How lucky we were to have experienced the wonderful gift Mrs. Rowe gave to us. 
To graduate from FHS we were required to take Social Studies.  However, in the end it did not seem like a requirement.  We wanted to be in her Social Studies class.  Immediately stepping into her class, we knew we were fortunate to have Mrs. Rowe for a teacher.  Social Studies with her taught us how to think and act in a world full of people with very diverse perspectives.  She helped us realize how to interact in the real world.  She prepared us for the future by helping us develop into more mature thinking young adults.  What a gift that was.

Mrs. Felecia Rowe, February 2010

Mrs. Felecia Rowe
A Study In Relevance
by Dan Wolfe, Class of '65, submitted February 2010

Conversation among Fairview High School alumni invariably turns to which teachers were our favorites or the best or had the most impact on who we are as individuals or a generation.  One name is on everyone’s short list: Mrs. Felecia Rowe.

I’ll admit to a mixture of excitement and concern about my get-together with Mrs. Rowe — excited that I was going to meet with one of my favorite teachers and concerned that I would be able to ask relevant questions.  As it turned out, relevance seemed to be the operative word for the day.

OK, while you were sliding your finger along the screen reading the last paragraph, did you pronounce her last name like row, row, row your boat or like ouch I just hurt myself with an “R” in front of it?  Actually she would respond to either. Or is it either?
Down south, in her husband’s family, it was “ow” but as Mr. and Mrs. moved north, they saw it become the long ō sound.  Just so you don’t agonize over it.

Felecia Payne was born in 1929 in Charlottesville, Virginia and for those of you in need of a social studies refresher course, that was a very segregated time and place.  Nonetheless she remembers primary and secondary schooling in her hometown as enjoyable and competitive.

“We wanted to do well and we were encouraged by our teachers.  It was a complete educational experience, including sports, music and after-school activities.”

North Carolina A&T College with its “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” philosophy was the ideal place for young blacks so motivated.  She graduated in 1948 with a baccalaureate degree in Social Studies and promptly returned to her hometown to teach the social sciences at Albemarle Training School.  For consecutive summers while teaching, she attended Boston College for her Masters in Social Sciences.

Why teaching?  Teaching was one of a very few significant career options for black women.  Why Social Studies?  There was a potential to help and a way to explain social differences.  Relevance.

1955 was a “Dear Diary” year for Felecia Payne, as she received her M.A., married James Rowe and followed him to Dayton, Ohio where he would be teaching at Dunbar High School.  She remembers vividly a Sunday drive where they went past a school in the suburbs and her husband told her, “That’s Fairview.  It’s the best school in Dayton.”

It made perfect sense that she submitted her teaching credentials for a position with the same school system.  So when she hadn’t heard anything from the Board of Education by late summer, she took time out from a downtown shopping trip to stop by the Board of Education to see what was what.  The man who called the shots at the time was Mr. Royer and he was puzzled that he had not seen Mrs. Rowe’s paperwork.  He promised that he would find the missing application and get back to her promptly.

True to his word, Mr. Royer called her back that very evening to say that he had just been informed that Fairview’s longtime Social Studies teacher had had a stroke and wouldn’t be returning.  So her second interview went pretty much like, “When can you start?”  Sounds like there was just enough time between the two encounters for Mr. Royer to have had a heart-to-heart with Mr. Longnecker and Miss Folger. 

The strength of the relationship between Mrs. Rowe and the administrations of Mr. Longnecker, Miss Folger and Mr. Feuer to follow, was paramount to her ability to be the teacher we remember.  She still smiles when she thinks of them.  “Mr. Longnecker said he didn’t have to visit the classroom to know how a teacher was doing.  He could tell from the students he talked to every day in the hallway.”

One day in the midst of a pang of frustration and insecurity, Mrs. Rowe complained to her boss that she felt she wasn’t getting across to her students, that she just wasn’t making a difference.  He consoled her, saying that she was, on both counts, but that it might take years for her to realize it.  She didn’t want to wait, but she trusted his counsel and was inclined to believe him.

Fast forward to 1964.  Since my senior year schedule was full of math, science and Miss Herbst, I was obliged to take Civics and Social Problems during the preceding summer.  And I would be less than truthful if I said that I did not come to my first day of Mrs. Rowe’s class without that bit of prejudice embedded in us by our families and our exposure to the world at large.  All that became irrelevant in the first five minutes.  Her intensity and enthusiasm didn’t leave any room for unfounded prejudices. 

