Chapters from "TIME TRIALS"
• 8 •
Coming of Age
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The limitation on athletic activities continued into high school, but the venerable physician Edmund Sorenson, who also served as the school board president, allowed me to join the baseball team in the spring of my freshman year. I was persistent and went to the doctor’s office at the beginning of every athletic season to ask about my wellness for the coming season. Throughout 8th grade and into the freshman year of high school, the answer was a definitive, “no.”
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In other ways, I was shaping up as a more serious student although gaining traction in a high school environment had its challenges. It didn’t help my self-confidence that senior boys pursued freshman girls.
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During the first week of the school year, I was selected freshman class president by the vote of classmates. Sure, I was popular, but nonetheless surprised, clueless and intimidated. Our freshman class advisor, English teacher, Sam Kaplan, called me to the front of class, where I was to preside over our official meeting. This was my first encounter with Robert’s Rules of Order.
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Robert’s Rules were the work of the U.S. Army officer Henry Robert who adapted the rules and practices of Congress for non-legislative organizations that often could be chaotic. Robert first designed the rules in 1876 that periodically have been updated. The current and 11th edition was published in 2011.
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The no nonsense, immaculately dressed Mr. Kaplan guided me through the process. Somehow, I survived that modest leadership position throughout the school year.
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Sam Kaplan was a rigorous teacher respected by the best students, and I was not about to disappoint the man. Every moment of each class in his room was engaged time-on-task. A lot of language, literature, and learning were encountered in his English classes, and every student was called on to perform each day. The teacher also was Coach Kaplan, who served as B-team (i.e., junior varsity) mentor that fall and winter for football and basketball, as well as head varsity baseball coach in the spring.
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As baseball approached in the spring of 1954, the doctor, probably tired of my persistence, gave me the okay to play. The sport, he likely reasoned, was not as taxing as football and basketball, so I was on the varsity team that season. No “B” team existed then with only 16 boys willing and capable of playing. Baseball, or hardball, is a challenging sport requiring bravery and skill. (No softball yet for girls.)
I was somewhat overawed, but Coach Kaplan likely detected a sliver of potential. Roger and I had been playing the game, as early as I could recall being able to catch, bat, and throw.
1954 Baseball Team
(Circled Left to Right) Coach Kaplan, Jim Platts, Rod Thorson, Duane Duermeier, Joe Vlad, RVS
As a freshman, I rode the bench in a reserve role and went 0 for 7 at the plate. I did manage to hit a fast ball over the lower half of the plate on the “sweet spot” of the bat but right to an outfielder. Being hitless that first season, sporting a .000 batting average, I was nonetheless encouraged by the prospect of playing more and proud of my status on the team that included such formidable upperclassmen as seniors Rod Thorson, outfielder; Duane Duermeier, 1st baseman; and catcher Joe Vlad along with Jim Platts, a flame-throwing junior.
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That summer of 1954, I joined the Booster Gray youth city baseball team. Having acquired maturity and experience, I felt comfortable at the plate. The batting average didn’t exactly soar, but my play was consistent both hitting and in the field. Roger, who would be entering high school in the fall, displayed signs of a versatile athlete beyond his 13-years. He would turn 14 in late August.
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No football the following fall, as a sophomore, but I again served as team manager. That winter, I was permitted to play basketball on a limited basis—intermittently, on and off the court every four minutes, as a preoccupied coach allowed the boy to self-monitor playing time. Jon Dahle, varsity football coach, took over the B squad, when Sam Kaplan mysteriously was demoted.
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Self-monitoring was a wonderful responsibility and privilege for a 15-year-old, which was sometimes abused. Those four minutes on the court could stretch to five minutes and maybe a touch longer.
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After each game Dr. Sorenson would descend to the locker room and compare my cardio-vascular recovery to Roger’s, the best available control group. The doctor also had sons active in high school sports a decade earlier and took a dedicated interest in the Elks’ teams. On one occasion, however, he stormed into the locker room after a game chastising me for abusing my playing time and advising the coach to be more vigilant. Dahle creeped off to the coach’s office and gently offered a reprimand.
