Paul Simons

Oh no. I messed up. Sorry Jerry. But in my defense I direct the jury to Post # 4014 in which I name you in an appreciation of the sex-ed film from the days when innocence penetrated and permeated our entire beings, that you had posted. You are absolutely not chopped liver, which brings up the next apology, to Phil for ruining his dinner, which was propably also not chopped liver. It might have included pate de fois gras which is a fancy way of saying fancy chopped liver but then again it might have been pepperoni pizza with a glass of chianti. I don't know. It might have been that Rubbermaid container of leftovers from Tad's Steaks on 4th Street from 1967. Hmmm...Rubbermaid...sex ed...where am I...Oh yes. I should also mention Judy who opened the door to these classes and those who taught them at WHHS, itself a veritable Masters and Johnson laboratory on weekends - for the really cool operators - and we all know it.

Jerry Ochs

I stumbled upon what was probably a universal fear among 7th and 8th graders: the fear of looking childish or not cool.  On weekday mornings the kids in my neighborhood pass our house in two waves, junior high at 7:30 and elementary at 7:45.  We use the elementary kids as a rudimentary alarm clock.  It is quite enjoyable to be awakened by airplane noises, shrieks, and laughter.  The junior-high kids glide by like ghost ships; they stopped acting silly on the first day of junior high.  We humans don't start acting silly again until we have grown so old that we figure we've got nothing to lose.   Whrrr, squeak, twirl.

Philip Spiess

Actually, Paul, what I had for dinner was a Sazerac Cocktail, Peachy-Parmesan Chicken, Apple Cornbread, Spinach Horseradish, and a Baked Apricot Rum Pudding with English Hot Custard drizzled on it for dessert, all washed down with a Washington State Chardonnay.  No chopped liver or left-over pizza for this kid!

Stephen (Steve) Dixon

Gradually Diminishing Concentric Circles...I need to try that.

As for feet on index cards (Spiess), all is fair in War and Latin class.

This has been a very interesting discussion, and I am a rogue and a villain for making light of any part of it. Hopefully, I will have one or more serious thoughts to contribute later.

David R. Schneider

Irma Foley was in fact the sex Ed teacher and I remember that the class was in the satellite building outside the main campus. I remember that we had sex Ed for one semester and I thought she also taught drivers education. I don’t remember too much about Mr. Bass or Me. Davis.

Jerry Ochs

In response to David's post, I vaguely recalled sex ed in "the colonies" but wasn't certain there were colonies.  Does anybody know why they were built?

Philip Spiess

Jerry:  The "colonies," which were those (4?) "sheds" to the south of the gym/swimming pool wing of the school (on the rise above the girls' athletic fields), were built, I feel certain, because we were the initial surge of the post-War "baby boom," and more classrooms were needed.  This was where some of us had 7th grade English with Miss Gerwig (later Mrs. McCammon), whom many of us are communicating with on the alternate WHHS site on e-mail; I also had class in the "colonies" with Mr. Raffel for 8th grade General Science.  (Later, the Annex, off the Auditorium wing, was built with more substantial classrooms, probably for the same reason, and perhaps some curriculum additions, and I had homeroom there with "Pedro" Stites, as well as German with "Frau" Kitzmann and, senior year, with Jamie Seidells.)

However, I certainly recall having the co-ed sex education class in the main building in the north wing of the 2nd floor, in what I picture as Mr. Brandon's History room.  Does this make sense to anybody else?

Jerry Ochs

The "boys only" sex ed lesson/class was held in the colonies.  Now that that question has been answered, I ask if the "girls only" class provided any new or useful information.  For most of the boys it was too little, too late.

To respond to some of the answers to the original question of fear, I apologize to all those fellow students who felt invisible or unliked.  I think I mistook their discomfort for aloofness. 

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

I don't remember sex ed at all but must have had it.  As for Driver's Ed, I did have it and with a horrid man who has not been mentioned yet.  Anyone know who he was?  This was not driving, just classroom. Is that what you're talking about? 

Stephen Collett

Please forgive a jocular tone but our recent discussion has led to a reflection that for me, driver education and sex education were very closely, you could say intimately linked, pretty much one and the same thing.

I wasn´t getting much new out of either though. This would have at least in part to do with the circumstance that at the end of summer after my sixteenth birthday my sister who is five years older brought home a Dutch boyfriend from her eastern university summerschool, and for his summer experience in America he had bought a 1954 Plymouth in Boston. And now it was in Cinti and he was going home (goodbye Jane) and he wanted to sell it. Short story (after he had it in the paper and had to turn people away at the door), I talked my father into loaning me the $150 (I washed trucks at his business).

So at sixteen I had a car that was big enough to move a family from the Ozarks to California (no, that was two decades previous) and I paid the gas by driving a car pool to school: Betsy von Benken, Bob Williams, Steve Snow´s younger sister and another one or two. What did they pay, only like a buck a week? I remember that I could fill the tank of the "blue ballroom" as she came to be known, for a couple of bucks. I think we are talking 25cents a gallon?

