not provide a statement of income, and all the applications required it. So, I felt obligated to get a degree that would likely be useful in starting a career.

For graduation We had to rent formal wear with white coats, but the ceremony was not a big deal for me. My mother probably took some photos, but I cannot remember ever seeing them. I think that I finished fourth in the class on cumulative GPA.

One medal was awarded to each student in each subject every year. I never won one. I was somewhat disappointed that I did not win the Greek medal for senior year. I was the only guy who got a perfect score on the final exam, but Fr. Burton awarded the medal to John Rubin.

My Uncle Dean expressed the opinion that Rockhurst emphasized academics too much at the ceremony. He thought that more emphasis should have been put on athletics. His son Terry had lettered in basketball.

1. Fr. Gerald Borer died in 2007. His obituary is here. He evidently did no teaching for at least the last thirty-four years of his life.

Cummings2. Fr. Thomas Cummings, SJ, celebrated his fiftieth anniversary in the priesthood in 2019. After serving as chair of the English department for six years, he spent many years in the administration of various Jesuit educational institutions. He was president of Saint Louis University High School from 1977-1985 and president of Rockhurst High School from 1992-1993.

3. Marc Murdock died in 2012. His obituary is here.

1962-1965 Rockhurst High Part 1B: Sophomore and Junior Classes

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More classroom tales. Continue reading →

All sophomores at Rockhurst took the same classes with the others in their homerooms. The subjects were pretty much the same as in freshman year: English, Latin, math (geometry), American History, and religion. We did not take typing. The sophomores took typing when we were freshmen, and the freshmen took typing when we were sophomores.

I remember almost nothing about the religion classes. Of this much I am pretty certain: Church history (a subject that has subsequently fascinated me endlessly) was never mentioned in religion classes or anywhere else.

Likewise, I remember very little about the sophomore and junior English classes. I don’t even remember who taught them. I recall that we watched a film about Macbeth that claimed that most people misinterpreted it. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the details.

Speed_ReadI vividly remember that as part of English class we spent a few days in a speed-reading course. It taught a technique of maintaining focus in the middle of the page while picking up the right and left with peripheral vision. We had exercises in which we read a story and then took a ten-question multiple-choice test with no penalty for guessing. We then were given a score of our speed-comprehension score, which was our words per minute times the percentage we got right.

It did not take me long to figure out how to game this. I usually knew one or two of the answers before reading the story. So, I decided to maximize my speed. I read the story in less than ten seconds. Okay, I didn’t “read the story” but I did glance at every page. On the test I got five or six out of the ten questions right. My speed-comprehension score was completely off the chart, 50,000 or 100,000 words per minute. If I had made the denominator one second, it would have been nine times higher. I think that the school dropped this exercise after this experiment.

CaesarThe sophomore Latin teacher was Mr. Stehno (STEE no), a layman.1 We studied Caesar’s self-serving account of his conquest of Gaul. Like all of the other teachers at Rockhurst Mr. Stehno favored the Church Latin pronunciations; “Veni, vidi, vici” was pronounce VAY nee, VEE dee, VEE chee, not WAY nee, WEE dee, WEE kee.

Classroom high jinks were very rare at Rockhurst. Most of the teachers were on the alert for mischief, and there were no warnings issued. Every misdeed merited, at the least, a demerit.

MacAMr. Stehno was one of the few teachers who taught from the desk. Now and then he would stand up to write something on the board, but for the most part he stayed seated. One day Vic Panus bet someone, maybe Pat Tierney or Mike Van Dyke, that he could do a forward roll in the aisle between his desk and the last row without being caught. He definitely pulled it off. I had a ringside seat.

Mr. Stehno loved generals, especially Julius Caesar and Douglas MacArthur. He thought that President Truman’s recall of MacArthur in the Korean War was the lowest point in the history of mankind since the infamous Ides of March.

Mr. Stehno also supervised the chess club, in which I participated for a year or two.

RyanThere was absolutely no nonsense in Mr. Ryan’s classes. He walked up and down the aisles while he taught us American history. He was obviously very much into World War II. We spent what seemed to me an inordinate amount of time on the American involvement in the European campaign, especially the Battle of the Bulge.

I have never found American history very interesting. Once you know about our “original sin” of slavery, everything else pretty much seems (to me, at least) to fall into place.

I don't remember the mustache.

I don’t remember the mustache.

