#21: Driving the Bus
I have often told new teachers, "The teacher who can teach and drive the school bus is more valuable than the one who can only teach". It’s harder to replace the person who has more than one skill. Years ago, the running gag among the staff regarding one of the members of the maintenance crew was that he'd never be fired because he was the only one who knew how to work the furnace.
That brings me to my real point. I've never considered myself a cornerstone; I'm more like mortar that “fills in” the gaps where needed. I believe that I used this same metaphor, when I wrote about Ray Kizelevicus.
During a short hiatus from coaching in the late '70's, on two different occasions, I was asked to coach a team that was coachless. Both times, I teamed up with another teacher to fill the gap. The first time, the 1976 sophomore baseball season was in danger of being cancelled because there was no coach. Fr. Stan Wisniewski and I had agreed, independent of one another, to coach if there was another adult to help. I had coached the sophomores from 1963 until 1969 and, while Father wasn't much of an athlete, he loved baseball, and he was more than happy to do the clerical work while I hit fungoes and pitched batting practice.
We were the quintessential “odd couple“. A 5’6” heavyset priest, and a slender (just kidding) math teacher...but he and I had been friends from the early '60's. I had always respected him for his intelligence and spirit; he had always enjoyed listening to me speak because he found it a challenge, when I started a sentence, to try to guess where I was going with it. Really we just liked each other and we had a similar sense of humor. Father passed away several years ago, and he is one of the many former colleagues that have gone to their final reward that I miss these days.
The second time that I was pressed into service as a coach was in 1979. The tennis team was without a coach, and John Chandler and I were asked to fill in. That was a little more daunting; neither John nor I had any background in tennis. Our philosophy was pretty simple: make sure the players had a place to practice and were able to get there, make sure that we had the equipment we needed, and make sure we got the players to the matches.
Astonishingly, Ignatius won the Catholic League Championship, and we had a doubles team that ended up 6th in the state. Heaven only knows how far they would have gone if they had coaches who knew which end of the racket to hold. Truth be told, John and I were blessed with some outstanding players. The first and second singles players were Russ Elderkin and Santiago Alva respectively, both high ranking players, and the rest of the lineup was talented beyond anything that we had a right to expect.
>An interesting sidelight, from our point of view, was that John and I were summarily released as tennis coaches at the end of the season, but it was legitimate. Rich Kehoe, who relocated from Loyola Academy to SICP, took over the tennis program and he was a bona fide tennis coach.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Reflection #20 (Only 1056 to go!): A Turning Point(Pt. 1)
Reflection #20 (Only 1056 to go!): A Turning Point(Pt. 1)
The Saturday evening of Dec. 18, 1976 at the Auditorium Theater was a magical evening. Bob Hope did a benefit performance for Saint Ignatius College Prep, entitled "Hope For Ignatius". Most of the time, when the phrase "magical" is used, it refers to a prom or a concert that is particularly well-done. I have to say that this event had a greater element of magic than just being good.
In mid-December of 1976, not only did Bob Hope do a benefit for us, but he brought Andy Williams and Dyan Cannon along. Williams was a big name singer in his own right, and host/star of his own variety TV show. Hope had talked him into appearing that night, and Williams was the headliner for the benefit the following year. Diane Cannon was a beautiful multi-talented actress who had earned several academy award nominations, but was probably more well-known for having been married to Cary Grant.
To put it mildly, Ignatius was going through a rough patch financially at that time. I am not privy to all of the details or causes (although I have some thoughts on the matter), but, as I understand it, we were not far from closing. As tuition necessarily increased, the enrollment dropped. If one looks at the class pictures for the years of the late '70's, the size of the graduating classes were significantly smaller than before or after those years.
I’ve heard a few variations about how the benefit came to be, but essentially the story seems to be that Father Bowen, the president of Ignatius, had placed an ad in a magazine saying that St. Ignatius was “looking for an angel”. At about the same time that Hope saw the ad, he received a letter from Father Bowen asking for help by way of a benefit on behalf of the school.
Hope contacted Irv Kupcinet, the very popular newspaper columnist of the time, and asked him if we were worth the effort. Kup vouched for us, and, in fact, was the MC for the event. Mayor Daley (the 1st) was the “honorary chairman” of the event. For younger readers, I'm not sure that Bob Hope's style would have been all that entertaining, but for people of my generation and older (Raispis), he was great.
Now why do I say that this night was "magical" beyond just being a great show? Because the fortunes of the school seemed to turn on that event. Not only did the concert bring in (by Ignatius' standards) a lot of money, but the whole atmosphere of the place changed. Suddenly there was an optimism and new-found spirit that had been dwindling at that time.
Many will argue Ignatius going co-ed was the critical turn-around moment, and I won’t deny its impact, but from the moment of the “Bob Hope Benefit”, the energy of the school jumped dramatically. We had real traction. All of a sudden the school had vitality. I truly wonder if we would have survived until the year young ladies were accepted (1979) into the school, had it not been for that “magical” night.
The Saturday evening of Dec. 18, 1976 at the Auditorium Theater was a magical evening. Bob Hope did a benefit performance for Saint Ignatius College Prep, entitled "Hope For Ignatius". Most of the time, when the phrase "magical" is used, it refers to a prom or a concert that is particularly well-done. I have to say that this event had a greater element of magic than just being good.
In mid-December of 1976, not only did Bob Hope do a benefit for us, but he brought Andy Williams and Dyan Cannon along. Williams was a big name singer in his own right, and host/star of his own variety TV show. Hope had talked him into appearing that night, and Williams was the headliner for the benefit the following year. Diane Cannon was a beautiful multi-talented actress who had earned several academy award nominations, but was probably more well-known for having been married to Cary Grant.
To put it mildly, Ignatius was going through a rough patch financially at that time. I am not privy to all of the details or causes (although I have some thoughts on the matter), but, as I understand it, we were not far from closing. As tuition necessarily increased, the enrollment dropped. If one looks at the class pictures for the years of the late '70's, the size of the graduating classes were significantly smaller than before or after those years.
I’ve heard a few variations about how the benefit came to be, but essentially the story seems to be that Father Bowen, the president of Ignatius, had placed an ad in a magazine saying that St. Ignatius was “looking for an angel”. At about the same time that Hope saw the ad, he received a letter from Father Bowen asking for help by way of a benefit on behalf of the school.
Hope contacted Irv Kupcinet, the very popular newspaper columnist of the time, and asked him if we were worth the effort. Kup vouched for us, and, in fact, was the MC for the event. Mayor Daley (the 1st) was the “honorary chairman” of the event. For younger readers, I'm not sure that Bob Hope's style would have been all that entertaining, but for people of my generation and older (Raispis), he was great.
Now why do I say that this night was "magical" beyond just being a great show? Because the fortunes of the school seemed to turn on that event. Not only did the concert bring in (by Ignatius' standards) a lot of money, but the whole atmosphere of the place changed. Suddenly there was an optimism and new-found spirit that had been dwindling at that time.
Many will argue Ignatius going co-ed was the critical turn-around moment, and I won’t deny its impact, but from the moment of the “Bob Hope Benefit”, the energy of the school jumped dramatically. We had real traction. All of a sudden the school had vitality. I truly wonder if we would have survived until the year young ladies were accepted (1979) into the school, had it not been for that “magical” night.
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