Tag Archives: Mulhern, Tom

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.