Dr. Edmund Sorenson
In one game against a tenacious Mukwonago team, I obeyed the doctor’s orders, but still scored 23 points, going 7 for 9 from the field and perfect nine straight free throws. I drove to the basket with abandon that night, as the “Indian” defenders attempted to stop me in vain. The only shots missed resulted from an exasperated opponent grabbing and fouling. The Elks scored 53 points in a winning effort, and I contributed nearly half of the total playing just 50 percent of the time.
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One girl that appealed to me, with whom I had in several classes, was a smart, attractive classmate Patricia (Pat) Tripp. She was a high-spirited, task-oriented farm girl, who lived 10 miles from town in the Millard area bordering the Whitewater school district. After rising early for farm chores, she boarded the school bus for town. While fun-loving, Pat excelled in school, and our romance was fast to blossom. As Coach Dahle, also our science teacher, remarked one day between classes to another teacher, “She chased him until he caught her.”
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“Oh, that’s what happened,” I thought.
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It was immaturity that I let her go and regretted doing so. Young boys’ emotional maturity is stunted without guidance and support. This applied to me, as it does, many boys influenced by a “toxic masculine” peer environment. Older boys would brag about their adventures with girls that I attributed to insecurity, and doubted, but still acceded to. It was peer pressure based on envy that I had a wonderful girlfriend. Yes, boys navigate a treacherous adolescence without mature emotional and psychological support that was missing in my growing up. In retrospect this legacy has followed me.
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Despite being a vibrant, young woman, Pat, at age 36, was our second EHS ’57 classmate to die. It was from a brain tumor, the same disorder that took the life of her 10-year-old daughter a couple years earlier. Along with two of her sisters, Pat had been adopted as a small child. I’ve wondered if this was a genetic connection or a result of stress having lost her own girl.
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That spring of my sophomore year, under the tutelage of Coach Kaplan, I settled in as an eager center fielder batting .313 and roaming the outfield. The opening home game against Mukwonago is etched in my memory. Hitting seventh in the lineup, I went three for three that afternoon with a single and double to go with a home run in the fifth inning. The pitch met squarely on my bat and sailed over the centerfielder’s head. I rounded the bases, barely touching the ground, but missed the coveted cycle by a triple. In that high school games were seven innings, it was but a short fantasy leap to imagine that my next at bat would have been a three-bagger.
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It’s possible in a fourth-at-bat that the Indian’s coach would call for an intentional walk spoiling my fantasy. As an opposing catcher remarked later in life, “The danger in walking me, and more likely Roger, is that we could turn a walk into a triple.” I was never thrown out stealing a base but wasn’t above making the chase in a “rundown” interesting. High school infielders have much to learn.
The sophomore year also was a breakthrough in the classroom. The course load was formidable including English, biology, algebra, and Latin—particularly the latter. Math was logical, biology didactically taught by the affable Bob Palmer, and English an intense but gratifying experience under the demanding Sam Kaplan.
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The significant turning point, nevertheless, was Latin in Ruth Bushman’s classroom. The first week that subject was like Greek to me but soon something snapped, as the result of maturity and hard work. The complexity and elegance of this so-called antiquated language suddenly seemed pertinent. For the first time in my academic life, I began to understand the English language and its mechanics more deeply—the eloquence and power in using it skillfully.
I came to realize that language is the greatest gift our culture has to offer. Material abundance and technology pale in comparison. I was hardly the scholar, citizen, and artisan that I would aspire to be but was on the way.
Richie Van Scotter, Patricia Tripp, Mrs. Bushman (circled)
During my senior year, Principal Jack Refling would ask me to take over Latin class, when Ms. Bushman was missing in action. She had to drive 20 miles in rain, sleet, or snow from home in Whitewater, where her husband was a professor at the state university, then Whitewater State College. Mr. Refling would explain that it could be a valuable experience in whatever capacity I might have as a public speaker or teacher. In retrospect, it saved the school from having to pay a substitute. This was a small gift I could make to the community and school for the education it provided the Van Scotter family.
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Enthusiasm and intensity in the classroom spilled over to my social and athletic life. School became an eventful encounter each day in which I was fully engaged. An average kid was being transformed into an “A” student, and my confidence across athletic venues in the Southern Lakes Conference grew. Unlike some teenagers, high school was an enjoyable life-enhancing experience. Later, as an educator, I understood that for too many adolescents there was little to remember fondly from those school days. For the most part, these students were relegated to the edges of school culture and suffered emotionally.