The subject matter in the sophomore math class was geometry, taught by Mr. Petersen, another layman, who, for whatever reason always wore a white lab coat.2 He was a pretty good teacher, but what I liked best was that he let us work ahead if we wanted to in order to finish the class in one semester. I took advantage of this. I actually did all the problems and, along with a handful of other guys, passed the final exam before Christmas.

Finishing geometry early allowed us to take probability in the second semester with a group of seniors. I really liked the probability class. It was interesting for us sophomores. The rest of the class was older than any of us, but academically they were no match for us. The pace of the class was a little slower than what we were used to.

In junior year there were some electives. English, Latin, math (trigonometry and other functions taught by Mr. Petersen), and religion were still required, but we could pick French or Greek for the second language. The other choice was between chemistry and modern European history. Most guys in our class chose French and chemistry, but I picked the other two.

Did you notice? Biology was not even offered at Rockhurst. When I told this to people at the University of Michigan, they could not believe it.

PuricelliThe junior Latin class was taught by the legendary Fr. Mario Puricelli, SJ. The text that we were asked to learn was from one of Cicero’s orations. Someone would be called up to the front of the class to translate a few sentences. The victim’s rendition was expected to be perfect, and that meant perfect according to Fr. Puricelli’s standards. For example, his translation of “O tempora, o mores” was “Ye gods and fiddlefish.”

I wasn’t crazy about his methods, but no education at Rockhurst in that (very long) era would be complete without at least one class from “Father Purch”. And he definitely did know his Latin.

StarkI liked Mr. Stark’s Modern European History class better than the World History Class he taught to freshmen. He still was as insistent on the six items that everyone must have available: pencil, pen, eraser, assignment book, folder, paper. His best technique was to emphasize certain dates that could serve as anchors for remembering the associated facts. The most obvious one was “1066: Battle of Hastings; William the Conqueror.”

NormansIn this case, however, I think that he should have provided a little more context. William was, of course, a Norman, which meant very little to me. When, much later, I discovered that the Normans did not just invade England. Their influence extended to Sicily, Italy, Kiev, and eventually Spain, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Moreover, one or two generations earlier they had been pagans living in Denmark.

I remember three of the seniors in that class. A guy named Tamaio sat a few seats ahead of me. He had much more difficulty than anyone else. Two football players named Briscoe and Donaldson were constantly making mischief on the other side of the room. During a test Mr. Stark walked around the room a few times. On the last occasion he confronted Briscoe with the fact that his textbook was lying open on the floor next to him. Briscoe said that it must have fallen out of his desk.

It could happen.

It could happen.

“Then please explain why it was open to a different page the last time that I came by?” Mr. Stark asked.

Briscoe, of course, blamed the wind. In the end, Mr. Stark gave Briscoe the choice of a punch or a jug. Briscoe chose the former, and Mr. Stark delivered a more formidable blow on Briscoe’s upper arm than I would have thought him capable.

Greek was taught by Fr. Burton, SJ. He was old then; my research has thus far failed to pinpoint what became of him. This class was, for me, a real delight. I loved learning the new alphabet, and I loved reading Homer’s stories in the original.

More than any of my other teachers Fr. Burton took a dim view of my attendance at speech events that caused me to miss some of his classes.

KennedyMr. Hill, one of the coaches, proctored our study hall in my sophomore year. The only reason that I mention this is that it fell to him to announce to the guys in our class on Friday, November 22, 1963, that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.

1. Joseph Stehno died in 1999. His obituary is here.

2. Harold Petersen died in 2006. His obituary is here.

1965-1966 Rockhurst High: Senior Year Speech Team

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The quest for the Double Ruby. Continue reading →

Double_RubyBefore my senior year at Rockhurst I had paid little attention to the NFL (National Forensics League, renamed in 2014 as the National Speech and Debate Association). The school had long sponsored a chapter of the league, and our results from tournaments were always sent to the NFL headquarters. Debaters all had NFL pins, and most guys wore them to competitions. The inlaid gem(s) indicated ranking in terms of points accumulated. The highest rank at the time was double-ruby, which indicated 500 points earned. Points were awarded for debates, rounds in speech events, and miscellaneous speaking events, including the state’s annual student congress. The maximum number of points in each category was limited.

This method of scoring suited my style perfectly. I participated more and in more varied events than anyone else on the team. My results had not been stellar, but early in the year I calculated that I could possibly amass 500 points by the end of senior year. It seemed like a reasonable goal, but it meant going to a lot of tournaments and other events. I decided to go for it.

