Philip Spiess

Jerry:  I assume you forgot to include the hyphen, and therefore meant "I re-sent that remark" -- presumably meaning it was re-sent to your lawyer.  Unless your lawyer has a really good dictionary (my favorite is the The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1969, 1973, because it adds "Usage" explanations in many cases -- the word in question appears on page 954 -- though I also use the OED), I suspect he may not find the word, which an English professor at Drew University in New Jersey accused me of (when I was pursuing my Ph. D. degree there in "19th-Century Studies," 1988-1990) as I was indulging my habit for punning in his class (it took me awhile to find the meaning of the word, but I got him back later, a story which I'll tell another time).

As to the American Heritage Dictionary, I was fortunate to have one in my classroom when I was teaching private Middle School, and, as we were always encouraged to get students to use a dictionary, I would (tongue in cheek) tell my students (correctly so) that this was the first dictionary in the United States to be published with definitions of all of the well-known "four-letter words."  The 5th and 6th grade boys would immediately fly to the shelves where the dictionaries were stored, pull out the one in question, thumb through the pages -- and then look up at me and say, "You're wrong, Mr. Spiess; it isn't in here!"  I'd saunter over to the desk where they were, look at the page, and say caustically, "You don't know how to spell it, do you?"

My teaching methods may have been unorthodox (so thought some parents), but they usually seemed to get the lesson across -- which is what learning is surely all about?

Jerry Ochs

Phil,

I wrote the past participle of "resend" in my pun.

To all,

Phil and Gail stated that Mr. Sowell was their first black teacher.  I attended Pleasant Ridge Elementary School and I don't recall any black students there.  David B may be able to confirm this.  For me, WHHS was a real eye opener.

Philip Spiess

Okay, Jerry, so here's my story from graduate school (I may have told this story elsewhere before, but never mind):  I was taking a graduate seminar at Drew University in New Jersey in 1988 (working on my doctorate) on "Shelley and His Circle," and apparently I was punning too much in my class comments (this will come as no surprsise to my WHHS intimates), so the professor (whom I enjoyed) suddenly said, "Sir, you are a paronomasiac!"  I was stunned; I had no idea what the word meant.  I finally found out that it meant "punning" (which, in my case, was true enough), but I thought, "I'll get back at him!"

And I did:  The next semester I was taking his course in "English Romantic Poetry," and one day we were discussing Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," and I said (malice aforethought), "Sir, would you explain Wordsworth's influence on the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe?"  Looking at me blankly, he said, "Huh?  I mean, I don't think . . ."  i responded, "You know, sir, the Tintern Abbey-lation of the bells, bells, bells!"  "He looked at me in disbelief and said, "I can't stand it! . . ."  (But I got an honors status grade from him.)

Nancy Messer

Thanks Jerry for the link info here so Shari (and everyone else) can see what I was talking about.

Phil - all your puns astound me.  They are so good and you make it seem so easy to think of.

David Buchholz

Jerry, I don't remember black students at Pleasant Ridge.  I don't remember Asian students, either.  I remember diving under desks, though, seeking protection from an imminent nuclear attack.

As long as we're dealing with fifty years, my wife Jadyne and I celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary on June 13th.  Here we are then...and now.

And one to celebrate Juneteenth, the holiday discovered just yesterday by the man in the White House.

Jerry Ochs

I've been shrinking as I age but David and Jadyne appear to have grown taller.  Can somebody put it into perspective for me?

David M. Schneider

Malcolm Caldwell or John something (there were two hearing impaired students, one was black, and the other was caucasian) and Margaret Hunt were two black students in my class at Pleasant Ridge Elementary.

David M. Schneider

Actually my memory having been stimulated, I think his name was Joe Caldwell and the white guy was Malcolm Perkins.

Paul Simons

Beautiful photos Dave. About Juneteenth - that was June 19, 1865 when liberation implemented by the Emancipation Proclamation finally reached and freed the enslaved black people in Galveston Texas - about three years after it was issued. You’d think that in the intervening 168 years the white people in the country would have learned of and made peace with the change as well, but evidently a supremacist mindset based on minor items like skin color or hair texture persists when intentionally passed from generation to generation by faulty governmental, religious, and educational institutions. This is one area where WHHS was a better place than many because it was and probably still is an inherently diverse place. At WHHS that didn’t have to be mandated by law - it came naturally. Not perfectly but better than in many other places.

Stephen Collett

Good work, Davey, calling up. I went to Hyde Park elementary school and we had NO diversity. The first people with color and Jews I met at WHHS. It was a great revelation for me. I loved them all immediately as something other than those I knew. 

