Steven Levinson

JoAnn:  Thanks so much for your entry into this maelstrom!  The more reality principle the better.  Our Outfit has a long way to go in so many respects.  There's only so much sugar coating one can take.

Phil:  Al Weihl was Clifton School.  David Ransohoff, as someone mentioned, was Lotspeich School, along with Mike Hunting, Larry Fry, Tom Carothers, Sally Hastie, Barbie Vilter, and me.

David Buchholz

Racism Redux.  It isn't high school.  It isn't black and white.  My wife is Chinese, and we were married in California forty-five years ago, and during our sixth month engagement and the subsequent two months or so after we were married and living in San Francisco neither one of us felt any sense of racism.  I was hoping to get into the Rhode Island School of Design and was willing in 1970 to work for a year (anything) while I ramped up an application.  UC friends opened a furniture store in Middletown, and invited me to work for them while Jadyne went to graduate school.  

On our way across country we met a Chinese friend who was working in Grand Island, NE. He invited us to Sunday brunch at a popular restaurant in Grand Island.  When we walked in Jadyne and Jim were talking and laughing, a perfect young Asian couple.  No one noticed.  No one cared.  Jim treated us, and as he paid the bill Jadyne and I walked out holding hands.,  I know it's a cliché, that silence is deafening, but it was.  The restaurant became deadly quiet, and the happy post-church going Nebraska diners looked up from their omelettes and stared at all three of us.  I can still see their faces.

Some weeks later, I took Jadyne to Riverfront Stadium.  After the game we headed up I-75, and she was in tears.  Knowing that it wasn't because the Reds lost, I asked her what was wrong.  She said, "some guy sitting near us pointed to her and said, 'I killed me a bunch of them in 'Nam."

Besides Ann, I don't know how many of my classmates are in interracial relationships.  Whether it's anti-Semitism (Judy), or straight out black prejudice, or the experiences we had, it all comes from the same place.  

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

The great lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (not Rogers - corrected by JoAnn Dyson-Dawson) described it so accurately in the song from South Pacific, "...you've got to be carefully taught before it's too late, before you are six, or seven or eight, to hate all the people your relatives hate...". 

With all the global problems as well, perhaps it's time for Klaatu and his robot to land their flying saucer.

Mary Vore (Iwamoto)

Thank you for your post Dave.  My husband Edgar is third-generation Japanese - born in Baltimore, and never been to Japan.  His mother had to leave Pharmacy school at UCSF to go to camp in Utah with her family, and his father had to leave his PhD program at UC Berkeley/UCSF to live with family in Nebraska; he was finally able to complete his PhD at the University of Maryland.  One of his professors at UCSF went to the Presidio to ask the head officer if he could adopt my father-in-law.  While the request was emphatically denied, I have always seen that effort as one of the redeeming acts that restores my faith in the human race.  Edgar and his family all say 'it was a different time'.   Edgar and I met in San Francisco in 1974, married in Ohio in 1976, and moved to Kentucky in 1978. I don't see the 'slights' that Edgar sees here in Lexington, but he has told me of some - the cute little blond at the UK gym, backed by her cute big blond boyfriend - who said "why don't you go back to To-ky-o".   But, happily, we lead a full life here in Lexington, KY, and we still hold hands in public!  I don't have an answer except to do my best to ensure that the very tiny corner of the country that I touch and hopefully influence is a just one.  Below is a picture of our family last Thanksgiving! 

Stephen (Steve) Dixon

Boy, I communicated terribly if I left the impression that I thought, because Walnut Hills was integrated when we went there, that racism was not really a problem in the 1920's, or 30's, or 50's & 60's, or now.

I was, in fact, trying to say just the opposite and to express my wonderment at how Walnut could have been such an anomaly way back before Brown v Board. In my experience, school boards do not tend to be trendsetters in terms of progressivism. They tend to lag behind advancing social consciousness, often by a decade or two.

Having lived my first seven years in Kentucky and the last forty-one in Georgia, I am probably more acutely aware of the active daily perniciousness of racial prejudice than most of you. Phil, I lived four years about 3.5 miles from the spot in downtown Marietta, GA where one of the most famous lynchings in state history took place. I know the history. I was here when Maynard Jackson was elected the first black mayor of Atlanta and had to listen to a cacophony of idiot comments throughout his entire administration, as well as every mayor since.