Our NFL chapter elected a president and vice-president every year. My recollection is that Bill Locke was elected president, and I was vice-president. Since Bill was playing football during the tournament that Rockhurst sponsored each fall, it was my responsibility to “run it”. I don’t remember that I actually did much. Mr. Marchlewski and Mr. Rothermich did most of the preparation and tabulation of results. I might have arranged for timekeepers or something like that. At any rate, everything seemed to go pretty smoothly.

The NFL at that time awarded trophies to schools that had amassed a large number of points over the years. It just happened that Rockhurst won the trophy my senior year. Bruno Jacob himself, the founder and patriarch of the NFL, paid us a visit. All of the students assembled in the gym for his presentation of the award. I was chosen as master of ceremonies.

Bruno E. Jacob died in 1979.

Bruno E. Jacob died in 1979.

The students were seated in the bleachers on either side. A lectern with a microphone was placed halfway between one of the basketball goals and midcourt. A wire ran from the lectern back to a corner of the gym. Mr. Jacob, myself, and some faculty members were seated in folding chairs behind the lectern. I have no idea who was responsible for the setup. I had never been involved with one of the assemblies.

The microphone did not work, and no one seemed available to fix it. I went on without it, and I think that I did a pretty good job of projecting my voice. However, I could hardly hear Mr. Jacob’s presentation at all, and I was only a few yards away from him. So, most of the students probably had no idea what he said. It was not memorable enough to last for in my brain for fifty-five years either.

Since Bill Locke was busy on the gridiron, I got to debate with John Williams for the first few months. We did exceptionally well together, winning almost all our debates. However, when Bill came back, he was paired with John again, as he should have been.

I am pretty sure that I had participated in the annual student congress event in my junior year at the RLDS headquarters in Independence. I had been very active and won a lot of NFL points.

I think that the congress in my senior year was held at the state capital in Jefferson City. I was somehow chosen to give the prayer to open the session. For a second my mind went blank (for the first and only time ever in a public speech), but I recovered and said what I intended. I did not take the advice of a student from St. Louis University High (another Jesuit school) to start the prayer with “Almighty God, if you exist, …”

HRepsI worked pretty hard preparing for all of the bills, and I received high marks from the judges in the first session. I was selected to chair the second session. I was surprised to discover that the first chairman had not made a seating map. I made one for myself so that I could fairly allow people to participate. Even so, the coach from (I think) Fort Osage High School interrupted the session and humiliated me by insisting that I call on people whom he designated. That soured the experience for me, but I still won quite a few NFL points.

Lindsay

John Lindsay.

My best moment almost occurred in the finals of the extemp event at a tournament in senior year. I don’t remember which one. In extemp you draw three topics, select one, and then spend 30-45 minutes crafting a speech on the topic. I think that the time limit was 5-7 minutes. My topic was whether the Republican Party was doomed after the Goldwater fiasco of 1964. I argued that the party would bounce back because of some younger people like John Lindsay, Chuck Percy, and a couple of others whom I can’t remember. Two of the three judges ranked me first, but the other judge, who said that he was a Republican himself, claimed that my speech was too obviously biased in favor of the GOP. So, I lost out to a guy who got a first, a second, and a third.

Incidentally, both of my parents were Democrats. My dad told me that in 1948 he went into the voting booth intending to vote for Dewey, but he couldn’t do it. I have never even considered voting for a Republican, and I had several chances to vote for Lowell Weicker, who was very popular in Connecticut.

He might have said it.

He might have said it.

I started doing better in extemp because of some advice from a fellow extemper from Parkview High in Springfield. I noticed that he spent no time researching his speeches and little time writing or rehearsing. He explained that he mostly made up the facts that he cited and that he usually started his speeches with “Wasn’t it Coleridge who said …?” He insisted that this was kosher. “I didn’t say that Coleridge said that; I merely posed the question.”

I was too much of a Boy Scout to do that. However, I did lighten up a little. Once, in a tournament at St. Paul’s in Concordia, MO, I was in a bind. The guy who selected the topics wanted to make life miserable for extempers. The three that I chose included one on fashion, one on a relaxation technique, and one on the effect of the Papal Line of Demarcation of 1493 on Latin American politics.

Actually, there were two lines.

Actually, there were two lines.

I had heard of the last one—the pope ceded the east to Portugal and the west to Spain. However, at that point in my life I did not know the pope’s name. I knew a few pope’s names that were fairly common; so I just called him Pope Urban.1 I argued that Portugal was too weak to control its properties for very long, and Spain was likewise unable to control its more distant properties. So, in the end all of South America was susceptible to foreign influences. In the sixties that opened the door to Communism. I had no evidence whatever to make that claim, but at the time it seemed like something that Time or Newsweek might say.