The car was so big that you had to get up and walk from the back seat to the front. You all know what I am talking about because I loaned it out more than a few times.

Larry Klein

Hey Gang!

I'm really enjoying all the discourse on MY trials and tribulations in our years at WHHS.  All I could say after about 15 of the recent posts here was "Ditto, Me too"!  However, on the subject of girls asking guys for a date, I have to say had it not been for a certain young lady in the '63 class, I might never have had a date in my high school career. I was inviited to escort her to HER post-graduation party on the riverboat, ironically the ONLY grad party I ever attended. That was at the end of our junior year, obviously. During senior year, I drummed up the courage to ask out one of the junior class girls.  Despite several crushes on OUR girls in the class of '64, I never once had a date with a classmate.

The MOT's that Paul (I think) brought up, were never an issue for me.  I was the only kid at WHHS from my neighborhood in the East End, so everybody was simultaneously strangers and potential friends. I can't remember a single "kid" in our class that I dis-liked, though we did have some stinkers (one tennis player comes to mind).

One of my classroom fears was of falling asleep in English classes. More than once the pencil in my hand would drop to the floor when I snoozed and I would be duly chastised.  There I learned to grip my pencil between the first two fingers so it would not fall out.  I still write that way today, 56 years later.

As Phil mentioned earlier, many of us have "found", or "re-found", new friends on the pages of this website. So thankful to Ricky, Gail, Nelson, Richard, and others whose brainchild has blossomed and endured the later years of our lives.  Here's to keeping on "keeping on"!

Steven Levinson

Larry Klein

Steve,

Were it not for John Counts, Nelson and I would likely never had a career on the track and cross country teams.  We both wanted to go out for basketball, and Mr. Counts told everyone that we had to either play football or run cross country in the fall to be considered for basketball.  We weren't too thrilled about that, but we persevered, stuck with cc, and managed to help the team be 7th in the state our senior year (still today the best finish ever by a WHHS cc team.

I have no recollection of ever attending a sex ed class.  It must have been elective, and I guess I had no incentive to get educated. I can't imagine what that class would have been like with John Counts.

Margery Erhardt (Schrader)

I am going to enter here which is something I rarely do. The reason that some do not remember sex ed was that a number of us did not have it. We were supposed to have it and it was one semester which was shared perhaps with driver's ed? Anyway, Mrs. Foley was new to our school and she had taught sex ed. to the first semester classes. However, it was brought up sometime before second semester by the powers to be that she was to have taught first aid for half the first semester along with sex ed. Thus, she announced to her classes in January, at the start of the new semester, that to get around this we would have first aid the FULL second semester… so it would all look good on paper. She apologized but there were some disappointed students. Can you imagine, first aid for a full semester? 

Jerry Ochs

Barbara: If it's not too painful or personal, how was the teacher horrid?

Philip Spiess

All:  I did mention Mr. Counts earlier; he taught both Driver Safety and Sex Ed for the boys.  I called him "a buffoon" above (in the Mr. Knapp usage); he had no sense of humor and was therefore deadly serious.  Unfortunately for him (perhaps), he took an extra job working in Steve Pahner's dad's pharmacy in Clifton on Sundays, right around the corner from Immanuel Presbyterian Church, where a number of us (including Steve Pahner) attended Sunday School. We would go over to the pharmacy after church and "bait" him while he was trying (I guess) to fill prescriptions; I was never sure what he thought of us.  I do remember that once in Driver's Ed class, he was telling us about a bad driver who had cut him off, and he blew his horn at the driver, who (and I quote here) "stuck up his finger like this at me" -- and he stuck up his index finger, at which we all guffawed, knowing what the driver had really done.  (I never knew whether Mr. Counts was trying to keep it clean for us in the classroom of a public school, or whether he was dumb as dirt.)

As to Steve Collett's remark that "Driver's Ed and Sex Ed classes were practically indistinguishable" (uh, Steve, you didn't tell us if that big car was big enough to have good sex in), it was probably that most of us knew more about both subjects by the time they were taught to us than we learned in the classes; it was "old (or nearly old) hat."  Or maybe the two combined because of the well-known teenage "Sex Drive."  I find it intriguing, from a Freudian point of view (and I'm a Jungian myself), that so many of us have forgotten or otherwise blocked out our memories on Sex Eucation.  (I myself do not remember any boys' sex ed classes in the "colonies.")  Anybody else have any thoughts on this?  Jerry?

(And Margery, your story is quite startling.  I've had to do First Aid training and teaching many times over the years as a Boy Scout leader, and, frankly, sex education would be much more fun.)

Paul Simons

Jerry Ochs

Gotta get new eyeglasses.  I thought Paul remembered folks being thrown at the ceiling.  By the way, my original post was number 3981; we are now past the 60 messages mark.  What a bunch of chatterboxes.