So for a summer’s worth of Sundays we had to read The New York Times and be responsible for substantive discussion wherever conversation on Monday would lead.  How’s that for current events?  And through such conversation we would weigh in with opinion on how we felt about various issues: capital punishment, civil rights, politics du jour, you name it.  Once she knew where we stood, she would turn the tables on us.  Pros became cons, cons were now pros and we were obliged to support the position contrary to our stated views.  And she made sure we did it with compelling sincerity and force of conviction.  Just a little something to help us appreciate the opposing perspective.

Social studies?  Sure.  Relevance?  Absolutely.

While young people usually tended to be more accepting of her than adults, she recounted the day when a student, who shall remain nameless, went so far as to say he didn’t think blacks should be moving into white neighborhoods.  He embellished his opinion with the standard rhyme and reasoning of the time: blacks should stay in their place, see what problems it causes, property values plunge, we don’t like them and they don’t like us.  When she then pressed him about how he would feel if she moved into the house next door to him, “Well, that’s not the same,” was the best he could counter.

Game, set, match. 

Race, like all the other biases out there: gender, sexual orientation, wealth, popularity, religion, did not matter in and of itself.  It only became relevant when it affected the way you thought and acted.  That was the final exam.

Her view as a minority served us well again this year in our conversation.  She pointed out that the sizable Jewish community in Dayton View was significant in motivating Mr. Longnecker and Miss Folger to make Fairview the academic powerhouse that it became.  As did all parents, they wanted their children to succeed and passed along the expectation for them to be challenged in high school, get into good colleges and do well once there.  This political lesson from their constituency was not lost on Mr. Longnecker or Miss Folger and they promptly started to translate it into advanced level courses, taught by bright, young teachers. 

She also went on to share another thought from the disadvantaged perspective.  In its rush to improve its college preparatory status, might Fairview have done so to the detriment of students for whom that was not the appropriate path?  Did the vocational, arts, domestic and business programs suffer in the process?  Were young adults unintentionally left behind before it became the catchphrase for the current educational model?

Just as Mrs. Rowe brought change to Fairview in the ‘50s and taught us its relevance in the ‘60s, she continued to embrace it into the ‘70s and beyond.  Drugs and welfare went from being abstracts to a relatively privileged demographic to realities of life in a more urban setting.  Relevance.  She admitted that she wasn’t always able to stay ahead of the curve and sometimes it was left to her students to tell her the facts of life as Fairview evolved.

We barely scratched the surface in our four plus hours of conversation, but I left the encounter a different person than I had been, just like forty-five years before.  In parting, and on behalf of all of us, I took the opportunity to tell her that Mr. Longnecker was right.  She did reach us and she did make a difference.  And she’s still relevant.

Mrs. Dorothy Culp, just the name brings back fond memories. To many FHS alumni she was most certainly one of our favorite faculty. We were fond of her. She was a true role model. Someone you quite simply admired to the utmost. We sensed her wisdom. She was a teacher, a mentor, a counselor and sometimes it felt like she was family, if only wishing could make it so. She is remembered dearly by many of us, not only for her teaching and counseling but for being a such stabilizing influence on us during our youth, just by being herself.

Mrs. Dorothy Culp, December 2009

            Mrs. Dorothy Culp…a very nice lady
by Dan Wolfe, Class of '65, submitted December 2009

If you want to understand why Fairview was such a wonderful place in the 1960s, just get to know Mrs. Culp.

I do, so I did.

At the outset it has to be said that she is all about family and it is nothing more than that passion that allowed her to be the person we remember at Fairview.  Read on and you’ll see what I mean.

We all recall her as the nice middle-aged English teacher…not a mean bone in her body, always had time to talk about something on your mind and always there after school doing those thousands of things that mattered to us…organizing, chaperoning,  assisting…mainly just being there for us.  Like I said, nice.

So when I first started to explore my interest in what made Fairview, Fairview, it became obvious that answers would certainly lie in understanding why some of the faculty and staff are part of that first mental picture that forms in our minds when we indulge ourselves and think back to the time.  And when I was told that Mrs. Culp was still living in the Dayton area, there was no doubt that her 94 years would be able to fill in a lot of blanks in the story.

Look, there she is again, that nice lady.  I didn’t have her as a teacher, did you?  No?  Then why is it everyone remembers Mrs. Culp?   

Patience, patience, my young Padawan Apprentice, Obi-Wan will teach, but you must let the Force surround you.

