Memories of an "Old History Teacher"

by Gene Edgerly, WHS Faculty 1974-1991

NOTE: If any of Edgerly's musings don't make sense to you, please ask him to clarify at the reunion. Or post a comment; he'll see it when I send him his next installment. I had to decipher 8 1/2 handwritten pages, which sometimes was tough to do! I can usually read much of what he writes, but there are sometimes words that I can't quite make out. To understand what I mean, click on the image of his handwriting below. I noted all questionable words and translated foreign words or abbreviations with square brackets.

Forty-four years ago, after having taught in a large high school near Detroit, I responded to a bulletin to teach in the DODDS system. I received a one year leave of absence to try it, didn’t return, and began the best 38 years of my life -- teaching for five years in Heidelberg, Germany, 15 years in Japan, and 17 years at Clark AB in the RP/PI [Republic of the Philippines/Philippine Islands].

My initial placement was in downtown Tokyo at Tokyo International School (Yoyogi) at the USAF housing area named Washington Heights which, two years later, became the site of the first modern Olympic games to be hosted by Japan. It was a fantastic year! We moved the school the next year to the suburbs of Tokyo and established Chofu High School, Middle School, and Elementary.

The following year, I transferred with the Army schools to Germany where my wife and I wore out a VW bus driving in every country in Europe from Hammerfest, Norway to Gibraltar and from Iceland to Hungary to East Berlin traversing the infamous wall at Checkpoint Charlie in the heyday of the Cold War. I have lasting memories of the Parthenon atop the Acropolis, wandering through Stonehenge, the souks of Damascus, crossing the Allenby Bridge at midnight to access Jerusalem, 11 ferry boats to cross the fjords of Norway to reach the end of the road where the summer sun never sets, negotiating the narrow and odoriferous tunnel into the great pyramid at Giza, five crossings of the stormy English channel from Calais to the white cliffs of Dover, Lenin’s torch near the Kremlin wall, miles and miles of tulip fields in the Netherlands as well as the gentlemen-friendly area of Amsterdam, Tangiers, the Rock of Gibraltar, and on and on.

As others who wax nostalgic for the place one spent his first tour abroad, I transferred back to Japan and the USN school at Yokohama called Yo-Hi. The great exchange rate of $1 = 360 yen had begun to downhill slide. Japan will always be my “love” -- the culture, geography, food, friends, trips, and climbing Fuji three times.

I was the AP [assistant principal?] at the Sullivan’s School at Yokosuka Naval Base (now the largest in DODDS) when the US Navy decided to home port an aircraft carrier at that tiny base with its attendant 5000 man crew complement. That was to turn a quiet, quaint backwater into a sardine can. So with our two daughters, we packed up and transferred to the RP/PI where I was assigned grade 4 at Lily Hill Elementary School and had little Lisa Tsatsos and others of you among the ten year olds. I survived the year, went over to WHS and prostrated myself before Mr. Taft who saved me by finding a place at WHS. I stayed for 17 years until 21 June 1991 when Mt. Pinatubo erupted eight miles away and locked the gates of paradise: RP/PI. What a great run it was.

I now intend to let loose a James Joyce style stream of consciousness of people, places, things, and events in no chronological order. Remember, an old history teacher’s mind is a wealth of insignificant trivia:

• Bicentennial Park having been finally completed two years after the 1976 due date.
• A 6-pack and a chaise lounge watching movies on the “portable” screen towed out into the middle of the grass field of Bamboo Bowl.
• Two daughters spending their lives with leased horses at the riding stable being mentored by a kind, patient Heather Weir.
• Spending an eternity at the Olympic Pool, frying in the sun with a stop watch and clipboard while the kids did the butterfly, back, breast, and free strokes.
• “Missing” a barn when my number finally came up to live on base because I did not leave a POA with a friend to respond while in CONUS one summer leave. Ed Goff lived in MY house.
• Buying a 5-bedroom home on Taguete Avenue (main street) near the Nepo Mart Subdivision exit from Carmenville where I lived for a dozen years. (I still own the place.)
• Old Royal manual typewriters which were always breaking while Steven Schrupp valiantly did battle to defend our meager repair fund from the rapacious, local “fixers.”
• Mr. Taft up on the hot, tarred roofs in a white shirt sweating as he replaced A/C belts on those old, noisy, inefficient clunkers and also seeing him jog “hydro carbon alley” as I drove off base. By the way, I taught in over a dozen DODDS schools and have “subbed” in a dozen more since I retired in 2000. I have never worked with a more dedicated and capable schoolman than BST [Bruce S. Taft]. He was ably assisted by Tom Flynn and Bill Ryskamp. You may not have realized it at the time, but they had a great deal to do with YOUR outstanding educational opportunity as well as, I modestly add, some extraordinary teachers -- over 20 of whom I exchange Christmas letters with: Carlsen, Cutler, Carmone, Hilgers, Hamaoka, Harmelink, Kumpf, McKinnon, Mitchum, Nestle, O’Connor, Olinzock, Pollino, Rumpf, Ryskamp, Reed, Schrupp, J.Sweeney, Tucker, Wunderlich, Donna & Keith Young, Linda Means.
• A long black funeral home Cadillac I imported 30 years ago to make big bucks and wound up “eating” it.
• Tony Carmone wrapped in a white sheet doing Julius Caesar in a British Literature English class.
• Having a smoke behind the old gym building when Kris Kristofferson appeared at break time and told me about his daughter’s near death in a severe auto crash.
• Chrystella Mary Atwater (H2O) writing merchandise control slips at the commissary in a valiant but futile effort to help stop black marketing.
• The Hale Koa military hotel oasis in Hawaii just up the beach from Waikaikai and Diamond Head.
• Taking half-baked turkeys back to the commissary for a full refund when the power failed one Thanksgiving during a typhoon. And seeing green coconuts fly like cannonballs across the parade ground.
• That tin GI skeet quonset hut that served far too long as some type of HQ -- a symbol, I suppose, that CAB was only a “temporary” thing for 30 years.
• Baguio/John Hay Air Station $5 a night fully furnished cottages with fireplaces. Great gulay [vegetables] and flowers at the palengke [market]. The St. Louis silver school, great restaurants, etc. Then the devastation from a massive earthquake.
• Intending to retire in the RP/PI until Mt. Pinatubo changed my life forever. What do I do now with my rice farm adjacent to Manila North Expressway between Apalit and the road to Subic, 12” deep irrigation wells with pumps, hand tractors, carabao, bodega, fish pond? Answer: my wife’s family has lived there for the past two decades.
• MARS calls to CONUS and sitting on that hill at ungodly hours of the night due to the 12-hour time disparity.
• Marcos’ last night in the RP/PI spent on Clark AB in one of those mammoth hotel-sized buildings along the parade ground and surrounded by phalanxes of guards, klieg lights, etc.
• The Nepo Market with shelves, aisles festooned with BX goods sometimes unavailable on base and still flouting the stickers (tags carrying a dollar denomination price).
• Visiting many times with Ruth and Charlie Lopez and their parents in their Fairfield, CA home near Travis AFB. Once, I left a car for them to drive, and a hit and run guy smashed into it. They tracked down the miscreant and used a ballpeen hammer on the guy’s headlights.
• Reporting my old Datsun pickup truck missing from the high school parking lot only to have it appear much later out in the [ding? dang?] weeds.
• Tom Crudgell (Cutler’s pronunciation of “Kruggel”) in caveman dress and Tammy Holman Fawcett, the queen winner at the Great Chili Cook-off at the Happening on the Green. I just received a wedding announcement from Tammy’s daughter.