Ashley Brown

Seeing John Count’s name brings back one of the uglier episodes of our years at WHHS. Some of you may remember that at the Assembly our Senior year when athletic awards were being presented, Counts deplored the “fact” that Jews did not participate in “manly” sports. He is reputed to have made other anti-Semitic statements as well, but that one, made in front of the entire student body brought on protests from students and parents alike, and, if memory serves me right, led to his removal from the faculty.

Jerry Ochs

For once in my life I'm speechless.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Jerry, It's not painful, there was no glaring incident with Mr. Counts. I had blocked the name so well it doesn't even sound familiar.  He was a nasty man with no sense of humor.  I found him physically repulsive. He dressed like a gym teacher in polo shirt and slacks and didn't smell very good. 

As Phil said earlier, "a buffoon" maybe but I remember a humorless person and maybe he was anti-semetic, which would explain how unfriendly he was to the point of being mean.  Ashley Brown had good information on that.  

Maybe Margery and I were in the same class with Mrs. Foley and only had first aid?  I remember so little but I do remember Mrs. Foley, I liked her a lot. Her children went to WHHS too. I know there was at least one son, maybe two. 

Dale Gieringer

  I have vivid memories of Ms Foley's sex education class.   It was the first-ever co-ed sex education class in the Cincinnati public schools - a daring experiment by the School Board, which they did their best to keep on the QT (maybe that's why the second semester was cancelled).   I don't recall that Mr. Counts had anything to do with it  (thanks to him, though, I learned to always check the car's GOWAB;  for those of you who've forgotten your driver's ed, that stands for gas, oil, water, air and battery).   Our boys' teacher for senior health and sex ed was Mr. Terry, who also coached JV football.  I don't think he lasted long;  he committed an outrageous act of sexual harassment upon one poor girl who came into the room to collect attendance slips, though I doubt it was ever reported.  The embarrassing physiological sex stuff was all taught in separate boys' and girls' classes.  The co-ed class was devoted more to discussing relationships. The conversation was open and not at all embarrassing.    One of our big assignments was to write a personal essay on the meaning of sex. Ms Foley read some choice offerings aloud to the class.  Fortunately, she didn't identify the authors.  I was going through a nihilist materialist phase at the time, so mine flatly contested the "meaning" of everything,    The most dramatic, entertaining piece was about the cosmic encounter of sperm and egg,  As I recall, Jon Marks took credit for it (Jon, correct me if I'm wrong).  Also, am I wrong, or wasn't Ms. Foley somehow related to Mark Blocher or another player on the football team (she was built like one)?    

Philip Spiess

Thanks, Dale, for resurrecting Mr. Terry in my mind; his co-teaching of the course makes much more sense than Mr. Brandon, given the subject matter (I still think the course itself was taught in Mr. Brandon's room).  However, I do remember physiological things that I, for one, found somewhat embarrassing to be mentioned in a mixed-sex class (maybe it was my own sense of delicacy), even though we knew about them, particularly because Mrs. Foley discussed them so brightly and energetically.  These included things such as periods and "wet dreams" and erections and the fascinations of the female breast.  What we did not discuss in those days (as I recall) were LGBTQ questions or issues, nor was there mention of child abuse (of any sort) or child predators, other than "never take candy from a stranger."  Even the Boy Scouts discuss these things in mandatory training sessions for adult leaders, senior Scouts, and the parents of younger Scouts.  How times have changed.

Jerry:  There actually was one unrecorded incident of a folk being thrown at the ceiling (or the ceiling being thrown at a folk, I forget which); it was minimally noted in a silly Chatterbox column called "Notes from the Padded Cell," but as it was in the April Fool's issue of The Chatterbox, and the several writers and editors of said column were notorious liars and jokesters, nobody took any notice.

Jerry Ochs

Interlude

After dinner on their 60th wedding anniversary, Fred and Ethel decide to take a stroll to their old elementary school, where they first met.
He kisses her tenderly under the stairs to the library and they head home.  Along the way an armored truck passes them and a big black bag falls out the back.  They take it home and when they open it they find it is filled with money.  Despite Fred's objections, Ethel hides it in the attic.
The next day a police officer is going door to door asking about the bag.  When he gets to their door, they go out on the porch to speak with him.
PO: Did you happen to see a bag fall out of a truck?
Her: Sorry, no.
Him: Oh yes.  Ethel hid it in the attic.
Her: Please ignore my husband.  He's very old and his mind has been playing tricks on him.
PO: Tell me mister, what happened exactly and please start at the beginning.
Him: Well, Ethel and I were coming home from school...
PO: Thank you for your cooperation.  I'm outta here.

Mary Vore (Iwamoto)

My limited memory indicates that Mrs. Foley's son was on the football team, but it was not Mark Blocher. A second memory of Mrs. Foley is our graduation rehearsal, where we sang "Hail, PH McDevitt, hail, Raymond and Bill....".  Mrs. Foley thought it hilarious and age-appropriate, a feeling not shared by those mentioned in the song, and she was scolded (disciplined??) by said offended office holders.  Finally, her description of the effect of mascara, making a girl's eyes look like spiders, has never left me, and was probably a component of the girl's sex ed class.  It is the only thing I remember from that class.