So quick, do the math, Jeri, when was she born?  Time’s up…1915.  Born in New Bedford, PA and calling Youngstown home, Dorothy Cowden was educated at Wittenberg and got her credentials to teach a diverse curriculum of English, speech, drama, fine arts…you know, stuff.  Back then there wasn’t that brutal specialization attempting to make you an expert in a tiny little niche.  You had a more general skill that students in the real world needed to know…to get where they were going.  Nice.

As luck would have it, she met Howard Merritt Culp while at college and in 1936 they came back to Dayton to help manage the family business….Culp’s Cafeteria….the enterprise that Mr. Culp’s grandfather started as a tiny lunch counter in the Dayton Arcade when it opened in 1902.

Tell me your parents never went to Culp’s Cafeteria and you’ll have to explain to me why you are some sort of foreign spy sent here to infiltrate us and learn all our secrets.

While Mr. Culp was running the business outside the home, Mrs. Culp was taking care of business inside the home, living in Dayton View and raising John (Jack) and Jan.  Part of the daunting task of being a good parent was making sure children got the best possible education.

OK, OK, put your hands down.  I know you see where this is going, but not so fast.  With children at Fairview High, Mrs. Culp become the consummate school parent, helping out there with whatever needed to be done….volunteering to help make all those extra curricular activities happen….safely, with just the right touch of parental supervision…never obtrusive, just there to make sure.   Think Scotchette Mom.

Nice. 

It wasn’t until Jan was graduating in 1963 that Mrs. Culp felt comfortable thinking about becoming a teacher.  That summer she took the necessary courses at Wright State to renew her teaching certificate and off she went to the Board of Education to interview.  When asked if there was a particular school where she wanted to teach, you be surprised to learn that she did not mention Fairview.   Of course she knew Mr. Longnecker, Miss Folger and Mr. Feuer so very well, but felt it might not be right to presume on those relationships built as a parent, now as a teacher.

Think about that.  She was happy to go wherever the Board wanted to send her. And while it might be such an idyllic fairy tale ending to think how wonderful it was that she was placed at Fairview that very year, perhaps we know better.  Mr. Longnecker before her and now Miss Folger were so established as icons of excellence in the Dayton Public Schools going back to the early ‘20s, that it would be naïve to think that Miss Folger would ever let someone like Mrs. Culp end up anywhere but Fairview. 

Go ahead and tell me that once that interview downtown was over, the phone didn’t ring in the office at Fairview.  Can you say fait accompli?    

In the fall she started teaching English to sophomores and juniors.  It was the usual mix of grammar, rhetoric, composition and literature what we all still remember from our nightmares.  Remember seeing papers come back with two grades at the top…one for form and one for content? 

Sorry, but I had to bring that up.  Why should I be the only one to run screaming from the room?

Then it happened…November 22, 1963.  When Miss Folger and Mr. Feuer got the word over the phone about what was happening in Dallas, they asked Mrs. Fahner and a lady who  they trusted implicitly to give them good counsel, to come to the office.  That would be our Mrs. Culp.  There was discussion…whether to tell and then how to tell…and then with the four of them all in the little room off Miss Herbst’s class there was that ominous click of the PA system that froze a moment in time for us all…just after 1 o’clock.    

There was concern over what to say and how to deal with it.  Of course there was.  Quickly a consensus was formed that the students would be told the story as it was unfolding and then they would be sent directly home, but in a staggered fashion to minimize any hysteria that might come from too many being in the hallways at once.  With that plan in hand it was decided that it should be the strong voice of a man to try to offer some reassurance to students and teachers alike who could never be prepared to deal with what they were about to hear.

Mrs. Culp related the story how Mr. Feuer was uncertain what to say and with trembling hand, took the microphone.  Then he felt a wonderful feeling of calm that comes from knowing how important it is to say what needs to be said…the right thing in the right way.  And he did.

It wasn’t long after that that Miss Folger approached Mrs. Culp with a request.  Miss Folger, or as she was known to the rest of the staff, Miss Folger, wanted help organizing the myriad special projects and events that dotted the year.  And knowing how involved Mrs. Culp had been as a parent, making sure those events came off without a hitch, it was natural to hope that she would once again be able to rescue Miss Folger and free her to ensure that Fairview was staying the course of academic excellence that was now in full bloom.

