1955-1961 Part 2: The Neighborhood

Posted on August 23, 2020 by Mike

Life on a short street in Prairie Village, KS. Continue reading →

This is 7717 Maple in 2020. We moved into it in 1955. The house that I remember was much different:

It was light blue.
There was only one garage.
The window to the left of the door was a picture window, not a bay.
The shutters look different. I am not sure that there were any.
The addition on the right is new.
The trees are much larger. I am not even sure that there were any trees in the front.
A maple tree on the right between the houses is gone. It is possible that it grew into the huge tree on the right. It was small and skinny when we left in 1962.
Rooms have been added in the back, too.

Our version of the house contained three small bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. There was no basement. It was difficult to entertain company, but it was much more comfortable than the house on Thorp, and it was OURS.

The yard, especially in the back, was steeply sloped. Nall Avenue was at this point quite a bit higher than Maple. The best places to play on our lot were the two side yards, both of which have now pretty much been eliminated by expansions.

I remember an occasion on which my dad and I were playing catch in the backyard. He threw it to me with a lot of loft but not much distance. I ran downhill to catch it, which I did. Unfortunately I my momentum carried me into a corner of our barbecue grill, and it took a small chunk out of the left side of my forehead. It was not that big of a deal. Four or five stitches took care of it. It left a small scar that wrinkles have long since rendered invisible.

Pictured at the right is Maple Street. Nall Avenue on the right is a major street that runs north and south. Tomahawk Road, the street at the top is one of the few streets in the area that is not perfectly straight. To the left (west) it runs to Tomahawk School, which is where Jamie went to kindergarten in 1961-62. At this point it straightens and becomes a north-south street that terminates at 85th. To the right Tomahawk dead-ends at Nall, but at 75th St. it resumes its diagonal route northeast to the Prairie Village shopping center and beyond.

My recollection is that all of the houses on Maple Street were simple ranches. Some had basements, and some did not. The Nall Avenue end of the street was significantly higher than the Tomahawk end. The slope of the street that was south of our house was steep enough for sledding in the winter. The bottom of the cul-de-sac was also lower than the main road, but the slope was not as steep.

Car traffic on Maple was very light. Virtually always the cars entering from Tomahawk or Nall pulled into a driveway. Parking on the street was legal, but people seldom took advantage of this. Kids playing in the street were common. The residents knew to look out for them.

A creek (pronounced “crick” in our neighborhood) ran behind the houses on the west side of Maple. I am not sure of its function. I do not recall finding more than a few inches of water there. It certainly was no barrier to me and my friends if we wanted to go in that direction on foot. Occasionally it was a source of discovery and adventure. I remember that what we called crawdads occasionally appeared.

In 1955 our house was near the southern edge of civilization. A few blocks to the south of us were fields that had been farms only a few years earlier. I remember that while exploring a field I once discovered a mouse nest complete with babies. By the time that we moved the frontier was much farther south.

I inserted house numbers on the above map for all of the other houses on Maple. They may not be the right mailing addresses for some. My purpose was to simplify the references in describing our neighbors, starting with the side on which we lived, the east.

I am not sure who lived in the house labeled 7701. I have a vague recollection that it was an older couple with no kids. I do remember that the house on the Tomahawk side of 7701 did not exist during the period that we lived on Maple. The lot was vacant. I played football there with Don and Steve Wood and a fellow named Tuftadahl who lived on Tomahawk.

The Woods lived in 7703. Don was my age. Steve was one or two years older. They were both athletic and strong. I went down to their house many times through the fifth or sixth grade. I am not sure what happened after that. The family might have moved away.

There was no baseball field within walking distance, but we still spent a lot of summer days involved with the game. I remember many hours spent playing 500 with them. This is a baseball game that involves one player hitting fly balls to the other players. When a player on the receiving end had earned 500 points, he became the hitter.

Our other favorite diversion was hot box, which required three players. Two guys have mitts, and one of them has the ball. The other guy is “in the middle”. He tries to get past one of them. The guys with mitts try to tag him. They can throw the ball back and forth. This process is called a “rundown”. I was good at both aspects of this game, and it contributed to one of the greatest moments of my young life. It is detailed here.

I played on the Sunflower Drugs 3&2 League team with Don. Those adventures are detailed here.

Watching the All-Star Game together in the basement was the highlight of the summer. We all knew all the players from their trading cards.