Gail Weintraub (Stern)

I grew up in Kentucky where most of my parents' families lived and where my father was an attorney and Speaker of the House of the Commenwealth of Kentucky. My elementary school days were spent with all caucasian students and teachers. If anything, I was the diverse student. I was the only Jew. When religion was taught a half day each week, I did not attend the classes and, instead, assisted the principal with whatever tasks she assigned me. I felt different. Very different.

In seventh grade, I left Kentucky education behind and started WHHS. As my father said, "Thank God for Arkansas." because AR was 48th in education and Kentucky was 47th. I commuted across the river and felt like I had entered another universe. Not only were there students of several races and religions, but also classmates who were academically motivated and involved in a broad range of activities and pursuits. I felt challenged and accepted--something that I had not felt in my grade school years at Grandview Elementary School. I wasn't disliked by classmates there, but they knew that I was different. At an early age, I often thought what it must feel like to not be white. I was white, able to blend in, and, yet, I was different. This awareness was the start of my socio-political consciousness. 

To this day, I value the many levels of education that I received at Walnut Hills. Although not always perfect, we were fortunate to have experienced each other and to take advantage of what was offered to us. Sursum ad Summum.

I would love to start a website conversation on the racial perceptions and feelings that we experienced while at WHHS and how that might have shaped who we are today. Yes, I know that race and religion are subjects perhaps to be avoided, but........

Paul Simons

It does appear that with the on-screen murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop, cellphone video of the murders of other black men and teenagers by white cops and vigilantes, the strong re-emergence of white supremacy as a political force that happened at the "Unite The Right" rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and the acceptance of white supremacists by the executive branch at that moment, we are at what many are calling "an inflection point".

At WHHS as a 9th grader I had an encounter in which an upperclassman with a Germanic last name, taller and stronger that I was, called me a "dirty Jew" and pushed me part way into a gym locker. Another upperclassman also with a Germanic last name attacked the first fellow, got him off my back, saved the day for me. So I guess we can say, it takes all kinds, you can't generalize.

I do know it's all been going on way too long. In this country slavery lasted over 400 years - 12 generations. Think about the thousands of black writers, athletes, musicians, statesmen, jurists, doctors whose ancestors were deprived for their whole lives of ever being who they really were, who were used as machines to pick cotton or tobacco or to dig railroad tunnels. 12 generations. We did make some progress as a country but lately it's one step up, two steps back. I hope we can start moving forward again. I'm aware that these matters involve political decisions, and contributors to these pages are enjoined to remain apolitical, so I'll leave it at that. We're citizens of a country that depends on participation in fair and free elections by informed voters, that's our responsibility and duty, it's the least we can do. Just vote.

Philip Spiess

Gail, I think we can relate stories of personal experience without making them political; after all, they were  -- and are -- real parts of our personal and collective history.  They occurred; we acknowledge them for what they are; we cannot and should not erase history -- particularly "bad" history -- but face up to it and see how we can change and improve our mutual social existence.  Exploring all this together, acknowledging our feelings, then and now, or what our parents inculcated in us (without our really knowing or understanding it) -- in other words, sharing across racial and religious lines -- can surely not be a bad thing -- if each of us handles it temperately.

There were African-American students at my elementary school, Clifton School, though I can't say that proportionally there were very many, but we all did interact with one another.  (I do recall at some point there was some local controversy over the eastern boundary of the school district that encompassed thiose that attended Clifton School -- it was, I think, Vine Street, but how far east of Vine Street into Avondale it should go was, I believe, the controversy.)

However, near the end of my Walnut Hills High School career, the matter of "block-busting" reared its ugly head and hit Clifton (and other places in Cincinnati).  Simply put, the premise was that "if one black family moved into a house on your street, all of the property values would go down and all of the whites would move away, selling their houses to blacks -- and there goes the neighborhood."  It was predicted that the first street to "go" in Clifton would be McAlpin Avenue -- this happened to be the street on which I lived, and I wondered why folks thought my street would be the first --  but as it turned out, Warren Avenue, several blocks away, was the first street in (northern) Clifton to have an African-American resident.  This family was (if I recall) professorily connected with the University of Cincinnati, so it was "okay"; after all, the University was located in (southern) Clifton, and nothing further occurred (or was mentioned thereafter) concerning "block-busting" -- it had all been a big hysterical prejudicial scare!

Clifton Meadows Swim Club, a "private" swim club built on former farmland located on the downhill side of Clifton between Lafayette Avenue and the old canal (or Winton Place, if you will), was another matter, however. By virtue of its "private" status, it remained "whites-only" for many years, just like Coney Island Amusement Park.  When that policy finally changed at the club (and it did), I don't know.

Jeff Daum

In 1962 I was hired by one of our teachers at WHHS to carve a totem pole for Indian Hills CC.  All went as intended, and I was supposed to be interviewed and featured in an article at the reveal of the pole.