I've had probably fifty people tell me, over the years, "You can't go into Downtown Atlanta after 6:00 at night!" Of course, on further discussion, you find out that these idiots haven't been in Downtown Atlanta after 6:00 PM in thirty years, if ever. And when I tell them that I have been to numerous meetings there that let out at 9:30 or 10:00, that I took my soon to plenty of Hawks basketball and Flames hockey games at The Omni, and we walked a few blocks to our car a late as 11:00 without incident, it doesn't change their perspective one iota. Spooky myths have a powerful attraction. That's what made the Brothers Grimm famous.

The question I was trying to pose is "How, in a national environment that took at least until the mid 70's to come to the point of generally desegregated public schools, did Cincinnati decide to take the steps that it did so much earlier? And how did that happen without the kind of public disorder that eventually occurred in so many other places?

Like I said, I don't remember the fact that we would be going from all-white Mt. Washington Elementary to integrated Walnut Hills in the 7th grade to have even been a topic, at home or among those of us in my class who were headed there. It seems it wasn't an issue on anybody's mind, in anybody's household. It was never mentioned to me. The thing that worried me was that everybody there was supposed to be damn smart. Which turned out to not be a myth, at all.

I am not putting all that forth as exemplary of the way things were in the nation. My sense of history and my personal experience outside of Cincinnati was just the opposite. The polar opposite.

During my awful senior year at Briarcliff High, my Economics teacher preferred triggering a classroom debate to actually teaching us anything about Economics. (You begin to see the difference in focus between Braircliff & Walnut?) It was a pretty conservative, very affluent, markedly Southern and highly prejudiced crowd. The looming specter of the busing of majority-to-minority transfers, beginning the next school year, was a frequent topic. I earned the sobriquet "The Carpetbagger" after several me against everybody debates. In case you are wondering, Carpetbagger was not, at that time, a term of respect in the south. The climate at Walnut Hills could not have been more diametrically opposed. And I don't know where else in the country the Walnut experience was being duplicated. It probably was. I just don't know and have never set out to do research on it. Perhaps I will.

Maybe we all ought to collaborate on a book:  The Walnut Hills Experience

Stephen (Steve) Dixon

This so great, the feedback from so many, and everybody's perspective enlightening in a new way. Thank you, Mary, Becky, JoAnn, Judy, Dave, Phil and, most enlightening of all, the inimitable Mr. Lounds. I am learning much.

I hope this discussion rolls on and that more people will contribute. Like witnesses at an accident scene, we all experienced our youth, and our years at Walnut, in slightly different ways. Since hearing Ben in the reunion film, I have been looking back on the Walnut experience with new thoughts and especially new questions. 

I was completely oblivious to the segregation of swimming classes. It shocks me that I could have been so unaware. Probably, my brain was dominated by the awareness of my tiny, skinny, nude body shivering in front of the whole class. I like to think that, had I been aware, I would have wanted protest it in some way. It seems so ridiculous and, in light of how uneventful the rest of our blending together seemed to be, it looks particularly ridiculous.

But, then, maybe there is more than swimming to which I was unwittingly blind. Waiting to hear more.