The Woods were more into army games than cowboys. So, we staged quite a few mock battles with toy guns. I had a pretty realistic double-barreled shotgun that I brought to these engagements. As with the western scenarios the most important thing was to die heroically or at least spectacularly.

In bad weather we played games in their basement. They enjoyed a variation on Monopoly with which I was not previously familiar. The main change to the rules was that if someone rolled doubles, he (there was never a she) was not automatically awarded another turn. Instead, whoever could grab the dice got the free turn. Most of these games ended on a roll of doubles that quickly became a wrestling match over the possession of the dice. I never was involved in any of this grappling, but I did watch in awe when Don and Steve went at it. It usually ended when Mrs. Wood came down and yelled at them.

I don’t remember who lived in 7705. Kim, who rode on the Bluebird with us to QHRS, lived in 7707 or 7709. I don’t remember who lived in 7711, 7713, and 7715. No kids lived in any of those houses.

A family moved into 7719 a few years after we arrived. They had two boys. One was a little older than I was. The other was a little younger than I was. I can picture them, but I can’t remember their names. We played together pretty often, but I only have one really vivid memory. These guys each had a pair of boxing gloves. We had a series of boxing matches. Both of these kids and a few others were there. In the only bout that I was in I hit the other guy quite often, and he hit me almost never. The match was ruled a draw because the other guy “showed that he could take it.” I was upset for a minute or two, but I did not make a scene. Maybe I should say that if I made a scene, I don’t remember the details.

I only had one interaction with the lady who lived in 7721. One winter, probably 1960 or 1961, we had a pretty big snow, close to a foot. She hired me to shovel her walk. I did, but it took me a long time. It was almost dark when I finished. She paid me what we agreed on and added an additional dollar or two. I was grateful enough to remember the incident decades later but not enough to remember her name.

On the west side of the street I never met the occupants of 7702, 7704, or 7706. The Beesons lived in 7708. I think that the father, Bill, was one of our scoutmasters. There were two boys, John, who was one year younger than I was, and Mikey, who was another year younger.

PV Pool. There was no slide when I was there, but there was a regular pool, a diving pool with two or three boards, and a kiddie pool.

They must have moved in in the late fifties. I don’t remember them being around when I played with Don and Steve Wood. I spent a lot of time with John, however, after that. Both of the Beesons were strong swimmers, much better than I was. Since there was no swimming pool in the neighborhood, we must have gone up to Prairie Village Pool together. It was east of us near Shawnee Mission East High School. I did not really like to go there much. I always got cold, and it was embarrassing because my very flat feet left distinctive footprints—like a duck with toes.

I remembered that we played three-on-three football games on the island of the cul-de-sac. It was especially fun in the snow. I don’t remember who the other players were.

I don’t remember who lived in 7710. Michaelene Dunn, who also rode the Bluebird, lived in 7712. I don’t remember who lived in 7714.

7716 was the home of Ed and Ina Leahy. They were older than my parents by quite a bit, but they were probably their best friends, at least in the neighborhood. Ed was retired. He previously sold some kind of agricultural equipment.

One year Ed drove my dad and me to the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson. It was 210 miles away, but driving west through Kansas you can make pretty good time. The roads are straight, and the traffic is usually light. I was in the back. I got very tired or maybe just bored. I tried to sleep in the car, but I could not get comfortable.

My clearest memory of the fair was when the guy in the dunk tank sang “The Old Grey Mare” when Ed walked by. He was trying to taunt Ed into buying tickets to rent a softball to throw at the target next to him. Hitting it would send him into the tank. Ed didn’t fall for it.

I was not too impressed with the fair. I had no need for a new harvester, but Ed knew a lot of the guys who had exhibits. The rides have never interested me very much. I never liked the scary ones, and the others are just stupid.

My .410 looked a lot like this one. The stock was plastic.

Somehow I had acquired a .410 shotgun. I had fired it at tin cans with Fr. Joe once or twice. Otherwise it remained mounted on my wall. I thought it was cool for it to be there, but I never so much as touched it or let anyone else touch it.

Ed took my dad and me hunting once. It might have been on the Hutchinson trip, but it might have been separate. We drove to a farm somewhere in Kansas to shoot at pheasants after the fields had been harvested. I fired at one at about the same time that someone else did. It came down, but to this day I do not know if I slew the bird, or the other guy did. He had a 12-gauge or a 16, both much more powerful than mine. So, I was probably blameless. I don’t know what happened to the bird’s carcass. I never went hunting again.

The Lotzkars lived in 7718. I think that they moved in a few years after we did. They had two or three kids, the oldest of whom was several years younger than I was.