Remember College Night?  Good grief!  Fairview had such a reputation that schools from the East made it a point to come here to talk with the students.  Your don’t think those things just happened without hundreds of hours of planning, phoning, letter writing, and begging, pleading and calling-in-favors, do you?   And there was Career Night with the same sort of formula.  Bring in professionals from every imaginable career field to give short summaries of what they do for a living and then field questions.  And it was good stuff…not some sort of idealized description of the jobs, but what sort of work was done, day in and day out.  These mega-projects truly required a level of intense planning and organization if the event was to happen according to expectation.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg.  There were events, meetings, projects, social functions, community efforts, and traditions that needed a practiced hand to guide them from just being someone’s bright idea to successful completion.  She even was in charge of making sure that if a teacher had to make a meeting or appointment during school, someone else would be asked/told to fill in for them…even if it meant losing their free time between classes. 

Talk to Mrs. Culp about the very first Earth Day.  Guess where.  Guess who.

But pressures from the Board of Education didn’t allow Mrs. Culp to divest herself of her teaching duties.  When Miss Folger retired, she continued wearing both hats for Mr. Feuer.  In the early ‘70s it was being noticed that students no longer had the reading skills to handle the level of courses available at Fairview, so who do you think was part of the effort to assess reading and comprehension levels and then start the necessary remedial teaching to deal with the problem?

Bingo…that nice lady, Mrs. Culp.

That’s exactly what she was doing in the middle of the 76-77 school year when once again her family needed her.  She had to take what she hoped would be only an extended leave of absence to deal with a marked decline in the health of one of her parents and one of her husband’s.  That period of care giving did not allow her to return to teaching.

There was never any decision to be made.  It was family that got her here to us and it would be family that called her away after thirteen years.

In chatting with Mrs. Culp I learned so much about Fairview…things that only now make sense to me in the light of her explanation….factual and anecdotal.  I now have a much better sense of what drove the excellence of which we were the beneficiaries…and in time we will endeavor to help you understand it more fully.  We all deserve to know why we are who we are.

Nice.

Ok, so maybe some of us did not participate in Mr. Howard Schumacher's Physics II class. Certainly by the name of the class we knew it had to be taught by someone very intelligent. We knew the students taking the course were on the top of the list scholastically and probably taking home 4.5's on their report cards. Mr. Schumacher was an example of one of Fairview's finest faculty members and very importantly, we knew if we had excelled in the prerequisites, his class would have been available to us. The opportunity was there. If you did not meet Mr. Schumacher during your years at FHS, please meet him now.

Mr. Howard Schumacher

Icing on the Cake
by Dan Wolfe, Class of '65, submitted December 2009

If Algebra taught us to quantify our world in terms of numerical relationships, and basic Physics used that math to generate models for the natural, physical world, then accelerated Physics II with Mr. Howard Schumacher took those skills to yet another level…allowing us to synthesize how the real world, independent of its biology and chemistry, reacts to changes.

That’s usually all it takes to clear out the classroom and send everyone scrambling to change their schedule.

In order to take the class, you needed to have four years of high school/college math under your belt.  That means Calculus, boys and girls…instantaneous rates of change, areas under curves…fun and games.  Since you needed that skill set as a prerequisite for the class, you had to have either started Algebra back in the eighth grade or gotten ahead of the curve by ruining at least one perfectly good summer.

As you might imagine, the classes were small, even tiny and populated with students who really wanted to be there.  No one had to take Physics II and if you weren’t fascinated by trying to understand how we relate to the physical world, you didn’t have any business being there.  Classes were loosely structured to allow for the flexibility to study whatever seemed to be a good fit.  How’s that for a lesson plan?

And who better to teach a select bunch of the best and brightest than someone who was himself the best of both worlds…teacher and physicist? 

“That’s a rhetorical question, right Miss Herbst?”

Howard Schumacher was born right here in Dayton in 1934 and attended Kaiser High School.  In retrospect he considers the experience to have been quite good.  Then it was on to U of D for his B.S. in Education with a concentration in math.  No surprise there.  Back then that was quite enough education to land a job teaching…starting at Fairborn High School.  While there he received a grant to pursue his Masters in Physics, so for three consecutive summers it was off to The College of William & Mary in Virginia.

Physics is all about context.  We don’t live in a vacuum.  We are surrounded by forces that interact with us and change our “resultant vector.”  You need to understand the late ‘50s and early ‘60s…the early days of the space race.  Sputnik in 1957 caught the military-industrial complex off guard and started a crisis driven rush to grab the brass ring.  Supremacy in math and science seemed to be the way to do that.  The generation of our parents understood that we couldn’t win by resting on our Manhattan Project laurels.  It would take another generation of committed and impassioned scientists, teachers and students alike, to ensure success.  And as Howard Schumacher was the immediate beneficiary of that thinking by being fast-tracked to teaching high-powered science, students at Fairview were the end game winners in the strategic contest of “might makes right.”