Steven Levinson

Dave and Mary:  Interracial marriage is commonplace in post-statehood Hawaii (to a lesser degree, in pre-statehood Hawaii also), which is why such a high percentage of Hawaii residents are multiethnic (such as, for example, Chinese-Hawaiian-Cherokee-Portuguese-German-English).  So with respect to the mythical "melting pot," a term coined initially to describe European immigration to the U.S., Hawaii is about as close to the "ideal" as America is going to get.  Multiracial couples are taken for granted.  You would think that Hawaii would therefore be a uniquely tolerant/inclusive/respectful place, and by American standards I think it is.  But tolerance has its limits even here; just ask the LGBT community with respect to the same-sex marriage push that began here in 1993.  Evangelical churches are filled to the brim, Hawaii is a major Mormon center, and the Diocese of Honolulu is powerful and conservative with respect to the "party line."  Pope Francis is not, I'm sure, Bishop Larry Silva's favorite person.  The instititutional and individual anti-gay vitriol that spewed forth between 1993 and 2013 was disheartening and made one wonder whether the Aloha Spirit was a mere cliche. That's died down considerably since December 2, 2013, when Hawaii's Marriage Equality Act went into effect.  There's much greater acceptance of the construct these days; people who once found the notion of same-sex marriage baffling now take it for granted in a "what's-the-big-deal?" sort of way.  If Walnut Hills taught us anything, it taught us to recognize ignorance and bigotry when we saw it, even if the institution expected us to keep our mouths shut about it.  Remember the school assembly at which the Cincinnati School Board sanctioned representative of the John Birch Society lectured us on the most precious freedom of all -- the freedom to fail?  WHHS was relatively enlightened, but it was no paradise. It was a perfect reflection of the greater social order in which it was embedded.  If you knew what was good for you, you didn't stick your nose where it didn't belong. We perpetuated that atmosphere, and the administration used it to maintain its conception of order. Ann is right.  This country needs Klaatu and Gort in their flying saucer really, really bad.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Five years ago today, shortly after our official class portrait was taken. Some had trouble getting to their feet!!

David Buchholz

Another one...

Laura Reid (Pease)

In light of the recent discussions of religion/race relations, I wanted to tell you about a service I attended yesterday.  It is a bit of a segue.  I am in northern Michigan right now and a dear neighbor passed away recently.  Her memorial service was at a Unitarian Universalist Church.  The service was conducted by Rabbi Chava Bahle.  I spoke with the lady sitting next to me who is a member of the congregation.  She said this was the only UU congregation in the nation led by a female rabbi and that it had been written up in the Huffington Post when Rabbi Chava arrived about nine months ago.  It was a personal, uplifting service; I did not know the deceased that well, but I certainly felt that I did when I left.  I am sorry to be missing the festivities in Cincinnati at the Great American Ballpark AND the musical extravaganza at Awakenings; wish I could be there.....I want a full report and maybe some photos Paul!!

David Buchholz

Now that Ann has posted a photograph of our last reunion, and we have all been communicating through this wonderful web site (thank you again and again those who so richly deserve it), it is time to plan for next summer.  Although I'm looking forward to seeing everyone (and hoping, too, to rejoin Paul Simons, Eugene Katona, and George Makrauer for a rousing rendition of "Walk, Don't Run", with an encore presentation by David Schneider reprising Ray Charles's "What'd I say?"), I confess that all of that is second on my list when visiting Cincinnati for the first time in eight years.  

Number one, of course, (now that we Californians have access to Graeter's through Whole Foods), are the innumerable visits I anticipate taking to the quintessence of all dining experiences, what Esquire Magazine called in the seventies "#1 of the best 100 things you can do in America", and which Calvin Trillin, the esteemed writer of the New Yorker, enjoyed and discussed in a February, 1973 edition of the New Yorker.  (Incidentally, the New Yorker published one of my submissions; I regret having ever cashed the $5 check).  At the end of the countless photographic homages I'm submitting is the article itself.  You might have to enlarge your screen to read it more easily, a "Command +" control on a Mac and god only knows what on a PC whatever that is.

AAnd in conclusion, I'm submitting one more photograph. The artist Dale Chihuly created a set of these magificent heirloom pieces for me years ago, and I treasure them now as I have for the past thirty-one years.  If I told you where I stored them I would have to kill all of you, and neither one of us wants that, so we're all better off just keeping this secret.PS. During a Giants-Reds rain delay several years ago, the Giants TV announcer paused and said, 'Folks, there's something really unusual about Cincinnati.  Everyone goes to these little chili parlors that are all over town. He paused, looked around, then added, 'picture Alpo dipped in kerosene."

Laura Reid (Pease)

Husband goes with his wife to her 50th high school reunion. 

  

  

After meeting several of her friends and former school mates , they are sitting 

  

at a table where he is yawning and overly bored. The band cranks up and people are beginning to dance. 

  

There's a guy on the dance floor living it large, break dancing, moon walking, back flips, buying drinks for people, the works. 

  

  Wife turns to her husband and says, "See that guy?  50 years ago he proposed to me and I turned him down. 

  

Husband says: "Looks like he's still celebrating!!! 