One year there was a neighborhood picnic and party. I think that the Leahys sponsored it. Someone had a movie camera and showed the result later. I was the oldest kid there. I spent the time showing the Lotzkars how to slide like a ballplayer and climbing the T-shaped clothesline poles.

I babysat for the Lotzkars a few times. I recall that once the parents did not return home until pretty late. I watched Stars and Stripes Forever, the biopic about John Philip Sousa. on the Late Show. I have a low opinion of marches now, but I liked this movie well enough at the time.

Bob and Eleanor Anderson lived at 7720. If they had any kids, they were grown up. I remember my dad talking politics with Bob in the Andersons’ yard in 1960 after Kennedy won the Democratic nomination. My dad opined that the Republicans should have nominated Nelson Rockefeller. Bob replied that the only thing that doing that would prove was that somebody born with a silver spoon in his mouths could bedome president.

One summer day Bob took me to Municipal Stadium for an A’s game—just the two of us. It was a great time. We had very good seats on the first base line. Bob had a foghorn of a voice. Throughout the game he ruthlessly tormented the A’s second baseman, Jerry Lumpe. I did not like Lumpe either for reasons that currently escape me.

Bob’s voice carried so well that people all over the stadium were looking at him. Several ballplayers, including Lumpe, turned their heads in our direction.

I don’t remember the result of the game, but Lumpe went hitless. I think that he made an error in the field, too.

Lumpe was one of those players that the Yankees traded to KC when he seemed to be past his usefulness. To be fair, his best season was 1962, when he hit .301 for the A’s. He was a skinny guy, but he also managed to hit ten home runs that year. His average for the A’s was slightly better than his average for the Yanks. Lumpe died in 2014 at the age of 81.

I think that Bob died before we moved to Leawood. Eleanor continued to live in their house on Maple by herself.

The Wallaces lived across the street from us at 7720. I think that Mr. Wallace’s name was Ken. Her name was Jean. She and my mom were good friends. The Wallaces had three kids: Kenny, Sandy, and Gary. All were younger than I was. Gary was Jamie’s age.

I remember that one day I was for some reason home alone. Jamie must have been with my mom. I did not know where they were, and I got very upset. I think that I was even crying. Jean Wallace saw me and comforted me. A few minutes later our car appeared in the driveway.

Next to the Wallaces in 7722 was the Stivers family. Bill and Marie had two kids, Barbie was Jamie’s age, and Brad was a couple of years younger.

Bill Stivers claimed to have only one vice, fireworks. He bought a lot of fireworks for July 4, and he shot them off well into the night. For some reason this really irritated my dad. The dogs also hated it.

I don’t remember who lived in 7724 and 7726.

My first friend in the area lived in the house on Nall Avenue behind ours (7717). Michael was my age and the oldest son of Wally and Cherie Bortnick.¹ Michael also had a sister Donna who was a couple of years younger. There may have been one or two younger kids, too.

A big twister hit nearby Ruskin Heights in 1957. It killed 44 people

Their house had a basement. Whenever there was a tornado, which seemed to be every Friday in May, we would troop up to the Bortnick’s house (and I do mean up) and congregate in the southwest corner of their basement. This was a blast. The chances of getting hit by one of those midwestern tornadoes was minuscule, and if you did get hit, you were probably a goner no matter what. So, it was a great time to party, and we did.

I also remember that for a short while Wally and Michael and I ran around the Nall-Maple-Tomahawk block once or twice in the morning before school. This was in an era when nobody went jogging. I liked doing it, and it might have influenced my later decision to run regularly.

Michael had a chemistry set in the basement. We used to do half-assed experiments together. I enjoyed messing around with it, but it did nothing to inspire me to study the sciences.

The Bortnicks moved away after a couple of years. However, I think that they stayed in the KC area. Michael joined our class at Rockhurst High in sophomore or junior year and graduated with us.

I don’t know who owned the empty lot south of the Bortnick’s house. No one seemed to claim it. Vacant lots just seemed to exist in those days. That one was probably too small for another house.

A girl named Louise lived in the house north of the Bortnick’s. Her last name escapes me. Her mother threw a birthday party for her, and I was invited. All that I remember about it is that we played pin the tail on the donkey. No donkeys were injured. The paper tails were affixed with scotch tape rather than pins.

1. I was shocked to discover that Donna Bortnick died in 2013, and Wally, Cherie, and Michael had all preceded her. In all, Wally and Cherie had eight children—four boys and four girls.

