The Man Teacher

 I entered fourth grade in 1954 in The Wantagh Elementary School in Wantagh, Long Island. Along with twenty-nine other children, suitably dressed in their “first day of school” clothes, notebooks and pencil boxes at hand, we awaited the first glimpse of our brand-spanking new teacher. Rumor on the playground was that it was a male teacher! Imagine, a fourth-grade MALE teacher!! At that time, unheard of!

I had no doubt that a male teacher would be far less concerned about the cleanliness of my nails or my proficiency at writing cursive letters. A man wouldn't bug you about such things. This was going to be my best year at school, bar none. Not that I didn't love Mrs. Lamb in Third Grade. Far from it, I had a bit of a crush on her, but I spent all too many late afternoons sitting in her classroom trying to master the art of making those curly Palmer letters while my left hand smudged each effort. My handwriting is still abysmal and I'm frankly happy about that.

So we intrepid fourth-graders sat patiently, daring not to make a fuss for fear we would somehow queer the deal and this guy would hear a hullabaloo coming from his new work station and decide to go home. And we waited. Fortunately, each classroom had direct access to bathrooms and a drinking fountain so we were able to quietly trot off to relieve ourselves after the few hours elapsed.

I was just about to doze off when the classroom door opened and a very large man with a deep-set scar running along his right cheek entered the classroom. My Father was 6' 3” and this man would have had him by at least an inch. He wore a crumpled brown suit and a ribbon fedora, which most men wore at that time. I looked around and realized that I was as scared as every other kid in that room. He walked to the board and wrote in large scrawling letters “Mr. Kelly”. Okay, that was vital information. In fact, anything written quickly on a blackboard was assumed vital and we all popped open our brand new notebooks, filled with at least one ream of paper with dividers at the ready, and copied his name down on the first page. Whew. Assignment one- done.

He took off the fedora and tossed it casually on his desk and stood to address us. A few young girls and Ralph, the boy designed to be beaten up by all bullies, started to rise as well. Mr. Kelly motioned them to sit back down and made the necessary introductions.

“My name is Michael Kelly, Sergeant, United States Army, honorably discharged 1946. I served in the Third Army and saw action at the Battle of Nancy. After fighting our way across the Moselle River we cleaned out the Kraut army and liberated that lovely little city.” It may not have been those exact words, but pretty darn close. It's the sort of rude shock to your system that a nine year old kid isn't likely to forget.

I looked around nervously and noticed that a number of students were now attempting to write down everything he was saying, word for word. Two girls were crying quietly and Ralph had thrown up. On his brand-spanking new notebook.

“Take that out of here and clean it up in the bathroom, son.” Ralph stood and carted his recently festooned notebook and pencil case off to the boys' lav.

“Now take out this book right here,” We lifted the lids of our desks and noticed that all the necessary books were packed away, more than likely by our predecessors. They had also left the aromas of past lunches entombed therein. Suddenly, a sickening melange of peanut butter and tuna fish filled the air.

Mr. Kelly was holding up the notoriously boring Elson-Gray Readers. Our fourth-grade reader was “Times and Places”. “I want you to read the first full story- 'Bunny Boy Learns a Lesson' and answer all of the questions at the end of the story in your notebooks.”

This was just too much for me. To have a giant with a scarred face standing in front of a classroom instructing us to read “Bunny Boy Learns a Lesson” was more than I could handle. I laughed. I didn't mean to. I sure as hell didn't want to. It just came out. This penchant I have for seeing humor in all the wrong places always had a powerful negative effect on my educational experiences. His massive jaw jutted forward. Twenty-eight anxious faces turned from Mr. Kelly to me. Ralph was still trying to remove vomit from his brand-spanking new notebook.

“Go to the back of the room and stand facing a corner. Try to learn some self-control.” I stood looking for some way to repair the gulf that suddenly divided this man with whom I would have to co-exist six hours a day for the next 180 days. He turned and walked back to his desk, pulling a copy of Newsday out of his coat pocket and proceeded to catch up on the latest news. All avenues of reconciliation closed, I trudged back to a corner and counted dimples in a cinder-block, freshly painted in institutional green.

As we would come to find out, Mr. Kelly was no more inspiring through mathematics, English, Social Studies or Science. He would read articles about the latest advancements in weapons technology or bring in a schematic of a new washing machine he'd recently purchased, explaining what each part did. He corrected our weekly theme assignments by scoring them with a single grade. No suggestions, no commendations. And the mess dragged on. Then, we received a graphic lesson about concentration camps.

It seems that Mr. Kelly was an active photographer during the war, or so he said. Our history lesson on that cold, clear day in late February concerned Mr. Kelly's experience in the liberation of Buchenwald Concentration Camp. It was quite the lecture and, unfortunately, the first time we'd seen Mr. Kelly excited about teaching us anything. He stood in front us and held up enlargements of one gory scene after the other, explaining what those “filthy Krauts” did to Jews, Gypsies and just about anyone else who didn't fit their idealized vision of humanity.

It became a fiasco. Children were crying, Ralph and more than a few others had lost their recently consumed lunches and all but a few reprobates in the crowd sat watching intently as one gut-wrenching scene after the other flashed before our eyes. I looked down. It was all I could think to do.

Salvation finally arrived as the dismissal bell finally rang and we all bolted out the door, actually beating Mr. Kelly to the punch this time. We ran past the Principal, oblivious to her demand to stop running, out the door and across the street to the playground. Sanctuary. We stood as a single unit talking what had just happened before heading home in various directions.

Dutifully, I stayed back, donned my white Safety Patrol strap, with its brightly polished badge glistening in the afternoon sun and assumed my post at the corner of Beech Street and Demott Avenue. As I waited for customers to cross, Mr. Kelly came along the poorly plowed road in his pre-war Chevy Special Deluxe. As he looked to move forward from the stop sign, our eyes locked. He reached up to his fedora and tugged lightly at it. I had no response. It was the last real interaction I ever had with the man, other than a directive to stand in a corner.

Amazingly, Mr. Kelly continued his career for a few more years. My Brother Tom told me that many veterans like Kelly used the G.I Bill as a means to get a college degree. Many saw the teaching field as an easy route to a job, albeit low paying. Thousands of men flooded the profession during those years, replacing many of the women who had received their two-year diplomas from “Normal Schools”. Many were probably as ill-suited for the job as Michael Kelly.

I had heard from a younger brother of a friend that Mr. Kelly had left teaching a few years after my awful experience with him. My Father arrived home one evening and called me over to speak to him. He folded his copy of Newsday back and pointed to an article. It was a brief byline noting that one Frank Kelly was found dead in his apartment in Massapequa, the next town over from us. Cause of death- self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was thirty-one.

I felt so sorry for Michael Kelly (that's not his real name). He was just a child who went war, came home, snatched up a college education and went off to a job for which he was ill-prepared and obviously ill-suited. He shared one of his greatest, most intimate and painful experiences with an audience of little children. Why? Perhaps because we were there. Perhaps because no one else wanted to listen.