  

 

Larry Klein

Okay, Classmates.  If you missed it, you missed a terrific show.  Who could know these old geezers could play rock'n'roll like this??  Si can still pick'em with the best, Dr. Dave chimed in with a few classics on vocals, and the supporting cast was amazing.  I planned to stay only for an hour or so, but I got enchanted into the WHOLE show (well past 11).  Kudos to Si and Stan and the rest of the crew.

Philip Spiess

Steve Dixon:  Perhaps I'm misreading your last posting (above), but my memory recalls that, by the time we all reached WHHS in the Fall of 1958, the swimming classes were integrated, not segregated.  (And most people still can't believe it when I tell them we swam nude.)

Thomas Lounds Jr.

Hello, Class of 1964.  After that healthy, but certainly incomplete, discussion of race relations at our beloved WHHS, i would like to change the subject a bit.  I am curious about how far did you travel each day to go to Walnut.  As a teacher, I traveled from Kennedy Heights.  As a student , I traveled from Madisonville on bus "1  down Madison Rd. ( past Withrow) to  (?) Corner, then bus "2. Down to (?)street , then walk to school.  What say the rest of you?  P.S. Rick, I am sorry I missed the All-star game.  Would love to have seen all who made it to the game.  For what it is worth, I was Barry Larkin's first coach as his basketball (!) coach at Ken-Sil --one of the groups he acknowledged  on his way to the Hall.  

Jeff Daum

In response to your query Mr. Lounds,  I travelled by two city buses from Bond Hill to Walnut Hills HS.  I distinctly remember the place I would change buses- it was a GreyHound Bus Terminal in Norwood, with many interesting characters.  I would walk about a block or two to catch the first bus, and then a couple of blocks from where the second bus would let me off to WHHS. The best I can recall it was either about a total of 1 hour each way, or just seemed like that .  Then again I could always get neat treats out of the vending machines at the GreyHound terminal. Some of the more interesting trips were when I would take my full sized tuba home for practice.  In retrospect it is probably not a trip most parents today would be comfortable allowing their child to take by themselves- especially in the 7th grade. But back then it was never an issue. 

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

I lived four houses down from art teacher Dorothy Dobbins on Crane Ave. in Evanston. It was a twenty minute walk but my mother always dropped me off at school on her way to work.  I'd get there around 7:15 or so, go to the auditorium and either finish my homework I hadn't done or read before class.  I walked home most days, stopping by the Blair Ave. Market for candy.  Occasionally, rather than walk home, I'd take the bus (I think 3) to my mother's work in Mt. Auburn (she worked as an intake probation officer at Juvenile Court). I'd sit in a vacant office doing my homework and wait for her to get off at 5:00. I knew all the court staff.  One of the probation officers, Ed Schuermann, a former priest, helped me with my Latin.  I frequently tell people I grew up at Juvenile Court, but it was in the best possible way.

Philip Spiess

Mr. Lounds:  I commuted to WHHS from Clifton, and, for most of the time (perhaps all), I was in a carpool in the mornings going to school and took the school bus home in the afternoons (I'm now not sure of why this dichotomy in transportation, except perhaps that some of the parents worked in the afternoon.  I'm also not clear at this point on why my sister, a year ahead of me at WHHS, was in a different carpool; I'll ask her).  The carpool included Tami Tate, Robert St. John, Cathy Welsh, myself -- and I believe, someone else (Jim Stillwell? -- yes, I'm pretty sure it was Jim Stillwell).  There were five of us, so the parents each had one day in the week to drive.  I do remember that I was always the late one that they had to wait for while I scarfed up my oatmeal (but I was also the last pick-up, except for Jim); we'd proceed past the entrance to the Cincinnati Zoo and on through Avondale to Victory Parkway and WHHS.  In the afternoons we caught the school bus on the circle at the back of WHHS and proceeded westward through Avondale to Clifton.  The bus was supposed to let us off at the head of the McAlpin Avenue hill at Middleton Avenue (and often did, when we would walk down the long hill, past the Rawson Woods Bird Preserve, chucking ripe osage oranges under the wheels of passing cars to see them "sqush"), but equally often we would convince the bus driver to let us off at the bottom of the hill, which is where my sister and I (and Tom Gottschang) lived.