Enough already. I read your interesting submissions, thanks to Myrna. She sent me the third download of 85 pages from your website for which I here thank her profusely. My last bit of insignificant trivia to you: cartilage doesn’t stop growing which accounts for the present outlandish size of my nose and perhaps your ears. But your eyeballs were the same size when you were born as they will be when the rapture comes.

I’m a “sub” today (4-5 years in the classroom now) in the 150 student high school from which I graduated over a half century ago. I live in the UP [upper peninsula] of Michigan, a few miles from the Canadian border, 300 miles north of Detroit. Should any of you get lost up here while looking for the Soo Locks, there’s a rusty telephone wire I ran from the tarred road and nailed to trees up to our camp so you can call me at (906) 647-8490 or write to me at: 7319 Gogomain Road, Pickford, MI 49774 where my snail mail is delivered by RFD to a mailbox attached to a fence post on the 80 acres we own. Our nearest neighbor is a mile away. I don’t do email, cell phones, internet, digital cameras, text messaging, blackberry, podcast, stream on the web, have cable or satellite TV. But there’s an NPR radio station nearby to which I solely tune.

Comments

[John Bobersky]

John Bobersky
1813 Brittain St.
Berwick, Pa.
18603
jbobersky@yahoo.com
570-574-6883

[Myrna Nickelsen]

John, I told Gene Edgerly about your post since he doesn't go online - and he completely remembered you, that Allison mentions you often but that you two had lost touch. He asked me for your email address, but I can't figure out how to retrieve it from our website.

I suggest, therefore, that if you want to connect with Allison that you drop your contact info in the mail to Gene at this address: 7319 Gogomain Road, Pickford, MI 49774, which he then can pass on to Allison.

I think Allison is the daughter that just had a baby girl about a week ago, though I can't be sure...could have been Heather.

[John Bobersky]

I don't think that you will remember me but I dated Allison when I was stationed in the PI. After all these years I still think about her all the time. She is an incredible person. I love her and always will.

[Larry Shaw]

Gene,

Remember me? Traveling buddy through SE Asia during our Christmas break of 1963 while teaching at Chofu High School. Just had lunch with Bob Harrison and really had a great time with old memories. Maybe the 3 of us might travel somewhere together. I have a brother who has a summer home on L. Michigan just north of Traverse City, and was there this past June. Should have driven up to see you. Best, Larry

[Allyson Miller]

Hello Mr. Edgerly!
I'm sure you won't remember me - I was in your Business Law (?) class in 1977. I was only at WHS for my Senior year - I was quiet and withdrawn - didn't know that I was suffering from depression. But I've clear that up! I read your Bio and it brought back so many memories. I have to say that of all my teachers I've had - you and Carmone are the most memorable. I'll never forget you. Hope you are doing well. I'm now living in Raleigh NC ( I came here to live after my divorce) My Mom and Dad lived here - so I followed when I divorced. They now live in Atlanta with my sister Ashley and her family.
Take care,
allyson1959@gmail.com

[Chrystella Byers (Atwater)]

Mr. Edgerly,

Wow, you remember my "valiant but futile effort to help stop black marketing"? I had forgotten that effort! Brings back memories.

So you live in the UP? I attended undergraduate school and was a cheerleader at Northern Michigan University.

See you at the Reunion!