1955-1961 Part 1: QHRS

Posted on August 19, 2020 by Mike

Early years at Queen of the Holy Rosary School. Continue reading →

After my parents and I moved from Kansas City, KS, to suburban Prairie Village in early 1955, I began attending Queen of the Holy Rosary School (QHRS) in Overland Park. The faculty consisted of Ursuline nuns who lived in a convent behind the school and a few lay teachers, all women. Back in the day my dad and his brothers had been taught by Ursulines. In fact, in 1955 a few of the nuns who taught my dad were at QHRS.

For all the years that I can remember the principal at QHRS was Sr. Dominica. To say that she ran a tight ship is an understatement. As at St. Peter’s, we were all required to attend mass before school. The youngest kids sat closest to the altar. Sufficient space between the students was enforced to accommodate each one’s invisible guardian angel.

Girls at QHRS were required to wear uniforms of plain blue skirts and white blouses. There may have been other requirements. I cannot remember the standards for the boys. I never cared about clothes at all. My mother generally bought pants for me at J.C. Penney. She probably got my shirts there, too.

At the time QHRS had no cafeteria. The students all brought their lunches in paper bags or lunch boxes. We ate at our desks in the classroom. I think that students could buy a small carton of milk for a few cents. Some kids traded food. Mine was always the best; I never traded.

A cafeteria of sorts was installed in one of the expansions, but I don’t remember ever eating lunch there. There certainly was never a kitchen for preparing lunches to sell to students. Students could buy cup-sized containers of milk.

I usually took the bus to school. The driver’s name was Bernardine. Two girls on our street also rode the Bluebird. Their names were Michaelene Dunn and Kim Somebody. They were a couple of years older than I was. Once or twice I used their wisdom and experience as a source for the meaning of taboo words, phrases, and gestures.

I was very happy to join Sr. Mildred’s first-grade class early. Sr. Mildred had actually taught my dad at Holy Name School in KC KS. She was a very nice person; all the kids liked her.

A few weeks after I joined the class I contracted all three common childhood diseases—measles, mumps, and chicken pox—one after the other. I was out of school for at least two weeks. I doubt that I missed as many days during my next seven plus years at QHRS. I remember no great difficulty with my lessons after rejoining my class.

One huge difference between St. Peter’s and QHRS was that at the end of every six-week period Fr. Ryan, the pastor of the parish, personally visited every class, called each student up to stand beside him, and read the grades aloud. If a student’s grades seemed to be slipping, he/she got grilled. I must be remembering this wrong. Fr. Ryan must have skipped some classes or some students. In any case, the effect was terrifying.

In second grade (1965-1966) I was in a combined class of first graders and second graders. The first graders outnumbered us by at least two to one. The teacher who received this unenviable assignment was Sr. Lucy.

Sr. Lucy habitually abandoned our class during the lunch hour, presumably to fix herself a stiff drink or take a sedative. During her absence we were not allowed to cavort or even to speak. One student was assigned the role of monitor. This lucky person was assigned the task of taking down the names of miscreants. After a while this nerve-wracking duty was permanently assigned to me. I must have been rather judicious. I was never depantsed or beaten senseless at recess.

I remember a few episodes from this class. The first one was when someone decided to stage a basketball game at recess between the second-grade boys in our room and the other group of second-grade boys. We only used one basket. There were no substitutions. Everyone played who was there. There was no referee. Only a few of us were able to get the ball up as high as the basket.

The other team had more than twice as many boys as ours. They won the game rather easily. I was still the biggest kid in our class, and I scored all of our points. I don’t know why I remember this pathetic exercise. Maybe it was the first time that I participated in a team event in which someone kept score.

One of the students, whose last name was Martindale, had trouble reading. His parents obviously helped him study the text beforehand. When called upon to read aloud, he would retell the story but he did not use the words of the text. Many of us giggled, but I don’t remember anyone ridiculing him about it.

By the way, we did not use the “Dick and Jane” books that were a staple at the public schools. The protagonists in our books were David and Ann. Every once in a while a lesson involving Catholic principles was included. I remember that their father lost his job at some point. Things like that never happened to Dick and Jane.

We second graders spent a great deal of time preparing for our first communion, which is, or at least was, a very big deal for young Catholics. As part of our preparation Sr. Lucy required us to memorize a list of items from our catechism,¹ which consisted a set of questions and incontestable answers. The first two were:

Fr. Ryan put the host right on the tongue. There was no handoff.