But now for the drama:  Once I had attained my driver's license at the tender age of 16, I was finally, at some point, allowed to drive the carpool all by myself to WHHS!  I did so, proudly . . . and I was half way home on the school bus, a habit I had picked up after four years of doing so, when I suddenly remembered, somewhere around Samuel Ach School, with hideous acumen, that the car I had driven to school that morning was still parked on the drive in front of WHHS!  I had no other choice but to dismount the bus and walk, on foot, the numerous blocks back to WHHS, which is to say, down the hill to Victory Parkway and up the hill to pick up the car!  (I won't go into the several times I drove friends home to Hyde Park and elsewhere, showing off with the car, and was terribly late in picking up my mother at her job in the Registrar's office at the University of Cincinnati, which was, of course, in Clifton -- I received hell on those occasions!).

Jerry Ochs

I rode the #4 bus to and fro.  My stop was (according to Google Maps) 3.1 miles from the Blair Avenue stop.

Richard Montague

Fairly long ride from East Hyde Park. I transfered at St Frances de Sales corner.and used to wait in the church if it was raining. One of the prettiest churches I have been in,

Oh, and a hats off to Philip ! I thought I was the only Dumb Ass that on the first day I was able to drive to school I rode the bus home and had to catch a ride back to school to get the car.

David Buchholz

If I was lucky teacher Mark Klatt in his 1955 Chevrolet Bel-Air would pass me by on my way to the bus stop at the corner of Ridge and Montgomery Rds. in Pleasant Ridge.  My brothers, three classes above, were driven by Walter Becky and his 1958 Mercury, and there was room for me in the middle of the back seat.  If not, it was the #4.  When Cincinnati upgraded some of its buses to "Dreamliners" I was in heaven, feeling as if my ride was as pleasant as it could possibly be.  I never had a car to drive, but I was occasionally driven in my junior year by Mike Hunting and his light green VW Beetle. Before that it was Dr. Sandy Courter or Reed Blocher, the latter who drove a tiny Alfa-Romero.  Both Mark and Reed's knees were tucked firmly under their chins for the ride through Norwood, Duck Creek Road, and up to Blair Avenue.  Rides home were also on the ol' #4, and I remember one in particular, when Philip Barnette and I were sitting in seats that were normally occupied by (was it a Landfried?) others, one of whom was a drummer and wanted us to stand so he could sit in "his" seats.  Phil and I wouldn't move so he played the drums on our heads all the way back to Pleasant Ridge.  Once or twice, in early September, when the new models of cars were introduced to showrooms I would walk all the way home so I could stop and check out the new Studebakers, Impalas, etc., pausing at Goetz Jewelers (Losantiville and Montgomery) to stare at the colored lines on the first color TVs, as there were no programs yet, just slashes of color.  Four miles perhaps?

Bruce Fette

Well I remember the bus rides very distinctly. In College Hill, we rode the Kissel bus in the morning. The driver would pick me and others up at the corner of Reid Avenue and Hamilton Ave. He would spend about 1 hour driving all over College Hill to pick up kids. Then down Gray road, Winton Ave, Spring Grove, Clifton, Then Pick up Sally Fox, then Woolper, Forest, Victory pkwy, Jonathan, Fernside, Blair and the circle. Google says its 7.5 miles, and 21 minutes (not counting the hour to drive all over College Hill).  In snow, Woopler would clog up, and the ride could be a real problem. Also the bus would be late, and many of the kids would collect at the laundromat where we could stay warm. Lots of additional stories associated with all of this.

In the evening, if I was fast enough to catch the bus in the circle, it would take us down Blair, Woodburn, Dana, Clinton Springs, Mitchell, (Drop Sherrie Baum somewhere along Mitchell) and Spring Grove to Knowlton's Corner. At Knowlton's Corner there was a great burger place. There we would catch the 17 to College Hill. Altogether an hour. Many had to catch another bus from Hamilton & Northbend to get the last leg to their specific area. By the way, 20 kids trying to get onto the bus all at once can be an issue.

If I was late to the bus in the circle, then I had to take the 31, catch the crosstown, and then catch the 17 at the corner of WH Taft and Clifton. There were various favorite stores I could stop at along this path and walk to them, but if I did, then usually the bus driver would not accept the transfer, and thus I would need to walk much much further. This was usually a 2 hour ride home.  Looks like these bus routes have all changed since then.

