Ann Shepard (Rueve)

...or a Sinatra relative!

Margery Erhardt (Schrader)

That is funny Ann!

Phil, you bring back memories of my teaching and counseling days. I returned from England 5 months early so that I could take over mid-term in the Forest Park – Greenhills School District for a teacher who was leaving. And guess who was Assistant Superintendent? William Spreen, who was Assistant Principal at Walnut Hills when we were there. I had always liked him and he was great in his position at FP-GH. Unfortunately, I was there for only 2 years as I had gotten “with child” earlier than planned (our gourmet dinner group had the most wonderful pina colladas!) At that time women couldn’t work beyond their third month of pregnancy in Ohio so that would have meant I couldn’t teach after September. However, not having been sick a day and feeling great, I went back to teach in September and by October I was obviously pregnant.  My principal asked if there was something I hadn’t told him! We talked about my leaving, of course, and he sent it up to Mr. Spreen, who had recently become Assistant Superintendent. He wasn’t having that, so he sent a request to Columbus to permit me to teach as long as I wished and to change that antiquated ruling. They did change it, so thereafter, women didn’t have to leave teaching and counseling at 3 months. I knew that all eyes were on me and I was representing women educators throughout Ohio so I went out of my way to do a fabulous job. I left at the end of the fall semester in late January just 2 weeks before I had my first son. I took the traditional 6 months "leave" and one April day I received a call from Mr. Spreen to take over as Director of Curriculum for FP-GH upon my return. It was a fabulous experience! There was a strong Cincinnati presence there as many of my students had UC professors as parents.

Dale Gieringer

     Wow, Margery, what a terrific victory for women's rights!  Our class sure boasts some movers and shakers.  

       Best wishes to all  for a Happy Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day and President's Day.  Sorry about Mardi Gras, though.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Margery - thank you for sharing with us your fabulous story! The whole pretending that the schools were obligated to maintain the "purity" and innocence of children by forbidding their teachers to teach after such-and-such month of pregnancy, ridiculous. Long after it was shown that children are far from being as "innocent" as the puritan school system - read adult males - thought they were!

Becky Payne (Shockley)

Margery: Thanks for a wonderful and inspiring story! What an achievement for women - thanks to you!

Sandy Steele (Bauman)

Relating to Margery's post, I was teaching in Norwood City Schools in 1971-72, after my husband had finished his Coast Guard duty. I was due with my first child in May of 1972, but was not allowed to return after spring break. Three years later, I was teaching in Cincinnati Public and taught until June 9th. Our second child was born on June 10th. What a difference three years made.

Steven Levinson

Margery, when I taught 11th grade English and 12th grade Civics "Problems of Democracy") at Sycamore High School in 1968-69, Bill Spreen was the principal there.  He was a really good guy.

Margery Erhardt (Schrader)

Sandy - I was pregnant in the fall and winter of 1973- 74 so you just missed the change for your first child. And I don't credit myself for the change; I credit Bill Spreen for going to bats for us in Columbus! Without his influence, it might not have happened! And it is nice to know that your former HS Assistant Principal liked you enough to take up the issue!  :)

Philip Spiess

As one who was conversant, if not exactly adept, with the ancient Roman tongue of Latin (as weren't we all?) at dear old Walnut Hills, where we were taught to pronounce it, not as the Romish church does even unto today, but in what was presumed to be the true speech of, say, Alba Longa (or at least of Laura Riffe), I was shocked -- shocked! -- to hear, at the very end of the most recent impeachment proceedings in the U. S. Senate, the learned heads of both political parties -- Democrat and Republican -- speak the ancient words of adjournment in that august Upper Chamber:  "sine die!" ("without a day," meaning, in the law, "without a day being appointed," i.e., "indefinitely adjourned") -- but pronounced, not as we had learned them, "sin-eh dee-ay!', but spoken in some ignorant Piggish Latin form of "sign-y dye!", a god-forsaken sound that grated on the ears.  (I am told, by those who know, that it is thus officially pronounced in such state legislatures as that of Maine, which, I reflect as I sit here sipping my pre-dinner cocktail, was a state which also gave us, in the 19th century, something called "the Maine law," a virulent attack on freedom of choice which brought on national Prohibition.)