I finished second in the round, which earned some NFL points. That was a lot better than I would have done talking about fashion.

In the NFL state tournament I got to the semifinals in extemp. I didn’t expect to win, but my goal was to make the finals. I did make the finals of another unusual event, oratorical declamation. The idea was to deliver a speech that someone else had given. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but it gave me a chance to compete in another event. I picked a translation of a speech from the French revolution.

I made the finals, and so did Tom Mulhern. They announced me as finishing third, for which I won a trophy. When I looked over the results I realized that the tabulation room had gotten confused. Actually, Mulhern was third. I mentioned this to Mr. Rothermich on the ride back to KC, and he sternly told me to shut up about it. I did, but I would have preferred to let Tom know that his work was appreciated.

It was a near thing, but I won enough points to get the double-ruby pin. Pat Dobel, John Immele, John Williams, and Bill Locke repeated as champions of the state debate tournament.

Al61. The line was actually drawn by Pope Alexander VI, the notorious second Borgia pope, in 1493. It was redrawn in a peace treaty the next year. You can read about this and Papa Borgia’s other tricks here. That thing on his head is a tiara, which was the official headgear of popes up until Paul VI set it aside in the twentieth century.

1962-1965 Rockhurst High Part 3: Speech & Debate Team

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The start of my career in speech. Continue reading →

Early in September, 1961, an intercom announcement at Rockhurst advertised a meeting in Mr. Marchlewski’s classroom in the basement for students interested in speech and debate. I attended, along with quite a few guys in my homeroom, including John Williams, the guy who sat behind me.

The faculty representatives were Michael Marchlewski and Arnold Rothermich. Both were Jesuit scholastics from St. Louis.1 They explained that the team competed throughout the state in many types of events. I was mostly interested in debating, but I was willing to try just about anything.

I am not sure whether any upperclassmen talked with us that day. I do remember two seniors who debated, Doug Kingsbury and Al Riederer.2 As I recall, Kingsbury won all the academic awards at Rockhurst that year. I have only a few vague recollections of any guys in the classes of 1964 and 1965.

Bishop Lillis High no longer exists.

Bishop Lillis High no longer exists.

Initially I was paired with Pat Dobel. Our first debate was against two novices from Bishop Lillis High. I am not sure that we even had a practice round before this. One day after school (or maybe on a Saturday) a bus brought a bunch of guys on the speech team over to Lillis. Pat and I were on the negative against two girls from Lillis. I was first negative. I had brought a few quotations that I had cut out of the J. Weston Walch handbook and taped onto index cards. I probably brought a pad of some sort on which to take notes. I don’t remember the resolution, and when I looked up the national topic recently, it did not seem even vaguely familiar. I seem to recall that a priest was the judge.

I have one very vivid memory of this debate. I was giving my constructive speech when I heard an unusual sound coming from below my waist. I stopped speaking for a couple of seconds to identified the noise. I had lost control of my knees, and they were knocking together.

My performance was abysmal, but Pat must have been pretty good. At least the judge voted for us. Unfortunately for me, that was the last time that I got to debate with Pat.

After that victory I lost FOURTEEN debates in a row. This may be a record of some sort. Certainly, ten or so losses in a row would be enough evidence for most people to realize that they should try something else. I wonder what my parents thought. The thing was that I really liked going to the tournaments. The humiliation of all those defeats was mitigated if not outweighed by the fun of being with a bunch of friends on a road trip.

I could not blame my partners. I debated with Tom Mulhern and Rick Collins, who were in the class of 1966, but not in my homeroom. They were both very good speakers. I was certainly the weak link in both of these partnerships. I got over the extreme nervousness soon enough, but I was immature, and I was so ignorant that I had no idea of how ignorant I was.

HefTwo examples should suffice. The first happened when I was debating with Tom. The other team quoted from Hugh Hefner, the Playboy magnate. I thought that we should make an issue of the fact that they had based their case on such an immoral and unqualified person. I mean: anyone who had even mentioned the name Hugh Hefner at Queen of the Holy Rosary School, which I attended just six months earlier, would have been marched into Sr. Dominica’s office. What would happen after that is speculative, but it would not be pretty.

Fortunately Tom did not bite. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it did not work. When we got the results, I was stunned to see that the judge voted for our unashamedly immoral opponents.