Larry Klein

Since I was the ONLY Eagle who lived "south" of Mt. Lookout (Susie Lovatt moved to Kroger Ave for a couple of years, a block from my house), I didn't have carpools or rides with Dad to work.  He was a mailman in Norwood and left the house at 5:30am.  I walked a couple hundred yards to the bus stop on Delta Ave just under the old Grandin Rd Viaduct to catch the #68 bus.  Like Richard M, I transferred to the #4 at DeSales Corner (Madison and Woodburn) and exited at Blair and Woodburn for the las two-block walk to the circle.  Reversed the trip every afternoon.  It was about 40 minutes each way.

In ninth grade, I discovered that the Mt Washington to WHHS bus passed through Mt Lookout Square, so I began walking the half mile to the square and got acquainted with Dale Siemer, Jerry Blake, Barb Hay, Pam Hall, John Adams and several others.  Susie would ride the bus home and we would stop at Heinz Pharmacy for a soda and share it walking down Delta to Kroger Ave.

When I finally got a car my senior year ('51 Chevy, green hatchback, with no reverse), I would cross the Grandin Viaduct and pass thru O'brionville and Evanston.  Parking was an adventure with no reverse.  I always had to keep the front uphill and "coast" backwards.

I was already an experienced bus rider when we started 7th grade.  While at Kilgour in G1-4, I often had to catch the 68 on Herschel and ride to our apartment at DeSales Corner (across Madison from the church).  I was allowed to go to Kilgour because Mom had the beauty salon in Mt Lookout where I usually went after school.  I never experienced the pleasure of a 15 minute drive to school before 12th grade, so the time it took seemed like a normal part of the day to me.  Not true these days.

Harry Martin

I walked to school all 6 yrs. at Walnut. I lived on Bathgate St, the same street that Rubel's bakery was on, right around the corner from Sears and Roebuck at Reading and Lincoln. I would walk down Bathgate to Melish; go down Melish past Van Buren, then cut through the coal yard to, I think it was Wehrman, and then somehow got on Fredonia Ave and picked Phil Penn up. Sometimes we would take a route that would put us on Gilbert Ave., near Victory Pkwy and other times a route that put us at Victory and Jonathan. I believe it was a about 2-3 mi for me. BTW, does anyone remember Martin Presley? I think he left after the 8th or 9th grade. Briefly getting back to racism at Walnut, my dad graduated from Walnut in 37'. He echoed some of the previous comments about the black students only being able to swim on Fridays and then the pool would be drained and refilled for the white students on Monday. I remember as a kid African  Americans could not swim in Sunlite Pool at Coney Island. I participated in a Swim-In there along with my parents and some other people, so that we would be able to swim there. I believe the that I only swam there once since then

Dale Gieringer

As one of the handful of west side residents, I faced a tortuous 7-mile commute that seemed more like an odyssey at the time.  The trip home involved 3 different bus lines - the 4 to Peebles Corner, the 31 Crosstown to the Western Hills Viaduct, and the 21 to Westwood - all for 13 cents at student's fare.  Alternatively, though it involved a longer walk, I could take the 4 downtown to the Post Office and pick up the C Queen City line.  Either way, it typically took an hour or so to get home.  The way to school was quicker, since my good neighbor Mr. Ludecke regularly drove me and a couple other west siders there in the morning, though we had to arrive half an hour early because he was assistant principal.  When he retired senior year, I was allowed to drive my mom's 55 Chevy to school, picking up Jon White, Don Dahmann and the Bakers along the way.  Driving was a liberating experience;  I became the chauffer of choice for carless friends and classmates on innumerable   social forays, expeditions and parties on the east side, where most of my WHHS friends lived.   After years of being driven to and fro across the city, I once took it upon myself to walk with a friend back home - down Rockdale, which was through at the time to Burnet, on to Erkenbercher, Vine St, Glenmary, Clifton, Dixmyth, the Hopple Street Viaduct, Westwood Northern Blvd, Montana Ave, Epworth and finally Lischer.  It took a surprisingly short time - a couple of hours or so - but the scenery was familiar and dull and we never repeated the adventure.