Would someone with more Latin than I (say, Kathy Betz Elifrits or Dale Gieringer) care to explain this blot on a classical, and not yet quite extinct, language?  (And for those of you who love puzzles, eschew electronic games, and have nothing better to do during COVID, diagram the first paragraph above!)

Chuck Cole

Do students today even learn to diagram sentences?  Do they know what parts of speech are?  I remember diagramming as a competitive sport when I was at North Avondale School.  

Dale Gieringer

  I remember being told in Latin class that "sine die" is customarily mispronounced in the English fashion.   There are actually three common ways of pronouncing Latin.  (1) The way we were taught in Latin class, which attempts to resurrect how it was spoken by the Romans, came by way of a comparatively modern (ie 20th century) educational  reform.   (2) The English fashion, traditionally taught in 19th century British prep schools, twists the vowels in a peculiarly English way, such that "alumnae" is pronounced with a final English long "E" and alumni with a final long "I,"   the opposite of the Roman  way we were taught.  (3) The Roman Catholic Church way, the only one with a living tradition of spoken colloquial use dating back to the 4th century, in which "v" is pronounced in the familiar way and c is pronounced  "ch" before e and i  as in Italian.  We had a transfer student from a parochial school in Miss Hope's Latin class who pronounced Vergil that way;  that was perfectly fine with everybody, because we all knew we weren't kidding anyone about having authentic Roman accents.   

Paul Simons

I figured there must be a neutral way to diagram what's been going on, unfortunately in English but it could certainly be trasnlated to Latin, Russian, or any other language -

Becky Payne (Shockley)

Thanks, Paul. I like your diagram! Seems to hit the mark!

Paul Simons

Thanks Becky. It was meant as a non-denominational, multum in parvo, all-purpose, one size fits all type of affair, with malice towards some and clarity for all! Settings to be configured by user!

Also thanks Ann for increasing the depth and breadth of Rexford Tugwell’s look-alikes!

Philip Spiess

Paul, as I read your unbelief that anyone could be named "Rexford G. Tugwell," I reflect that it is no more unlikely to be named thus than being named Button Gwinnett, a Georgia signer of the Declaration of Indepen-dence, or Schuyler Colfax, the Speaker of the House from Indiana who helped push through the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, and who later was Vice President under Ulysses S. [well, there you are! -- "U. S."] Grant.  (Um, then there's "Quincy Adams,"; "Millard Fillmore"; "Rutherford Hayes"; "Grover Cleveland" -- named after a "Muppet" -- he was named "Grover Cleveland" twice, if the list of Presidents at the back of my Weekly Reader is correct; "Woodrow [?] Wilson" -- his real name was Thomas, apparently, as that's what a parent named him; "Warren Gamaliel [?] Harding";  "Hoopert Heaver" -- well, that's what a radio journalist called him; "Harry S Truman," whose full middle name really was "S" (without any period following, though some Republican Senators suggested that the term "horse's" should precede the "S"); "Lyndon Baines Johnson," during whose term Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington was renamed "Unter den Lyndon"; I could go on (well, I'll just mention Everett Dirksen), and I won't even start on Hollywood!

Uh, did I mention (true story) that my mother went to Walnut Hills with a girl named Eileen Hurway?

Paul Simons

Thanks Phil. I slipped up and overlooked the vast number of people whose first name is also a commonly heard last name. Sometimes like with Ford Maddox Ford their first name is their last name. Sometimes like with Upton Sinclair or. Hodding Carter that first name is nothing but a last name. Sometimes it's really easy like say with someone named "Scott Edwards" and someone else named "Edward Scott".

This discussion gets me wondering about names and language itself. Like say with TV lawyer Perry Mason - incidentally far better at his job than some lawyers you see on TV these days - I guess at some point someone worked with stone and mortar and got called "Mason" and it stuck. Or "Miller" or "Barber". And many more. But who got to call the stones set to grind against one another a "mill"? In other words where do words themselves start? 

I was reading an article about Margaret Meade. She was asked, what is the first sign of human civilization? She said it was the fossil or skeletal remains of a human being with a broken and healed femur. In the animal kingdom there were no healed broken bones. The animal with that injury would become lunch for some carnivore. But people learned to care for others who are injured rather than throw them to the wolves. It would be nice if that aspect of civilization was universal.