Rick was my partner for the other truly embarrassing anecdote. For some reason the two of us were chosen to represent Rockhurst at an important six-round varsity tournament at Smith-Cotton High School in Sedalia, MO. It was an 83-mile drive. The format was 8-3-4, which means that after each eight-minute constructive speech, one of the opponents was allotted three minutes to ask questions.

Well, we dropped our first five debates. None was memorable. The last round was “reverse power-matched”, which meant that the teams with the best records faced the ones with the worst. Why they did this I cannot imagine. I have attended hundreds of tournaments over the course of fifteen and a half years of involvement in competitive debate, and never once did another tournament use this technique.

So, in the sixth round we were scheduled against a pair from William Chrisman High in Independence, MO, who were among the very best teams in the state. I gave the first negative constructive. The round was over after the after one of the affirmatives cross-examined me. I got so flustered that I said that Rick would explain what I meant in his speech. When I sat down, Rick was justifiably furious at me. He asked me what he was supposed to say. I admitted that I did not know. Needless to say, we lost.

Mr. Marchlewski did not work with any of us much. After one of these bleak outings, I asked Mr. Rothermich what I could do to improve. He said that maybe I needed a new suit.

I did not quit even after the fourteenth loss, and we did get a little better. We won a few rounds before the end of the year. I kept signing up for trips. I often did extemporaneous speaking. I think I tried original oratory, although I cannot remember the topic. I read “The Death of the Hired Man” in the poetry reading event.

Frederick March was a little better than I was, but he had that fan, and we could not use props.

Frederick March was a little better than i was, but he had that fan, and we could not use props.

Rick and I even did a scene from Inherit the Wind in duet acting. I played the William Jennings Bryan character. Before my senior year I was mediocre at best in all of these events, and my results reflected it. Nevertheless, I still loved going to tournaments.

I enjoyed working with and performing with both Tom and Rick. Tom sometimes brought his guitar with him on overnight trips, and I was very impressed by his ability to play it. I knew how to play the saxophone, but (1) it was not nearly as cool, and (2) for a period after my last lip operation it was uncomfortable to play, and I got out of practice.

Rick was a real card. He started every morning by growling at the mirror and then intoning “Oh, Rick, you handsome dog, you!”

Not at Rockhurst.

Not at Rockhurst.

The team attended several tournaments in southern and central Missouri. Things are different there. From other Rockhurst debaters I heard some incredible stories about the debate team from Webb City, which is near Joplin, MO. One male debater was shocked to hear that Rockhurst had no female students. “What do y’all do for beaver?” he asked.

A Webb City novice team’s affirmative plan allegedly gave 2 percent of the weapons from the fifty largest countries to an international organization. They claimed that the organization would thus have control over 100 percent of the world’s weapons, but each country would maintain its own deterrent.

MonettI remember that we stayed at an old hotel on the main street in, I think, Monett, MO. I have not read the town’s building code, but I cannot believed that this hotel passed. My room was on the second floor. There was no fire escape. Instead, a very long rope that was at least an inch thick was tied to the radiator, which was located near a window. The rope was knotted ever foot or so. There was no instruction manual. Apparently in case of emergency occupants were expected to throw the rope out the window and climb down. I wonder how the hotel adapted to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

We had a few practice debates, but I never received anything that I would characterize as coaching. Mr. Rothermich did help me a little with my poem. Mostly I learned from osmosis by listening to others.

There were a few dramatic moments. If I was only participating in individual events like poetry reading or extemp, there would be times when debates were occurring, and I was not busy. I would often walk around and listen to portions of debates by standing in the hallway near the door. At one tournament the coach of one of the teams that I had listened to complained to Mr. Rothermich about my behavior and demanded that I hand over all of my notes, of which I had none. He was really incensed about it, but Mr. Rothermich told me not to worry about it.

Junior year ended with something of a surprise. The four-man team of Pat Dobel, John Immele, John Williams, and Bill Locke—all from our junior class—won the state debate tournament. They received some public recognition for this, but probably not as much as they deserved. I did not feel envious; these guys were all my friends, and I was happy for and proud of them.

The problem for me was that I was now clearly a fifth wheel as far as debate was concerned. There would be little or no chance for me to debate at the varsity level as a senior, and I was too experienced to compete at any other level. It would be necessary for me to adjust my goals.

Marchlewski1. Fr. Marchlewski recently celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination.
 
 
RothermichMr. Rothermich did not become a priest. He died in 2020. His obituary is here.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Riederer2. Al Riederer died in 2012. His obituary is here.