Q: Who made you?
A: God made me.
Q: Why did God make you?
A: God made me to show forth his goodness and to make me happy with him in heaven.

When Sr. Lucy interrogated the second graders (out loud) on the answers that we were required to memorize, I was unable to come up with the complete answer to one of the questions. This distressed me terribly. I had not encountered much failure since dealing with the boxes of letters that hid from me at St. Peter’s; to fail at something so important was devastating. I think that I felt that I had let down my mom, who had quizzed me the night before. Sr. Lucy tried to console me.

I also remember fainting once when we were preparing for first communion. It is the only time that I have fainted in my life, and in the first class section of a flight I once sat next to the one and only Desmond Howard, Michigan’s Heisman Trophy winner and ESPN star.

Before we could receive communion, we had to go to confession, which meant that we had to confront Fr. Ryan one-on-one. Until Fr. Finnerty arrived a year or two later, Fr. Ryan had no assistants. I can’t say that I remember any details. I don’t remember what I admitted to in that first confession, but I certainly did not ask forgiveness for beating up that BAD kid in kindergarten.

My third grade teacher was Mrs. Nolan. There was such an influx of students that we now had two full classrooms of third graders, and wings had been added to the school building to accommodate this.

I was very happy not to be in the other third-grade class, which was taught by the notorious Sr. Veronica. She often made errant children kneel in the hallways. One time she yanked by the ear a boy who was not moving rapidly enough to suit her. The ear tore near the lobe and a large quantity of blood erupted. He was not badly hurt, but he looked like someone took a knife to him.

Decades later I told my dad how mean Sr. Veronica was. He informed me that she had taught at Holy Name when he was a boy. He also told me that her twin sister was much meaner, and everyone was terrified of her. I asked him what became of her, half expecting him to say that a house had landed on her. Remember, this is Kansas; tornadoes were common.

By the third grade most of the boys realized that acting up in class was not worth the punishment, which at QHRS was quick and rather severe. The worst punishment was to be sent to Sr. Dominica’s office, over the door to which was a sign advising those who entered to abandon all hope before they crossed the threshold.

However, many of us came to appreciate that our teacher would occasionally need to leave the classroom for a few minutes. During that interlude we could get away with all kinds of mayhem as long as we were not caught when she returned. In our class the mechanism for this was the “spitball” (or “spitwad” in some dialects), a piece of paper which had been formed into a ball and placed in one’s mouth until it congealed into a spheroid suitable for throwing. A piece of notebook paper could generate two good spitballs. I prided myself on having two or three spitballs concealed and at the ready at all times.

As soon as the teacher left the room an aerial battle pitting the guys in the desks near the door (my team) against the the enemy forces by the windows would ensue. The guys seated in the middle and all the girls occasionally incurred collateral damage. War is not pretty.

My usual strategy was to fire all my missile early and then to switch to using my three-ring binder as a shield. When the teacher returned, the boys still actively engaged in combat sometimes were punished, but I was never caught in the act.

At the end of our last third grade class, Mrs. Nolan announced that she and her husband were moving to Venezuela. Therefore, she would not be teaching at QHRS any more. Everyone was sad.

My memories of fourth, fifth, and sixth grades are sketchy. I only had one teacher per year, but I cannot recall who taught which year. I am pretty sure that I had Sr. Ralph and Sr. Kevin once each. One of the two might have taught me twice. If not, I don’t remember who the other teacher could have been.

In one of these years our whole class received the sacrament of confirmation, the most difficult of all the sacraments to explain to heathens and apostates. It is not a prerequisite for anything, and no additional obligations are entailed. From the perspective of the students there are two salient factors: 1) You are allowed/required to pick a “confirmation name”. 2) The sacrament is administered by the local bishop (in our case the archbishop) himself.

St. Peter's supposed sword is in the Poznań Archdiocesan Museum in Poland. — St. Peter’s supposed sword is in the Poznań Archdiocesan Museum in Poland.

I picked the name Peter to honor St Peter the apostle. So, my official Catholic name is Michael Dennis Peter Wavada. Everyone was required/allowed to choose the name of a saint whom he/she especially admired. Despite the bad memories of the eponymous school in KC KS, I picked Peter. It was mostly because of the dashing way that he had wielded his sword to relieve Malchus of one of his ears.

The appearance of Archbishop Hunkeler in our parish was a very big deal. He was the bishop at the time that our diocese was promoted to being an archdiocese. So, he was the very first Archbishop of KC KS. This is a very important distinction, but I have never been able to figure out exactly why.