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School life was not a damaging place for everyone. I must wonder about the experience of songwriters Paul Simon and Art Garfinkle, who croon the words “All the crap I learned in high school.” As friend Bill Ward later remarked, “For some of us, EHS was like a prep school.” Two implicit tracks existed.
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Well, yes, but my feet could have been held “closer to the fire” with a guidance counselor. That task fell to Principal Refling, a fine, capable man, who also taught a semester each of economics and sociology and probably was overextended. At least, he wasn’t called on to coach or drive the school bus.
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Sam Kaplan, teacher and coach, departed at the end of the 1955 school year. His leaving was a mystery to most of us. As reported in The Elkhorn Independent, fellow coaches indicated they did not want to work with him for reasons not offered. My hunch is that Sam could be condescending and appear arrogant to those he considered his intellectual inferior.
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Later in life as founder of a high school, I realized that every small school needs a strong academic teacher among its faculty. Mr. Kaplan and a couple other teachers served this purpose at EHS. In retrospect, the school board and superintendent should have protected Sam and nurtured his presence rather than letting him resign. I’d like to think that the school realized its error in “cleaning house” that summer rejuvenating the faculty.
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I embarked on summer work both to earn discretionary dollars for the school year and avoid boredom. Some experiences were hardly memorable and discouraging. One job during the school year as a freshman was a drug store clerk having been invited to do so. I was too immature and had much to learn about life. A second involved field work on a vegetable farm east of town that lasted a couple weeks. Another week or so of polishing metal tubs and sinks soon was abandoned. Both involved arduous mind-numbing work.
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Either as a result of maturing or just finding a good summer job, 1955 brought engaging work. I began employment at a small drive-in a few miles north of town at the juncture of highways 12 and 15. (Highway 12 took drivers from Chicago to Madison, and 15 went northeast to Milwaukee.) We had a modest menu of shakes, soft drinks, hot dogs, fries, and 20-cent “humdinger’ burgers. It was operated by Darrell Wales and Gordon Kennedy, two entrepreneurs who managed a larger truck stop diner across the highway.
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I “managed the store” seven days a week, seven hours at a time with Kennedy’s son Jim, a classmate—alternating daytime and nighttime shifts. The pay was $1 per hour (minimum wage in 1956) and occasionally included a hot-plate special, courtesy and head waitress at the diner. That $49-a-week for three months provided all the income needed for entertainment, a fashionable wardrobe, and a school year of dating. Gratuities, i.e., tips, were non-existent or certainly rare.
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Perhaps, more importantly, I learned lifelong skills in human relations. As mentor Wales explained. “Remember, the customer is always right.” Today, this is encased in more sophisticated language and called “customer-focus marketing.”
The job, however, cut into my baseball playing with the Elkhorn Grays wearing number 6 on the back of my jersey and roaming centerfield. Given my work schedule, I played in ten of the team’s 15 games but batted a reassuring .360 that included several extra baggers and stolen bases. It was a good summer filled with baseball, enjoyable work, golf with boss Wales, and seeing Pat, when she could break from farm chores.
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There were games when I depended upon my mother to shuttle me from work north of town to the baseball diamond not yet having a driver’s license. My 16th birthday wouldn’t be until the end of summer. Obtaining a license was, indeed, an event to celebrate in those days.
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I had been anticipating the occasion for over a year with dad patiently teaching me the skills and requirements of driving a gasoline-powered vehicle. Listening to parents these days talk about their teenage daughter or son reaching “sweet 16”, I find many aren’t interested in this once rite of passage. They don’t care and find escape in addictive video games and tweeter chat.
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On September 2nd, 1955, dad took me to the police station downtown for a written and driver’s test. The encounter, it seems, was typical for the era in a close-knit town. The deputy on duty simply said that he had witnessed me driving around town with dad as co-pilot. Within minutes, I was issued a license and on my way to freedom and mobility.
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I could have benefited from a drivers’ education course, and don’t recommend my experience. Yet, somehow, we joyfully navigated streets, highways, and county roads, in control of two tons of steel, at 60 mph with rare accidents but without seatbelts, airbags, and other safety measures.