However, after the pole was already erected, someone informed them that I was Jewish (at the time, not welcomed there), and the interview was cancelled.  I was however paid in full for the pole per the contract.  The above picture and write-up is from Popular Mechanics.

Jerry Ochs

Jeff,

I reckon it wasn't you they objected to; it was the galvanized-iron foreskin.

Jeff Daum

touché Jerry!  Didn't think the picture was clear enough to see that.

Philip Spiess

Huh?  Nothing wrong here -- the Carvers came over on the Mayflower and were present at Plymouth.  And what Indian tribe inhabited Indian Hills in the 1960s, anyway (the traditional tribes of the Miami Country, i.e., Hamilton County, were the Shawnees and the Miamis)?  Were they welcome?  (Or only at Thanksgiving?)

Sometime, about the same year you mention, my Boy Scout troop, Troop 3 of Clifton, decided to carve two totem poles that would (perhaps) embellish the grounds of Calvary Episcopal Church (where we met).  My father, being head of the Right-of-Way Division of the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company, had access to poles!  He ordered two or three up to be delivered to the church property in time for our Monday night meeting.  They duly arrived, and we went out to carve.  But whoa!  The Gas Company had delivered brand-new poles, covered with rich creosote, instead of old poles that had been removed from service and were practically bare of anything!  Tarnation!  We did not carve, but we did cut out that event!

Jerry Ochs

Gail wrote: "I would love to start a website conversation on the racial perceptions and feelings that we experienced while at WHHS and how that might have shaped who we are today."  I would like to find out if WHHS still tolerates fraternities/sororitiies, which I felt walled off people.  I didn't have much interest in them so my memories of them are dim, but did we really have black, white, Jewish, boys', girls'?  Really?

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

1. This current thread of discussion reminded me that Steve's big sister, Jane, was my Big Sister at Walnut Hills. She was so kind. 
2. I started elementary school at Columbian when the Avondale neighborhood was transitioning from Jews to African American. Our family moved to Evanston when I was eight, living on the mostly black west side of Montgomery Rd. (D. Roger Dixon lived up the street). Someone told me that Doris Kappelhoff (Day) had long before lived in my house, on Greenlawn, but my street, Jonathan Ave, Woodburn Ave. quickly switched.  Evanston Elementary was integrated, about two-thirds white at the time. We moved again when I was in sixth grade, to Crane Ave. on primarily white east side of Evanston. We were the fourth African American family to live on that street. One by one, the white families disappeared. My good friend from fourth grade, Barbara, lived directly across the street. We were in tears when she told me she was moving to some strange sounding place called Finneytown. By the time I graduated from high school, the neighborhood had changed to just about all black.  
3. On Saturday, a memory from our last reunion popped up on my Facebook timeline. I reposted it with a recollection of one of my last conversations with Rick. The class of '64, as Paul, and others say, was very special. 

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Jerry, I thought that fraternities and sororities were discontinued a few years after we graduated. Perhaps someone here knows?  

Yesterday we had our first family gathering since the quarantine began and this was one of the things under discussion, believe it or not. I gave my 16 year old granddaugher my Sweet Sixteen charm bracelet I received as a gift at that age. One charm was my sorority pin so I explained it to her. I said I thought they were eventually discontinued. They had far too much prominence for High School and it had to have hurt many people to be excluded.  

One of my daughter in laws then told us that she was a member of a sorority at her Catholic Girls High School here in NY.  We both had the same reaction when we got to college.  Been there, done that so No joining at our Universities.  

How did everyone else feel about the fraternities and sororities in HS? Too much importance?  Too many people left out?  I didn't ask those questions until many years later. 

I am still not allowed to touch the babies in my family that I used to babysit for but it was wonderful to see everyone for a barbecue in my son's yard.  

Sandy Steele (Bauman)

I also attended Hyde Park Elementary with Steve. Most of our 6th grade class went on to Withrow. As Steve mentioned. Going to Walnut Hills became one of the best chapters of my life due to meeting lifelong friends of different races and religions. My step-father was a very prejudiced individual, so I learned that I didn't have to accept his viewpoint anymore. 

Jerry Ochs

Ann,

Doris Day was born at 3475 Greenlawn Avenue.  My mother, Vera Ellen (White Christmas, On The Town), and Doris took dancing lessons together at Hessler's Dance Studio on Mt. Adams.  It's a small small small small world.