The big moment in the ceremony is when the archbishop addresses each candidate individually and slaps her/him on the face. Anyone who runs to his/her parents to get mom to kiss the boo-boo or dad to beat up the archbishop is automatically disqualified. Everyone else is accepted. In our class everyone took the blow like a soldier of Christ, although a few students flinched. Frankly, I think that the archbishop’s right hook did not have as much power as we had heard. He was, after all, in his sixties.

The nuns liked to ask question in class. If you thought that you knew the answer, you raised your hand. The nuns often liked to call on kids who did not know the answer. I remember holding my hand up for so long that I had to support it with the other one. All the time I was saying “S’ter, s’ter” to get her attention. Other kids were doing the same.

English was not my favorite subject, but I loved diagramming sentences. Many students hated it, but it just seemed to come naturally to me.

I was shocked to learn that most of the kids were paid by their parents for A’s and B’s on their report cards. Mine wanted to know what the problem was when I got a B. I never received a C except in music and art. I felt a little cheated by the lack of remuneration, but I did not complain to my parents.

After a few years it was evident that, while I had no difficulty at all with any of the other subjects, I had absolutely zero talent for art. The lack did not bother me. While the teachers droned on about something that I already understood, I often drew battle scenes that involved lots of strafing of stick figures by stick airplanes. I was only marginally better at music, which at QHRS was identified with singing ability.

In fourth grade I could no longer see the blackboard very well. The teacher told my mom that I probably needed glasses. She was definitely right. My first pair had grey plastic frames. By the time that I finished high school my vision was 20-400 in one eye and 20-450 in the other. However, I could see OK with my glasses, and I could read with them or without them.

May and September in Kansas City are hot, and the school had no air conditioning. The teachers opened some windows from the top using a long stick with a hook on it. Flies then invaded the rooms in substantial numbers. I was a ruthless murderer of the interlopers, mostly with my bare hands. I was equally adept with the clapping method and the one-handed grab and squeeze. It grossed out the girls, but no one complained.

A guy in our class, Mike O’Shea, claimed that he had been run over by a truck. He said that he fell down in the street as the truck was speeding toward him. It was too late to get up, and so he positioned himself so that the wheels missed him. By flattening himself he avoided the undercarriage. This was the first time in my life that I disbelieved what someone told me. Who knows? Maybe it did happen.

Even if it did, I could top it. Everyone in the class witnessed the time that I ran over a car.

No, no. It's not really Red Rover unless you play on asphalt. — No, no. You have to play Red Rover on asphalt.

Recess: We had two fifteen-minute recesses, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We also had thirty minutes to play outdoors after lunch. The lower grades played on the asphalt. The upper grades played on the dirt behind the schools. Popular activities for the boys were Red Rover, dodgeball, beanbag tag, and a self-describing game called Kill the man with the ball. We would have played the usual sports, but there was not enough time to get organized.

The girls mostly jumped rope while singing or played pat-a-cake while singing. Their squandering of precious recess time with such meaningless endeavors was the main reason that I had such a low opinion of them.

Red Rover and kill the man with the ball caused a lot of bruises, scrapes, and torn garments. However, the one time that I got really hurt at recess was while playing beanbag tag. Someone else threw the bag at me when I was running full speed on the asphalt. I neglected to account for a car that was parked there. There was a lot of blood. The wound required nineteen stitches, but they were on the inside of my right cheek. There was no scar, and it healed fast.

I always title this story “The time that I ran over a car.” By the way, I leapt at the last second, and the beanbag missed me. The guy who was “it” had to crawl under the car to get the beanbag.

When we were in the upper grades, and the springtime weather was nice enough, all the boys would sprint to our designated area to play baseball. The play resumed exactly where we had left off at the end of the previous recess, which may have been the previous Friday. Not a second was wasted.

They did not happen often, but fights sometimes broke out at recess. They were usually preceded by an exchange of pushes and exclamations, the most common of which was “Oh, yeah?” When the first punch was thrown, a circle was formed around the contestants. Eventually a nun would come, blow her whistle, and shame the pugilists into ceasing.

I was in my share of fights. The only one that I remember losing was not at school. Michael Bortnick, who lived behind me and was bigger than I was, pinned me down and then beat on me until I said “uncle.” I went to my mom and complained. She said, “Well, if he is bigger and stronger than you, you shouldn’t fight with him.” I was dumbstruck.