To your lasr point - about Eileen Hurway - was she the one who was driving on a stretch of back road and got fed up with her passenger, a fellow named Myway Highway, and threw him out of the car? Asking for a friend.

Philip Spiess

Or consider the derogatory phrase, "calling people names."  Well, isn't that what we do anyway?  As to Ford Madox Ford, who spent the first forty-six years of his life as Ford Madox Hueffer (okay, full name Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer -- try putting that on a driver's license!); his father, Francis Hueffer, was music critic for The Times, and he himself was named after his maternal grandfather, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown.  Ford Madox Hueffer changed his very German-sounding last name (which it was) in 1919 after World War I to the more English-sounding Ford Madox Ford.

Your mention of "Perry Mason" brings us to an even more convoluted name situation.  The detective "Ellery Queen," equally fictional to detective "Perry Mason," was supposedly written by an author named Ellery Queen as well.  This, however, was a pseudonym for not one but two writers, Frederic Dannay (original name Daniel Nathan) and Manfred B. Lee (original name Manford Lepofsky).  Got that?

And Ann's story [below] brings to mind the day we visited Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.  There was a giant outdoor mural of some event in American history, "Washington Crossing the Delaware" or "The Signing of the Declaration," or something, and I stepped back to get the full kitschy thing into my camera range. As I did so, I tripped over a small footstone identifying the grave of one "Dickie Hickey," aged seven.  I pondered this, then commented to my wife, "The child spent his first six years living a full and happy life.  Then he started attending public school, and all the kids followed after him, chanting ecstatically 'Dickie Hickey!  Dickie Hickey!' at him, the humiliation and torment of which drove him into an early grave."

And did I mention I was in 6th Grade at Clifton School with a rather snooty young girl with the euphonious but quite improbable name of Rochelle Richelieu?  Names!  It's what other people bestow on you; you rarely get to choose them yourself.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

This discussion of names brought a chuckle. I used to grieve my dear late husband tremendously, especially in the first several  years after his passing in 2002.  But, every single time I visited his grave, I couldn't help but smile. Immediately to his left is the grave of ANNA HORNEY. Before departing,  I got into the habit of saying, "Anna, take good care of Ed for me." 

I guess it was around 2015 that Theodore Horney appeared to her left. Theodore finally "gave up the ghost" to stop the shenanigans!! 

Stephen (Steve) Dixon

I would not have wanted to go through high school with the last name Horney.

Even at so dignified an institution as Walnut Hills.

Philip Spiess

Stephen:  I know that Laura Stoner, who was in the WHHS class ahead of us, once dated a boy with the unfortunate name of Jerry Rape (I don't know whether he was a Walnut Hills student or not).

Becky Payne (Shockley)

About names: I once knew a piano studenet at U of Colorado with first name Candy and last name Koehn - pronounced "Candy Cane."

Larry Klein

Regarding names, and kids inevitable ability to make fun of them, some of you who knew me well at Walnut may have silently wondered why you called me "Larry" when my first name was "Hobert".  Now think for a minute about how many "fun" names you could make out of Hobert vs Larry.

I'm sure we all loved Ms Renfro, who taught my 8th grade Latin class, and have stories to tell about her. She translated my name for me one day in class.  It seems that Lawrence loosely translates to "luck" in Latin, and Klein means "small" in German - hence the theme of my life in areas where ability does not prevail.

Lastly, when I was a Materials Director near the end of my working days, I did some business with a Japanese distributor whose executive secretary's name was Ceri Pai (use your imagination).

Paul Simons

Here’s the great Candye Kane doing actually a really fine piece of Texas blues called “I’m The Reason Why You Drink”. https://youtu.be/9KGzayck13Y

And an article about her. Amazing lady.

http://www.bluesblastmagazine.com/featured-interview-candye-kane/

Steven Levinson

My father, WHHS Class of 1937, generally sat immediately behind one Phil Krap.  Peter Schmuck was one of my fellow congressional interns during the summer of 1967.

Philip Spiess

Now that you mention it, Steve, I think there was a Lee Krapp in my sister's class (WHHS Class of '63).