Philip Spiess

As usual, I feel I must add my piece.  Why did I want to go to Walnut Hills High School?  The answer is very simple:  on the buffet in our dining room stood two china commemorative plates with lovely etchings on them, one of Hughes High School, from which my father had graduated (1936), and one of Walnut Hills High School, from which my mother had graduated (1939).  Much as I love towers (I go up them whenever I can), as a small child I became infatuated with Walnut Hills's dome (I can't tell you why, but I also go up domes whenever I can -- some day I'll post the photo of me atop the U. S. Capitol dome), and I determined that that was the school I was going to go to.  (It was only much later that I realized -- academically -- that that was the school that I should go to, as opposed to Hughes, which was my district high school.)

As to fraternities and sororities, my family and I thought that these were things reserved for college, not high school.  I know that a number of you have expressed astonishment that I not only joined a fraternity in college, but was elected president of it in my sophomore year.  It was a great experience, and great fun.  The fraternity had nearly not taken me -- no doubt they considered me a Geek (not Greek), as I carried (for god's sakes!) a walking stick around campus -- and yet I was elected president the following year (apparently they recognized greatness when they saw it), a point of which I constantly reminded them when they gave me grief (I protected the fraternity several times from the Dean of Men -- vide Animal House -- and nearly got expelled for it -- but that's another story, or two).  During my tenure as president, I introduced the fraternity (whether it wanted it or not) to classical music, particularly opera (which I played loudly throughout the house and sang in the shower -- there was a great echo there), also to great literature (by virtue of conducting in-house seminars on such for brothers who were struggling through those courses), and I raised the fraternity house scholastic average from the lowest of all the men's living units on the Hanover College campus (fraternity and independent dorms) to the highest, winning the campus's Men's Scholarship Trophy for that year (awarded by the Dean of Men, who hated my guts, and therefore hated handing me the trophy); this also raised our chapter nationally in the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity system from 102nd place to 14th place!  Ah, yes, you may ask, how was that achieved?  Answer:  by the simple expedient of awarding a steak and beer dinner "on the house" to every member of the chapter who made the Dean's List!  [N.B.:  Alcohol was verboten at Hanover College, a central point of our -- and my -- contention with the Dean of Men.] It worked!  I've never been sure that any or all of the (mostly) Indiana farm boys who were my fraternity brothers ever really understood me, but I did (I think) certainly expand their horizons as to what to think about and what to do (and to recognize what other types of personalities there are in the world!).

Oh, yeah, Jerry, Doris Kappelhoff (a.k.a. Doris Day), was also a featured singer on the (second) Island Queen steamboat (owned by Coney Island Amusement Park and making the trip from Cincinnati to the park in the summers), which blew up in Pittsburgh in 1947.

Jerry Ochs

Barbara and others who joined a sorority or fraternity,

What were the benefits?   What were the drawbacks?  If you could return to those times would you do it again?

(I'm beginning to sound like Dr. J. Safer '65.)

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

I particularly loved my high school sorority, Iota Sigma Chi, originally created for daughters of the first African American Greek-lettered sorority for college educated women.  The girls were from primarily Withrow, and Woodward, but the years I was a member, there were girls from Hughes, Central and Taft. I don't know when IEX was started, but the requirement to join was based on whether you were already friends with older girls in the IEX. I met,  and became friends with many girls I would have never met because we didn't all live in the same neighborhood or go to the same school or church. I'm sure we had worthwhile activities because one of our mothers was the adult advisor, but most of all, I remember having meetings at the Melrose Ave. "Y", trying to look sophisticated by smoking cigarettes.  I really enjoyed it and made lifelong friends. 
My college sorority experience was just the opposite. I didn't pledge my mother's sorority until my junior year.  I had transferred from Ohio State  to HBCU Knoxville College and at both schools, I had missed rush because I enrolled too late. My junior year, I pledged but living in the junior/senior dorm and my roommate already an AKA, the sorority hazed me relentlessly because they had access to me 24/7. It got really violent the night before my mother and her best friend (a national executive of the sorority) were coming to the initiation to pin me. The girls ripped off my clothing, trying to remove my pledge pin that was worn on my bra. There was one girl, who was the ringleader, but my roommate joined in with the others. I fought those girls, took off the pledge pin, handed to the ringleader an told them, "You can have your pin. I can't see how you could do this to me tonight, and be my sister tomorrow!" The next day my mother and her friend arrived on campus.After they saw how angry I still was and not wanting anything to do with the sorority, they accepted that I didn't want to become a member.  My mother's friend took some type of action to discipline the chapter.  My roommate, who's husband was in Vietnam in the Army, moved off campus when he returned.  I had my dorm room to myself and stayed in it as little as possible for the rest of the year.  I took a gap year off from school. By the time I went back, everyone involved was gone.

Over the years, many of my friends who belong to AKA have asked me to join the graduate chapter, dedicated to philanthropy and community activities.  Being part of the sorority was what I always looked forward to when I was young, but after college, I found other interests and other networking opportunities