I remember my last fight, which was in the fifth grade. My opponent was Tom Guilfoyle. We had been fighting for a few seconds when he threw a haymaker at my face. He missed, and I continued to fight. However, at the moment that his right fist went sailing past my face I made a resolution to stay away from fights. I never came close to getting in another one. Even in my dotage I still avoid verbal arguments.

If we had to stay inside, there were board games and card games for us to play. I remember that in the second grade, I played checkers many evenings and weekends with my dad. I never won a single game. I also played checkers against my classmates at recess, and I never lost.

I remember playing a card game called Authors. I think that when you collected three or four books by the same author, you could win points. It resembled Rummy. By the time that I read any of these books or poems at least I knew what the authors looked like and the names of some of their other works. I think that I eventually read every one of these authors except, of course, Louisa Mae Alcott.

I also seem to remember Chinese checkers. There must have been quite a few other games, but I don’t remember them.

Field Trips: My recollection is that the entire school attended The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur at a big theater. Maybe they limited attendance to the older grades. I got very little out of these movies. Everything but the chariot race bored me. Maybe I was too young; maybe I just don’t like religious movies; maybe I don’t like Charlton Heston.

I don’t remember the year, but my class went to a matinee concert by the Kansas City Philharmonic. I enjoyed that. I also liked our eighth grade field trip to the Natural History Museum at KU.

This wasn’t a field trip, but a small acting company came to our school and put on a melodrama. I thought that it was awful.

1. The most commonly used was A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Prepared and Enjoined by Order of the Third Council of Baltimore, generally called the Baltimore Catechism. I think that the one that we used was slightly different.

1962-1965 Rockhurst High Part 2: My Classmates

Posted on August 1, 2020 by Mike

Guys in my homeroom. Continue reading →

Here are the guys in our homeroom class whom I can remember.

I think that these guys were all in the class for at least some of the years, but I did not know them very well: Jim Cecil, Carl Cordes, Mike Griffin, Jim Hafner, Robert Hudspeth, Mike Loftus, Jim Murtha, Mike O’Connor, John O’Malley, and Mike Ulses. There was another guy named, I think, Mark McSomething.

I was pretty good friends with Chuck Blumentritt. Chuck, Joe Montanari, and I played golf at Blue Hills on caddy day once. The caddymaster got angry at us for some reason; maybe no guests were allowed. I also recall that Chuck later wrote a satirical play called Knifesmoke. The leading character was a saloonkeeper named Philip McGlass. I think that Chuck also played on the soccer team that was initiated in our junior or senior year. It was a club sport; in the sixties Americans did not take soccer seriously, at least not in KC. I think that Rockhurst only had four official sports in those years: football, baseball, track, and basketball.

I knew Michael Bortnick from when my family first moved to Prairie Village. His house was on Nall Ave. immediately behind ours. His family moved away a few years later. He was not at Rockhurst in our freshman class. I think that he enrolled when I was a junior. I had only a few classes with him, and he always sat on the other side of the room.

I am uncertain whether Jock Bracken was ever in our homeroom. He ran for President of the Student Council. His slogan was “Jock supports athletics.” I don’t remember whether he won or not.

Terry Cernech, my cousin, played on the varsity basketball team. I think that he also was associated somehow with a musical that was put on by Rockhurst High and Notre Dame de Sion, a girls school. I think that at one of those rehearsals he met his first wife, Debbie Lieschman, who, believe it or not, lived directly across the street from us in Leawood. Terry lived twenty miles away.

Dave Chappell was a good friend. I went over to his house a few times to play chess. He had a fancy chess set. It was difficult for me to identify the pieces. The queen looked a lot like a bishop. He used to say “Jethro Bodine is my ideal.” For some reason he decided to go into the Navy rather than go to college after graduation. He had a pronounced southern accent.

Pat Dobel was two-time state debate champion. He was also very good at extemporaneous speaking. He and his debate partner John Immele finished first and second in the overall GPA race. I don’t recall who won. He is on the faculty of the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington.

Bill Fischer was on the speech team, and he also acted in the school’s plays. He was easily the best actor in the Class of 1966. I remember him being very upset when Bob Dylan brought an electric guitar to Newport. He is on Facebook.

Gary Garrison was my friend from grade school and the Boy Scouts. At the 8th grade graduation he was one of the shortest guys, but he grew nearly a foot over the next summer. He has published two books and now lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

Michael Huslig, a very quiet guy, was one of the top students, especially in math and science. I think that he is now at Kansas University.

John Immele was also on the debate team that twice won the state championship. He was either first or second in GPA. As of 2005 he was associate director for nuclear weapons technology at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Bryce Jones was one of the guys that I hung around with, but I don’t remember any good stories. He died in 2019. His obituary is here.

Mike Kreyche took both Latin and Greek at Rockhurst and then studied the same subjects at the University of Arizona. He was the Systems Librarian at Kent State, where he published many articles.

Bill Locke was a friend from grade school. He played on the varsity football team at Rockhurst and was also on the two-time state championship debate team. He went to Notre Dame on a speech scholarship, but I never saw him on the collegiate circuit. For a while he was a barrister in London. His Facebook profile says that he is now a criminal lawyer in California.

Bill’s family lived fairly close to our house. One evening he and I decided to roll hedgeapples under cars driving on 89th St. When a car’s tire hit one it sounded like a blowout. One driver stopped to talk to us, I wanted to run, but Bill held fast. We said “yes, sir” and “no, sir” for a few minutes, and then he drove off.

What’s a hedgeapple? It is the fruit of the Osage Orange tree, which is very common in KC.

I remember that Bob Malone was pound-for-pound the best wrestler in our phys ed class.

Jim Mansour was easily the hairiest guy in the class. He played on the junior varsity basketball team. I think that he is a doctor.

Joe Montanari was a pretty close friend. He was our homeroom rep on the student council in freshman year. For some reason many of the guys wanted to impeach him. Then we voted him back in. In 2021 he was president of Montanari Fine Art Jewelers in KC.

Kent Northcraft was the tallest guy in the class. He worked very hard on his basketball skills, and by our senior year he was one of the best players in the KC area.

Vic Panus, who usually sat directly to my left, was a real character. I remember that he once did a very tight forward roll in Mr. Stehno’s Latin class. When a guy from Junior Achievement tried to recruit us, Vic asked him this question. “How can I too become a J. A.?” He wanted to go to Spain because the señoritas were all beautiful, and the guys were, well, not serious competition. He debated with Vic LaPorta for a little while. In one practice debate he talked for a few minutes and then said, “Please ignore everything that I just said.” There are a lot more Vic Panus stories. I think that he is a lawyer now.

I think that Gene Ramirez joined our class as a sophomore. I remember that he finished geometry in two quarters, as I did. So, we were together with a few other sophomores and a bunch of seniors in the second-semester probability class. The seniors called him Rammo, and made fun of him. It was one of the very few disgraceful incidents that I experienced at the rock.

John Rubin was a friend from grade school. He competed in public speaking events, but I am not sure that he ever debated. He later worked on the Prep News. He was in all of my classes.

He was first elected to the state legislature of Kansas in 2010. His Wikipedia page is here.

Jay Ryan was a very good ping-pong player. He was also deadly accurate shooting a basketball.

Big Ed Schafer played varsity football. He also was a camp counselor at Camp Nash, the local Boy Scout camp on the Kansas side.

Pat Tierney was inducted into the Rockhurst Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.

Pat Tierney was probably the best athlete in the Class of 1966. He was a very good point guard on the #1 rated basketball team in KC. His goal was to play center field for the Yankees.

Mike Van Dyke also played varsity basketball. As of 2017 he was an attorney at Polsinelli PC in KC. He also has been active in the alumni association.

Dan Waters sat in front of me. He was in the chess club, and he usually beat me. I remember once that we played Stratego at his house. He put his flag in the front row where it could easily be captured. It never occurred to me that he would do something so outrageous. I did not think that of Dam as much of an athlete, but he beat me in the only 100 yard race that we had. I should have known better; his brother was a sprinter on the Rockhurst track team.

We were very good friends throughout the four years. We exchanged a few letters in college but then lost touch.

John Williams, whom everyone called Willy, sat behind me. He was also a very good friend and my debate partner during football season of my junior and senior years. The rest of the time he debated with Bill Locke and won two state championships. One night he called me, and we spent about two hours trying to determine if John Williams was the most common name in the KC phone book. It was second to John Brown.

He got married and had a kid while I was at Michigan. I saw him once in KC and once at a debate tournament at UICC in Chicago. He also had a band and was in theater productions. He became a lawyer and a judge. His obituary is here. It says that John Immele was his partner. They may have teamed up occasionally, but his primary partner was Bill Locke.

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1955-1961 Part 2: The Neighborhood

1955-1961 Part 1: QHRS

1962-1965 Rockhurst High Part 2: My Classmates