In 1963 while living in the Ft. McKinley area, he became aware that Mr. Farnlacher, FHS’s very fine Physics teacher, was planning to retire.  He knew Fairview had a splendid reputation and was well underway in putting together a “dream cadre” of teachers who were as good at their area of expertise as they were good at being educators.

As fate would have it, he had something of an “in” on the job since he had done his student teaching at Fairview and knew Mr. Longnecker and Miss Folger well enough to know what mattered the most to them.  I can’t imagine that it hurt to be able to do some name-dropping when he interviewed for Physics Guru downtown at the Board of Education. 

Similarly, you have to wonder if Miss Folger had the office bugged or if she had to wait for the verbatim interview, ink still wet, to be hand-carried for her review.  In any case, I’m sure that consenting adults had their way.  Win-win is what they call it these days.

So in 1963 he started teaching Chemistry and Physics at Fairview High School.  He loved it and he was good at it.  In only one year he was given free reign to start the second year of Physics as part of the “advanced and enriched” program.  Support from downtown wasn’t a problem either.  First year Physics just needed the standard demonstration equipment so that each student could observe and perhaps replicate a phenomenon.  The equipment needed for this new regimen had to allow the students to go wherever the science took them.  It needed to be real laboratory equipment, not just “for show.”

Mr. Schumacher was good at going downtown, explaining the need and justifying the expense.  And the desired equipment followed.  It was as if Nikita Khrushchev himself had signed the check. 

This was science.  It took abstracts like exponents and logarithms from Algebra and gave them context.  These constructs live in nature, so they live in Physics.  When you derive a formula right along with your teacher in a lab, based on what you actually observe, the math comes alive.  It becomes relevant.  You no longer need to memorize the relationships; you only need to re-think the experience in the lab and visualize how they came to be.  Slide rules and calculators came in handy, but they didn’t supply the answers.  Those came from your brain and your imagination.

Mr. Schumacher knew all too well that he needed to retain Miss Folger’s support.  While she may not have understood the intricacies of the science, she knew good results when she saw them.  The SATs don’t lie and she knew understanding when she saw it.  Throw in enthusiasm and fascination and you have education.

“She was very aware of what we were doing.  She respected teacher integrity and let us follow our own lead.  And the respect worked both ways.  We understood what a privilege it was to teach our own way and we didn’t take advantage of the trust.  There was no micro-managing and no need for it.”

Go ahead.  Read that last quote again and think about how groundbreaking that must have been in education.  You might not have taken science with Mr. Schumacher, but you benefitted, even if only indirectly, from that sense of trust that worked in both directions.

“Were you ever asked questions that you couldn’t answer?”

“Sure and that was the absolute best.  I would just say I did not know the answer, but I would make it a point to find out and get back with something.  That was very important.  Every question had to matter because understanding mattered.  Or sometimes I would ask how we might go about finding out the answer together.  Both approaches worked well.  It was all about understanding.”

A student not knowing an answer was just as valid as knowing the correct response.  Both were opportunities to explore an alternative.  Quite often, Physics isn’t as black and white as you might think.  Since Nature is all about gray, you better be very careful before you say anything is wrong. 

No always.  No never.

So why does someone who has science and education credentials as long as your arm, choose to teach Physics at a suburban high school?  Hopefully by this time, that’s another rhetorical question.

I could tell you why Mr. Schumacher left Fairview and why he doesn’t teach anymore, but where’s the good in answers that don’t come from sound research founded in empirical science? 

I will tell you that he has the same passion and enthusiasm for what he does now as when he was in the classroom. 

And the next time someone tells you that “It’s not rocket science,” take a moment to think how exciting it might be if it were.  Mr. Schumacher would.

Pat Jessee has written beautifully about Fairview's much admired art teacher. Miss Julia Sharkey was a favorite of many students and Pat expresses why perfectly. Miss Sharkey left a lasting impression. She seemed to love teaching art and helped us explore all the art she could possibly bring to us. She brought out the best in her students. Thank you Pat for making Miss Sharkey step right off the page!

Miss Julia Sharkey, photo from Fairview 1966 Class Yearbook

Thinking About the Arts
by Pat Jessee, Class of '66, submitted November 2009

No matter where or when I am making or teaching art, Ms. Sharkey is there. She had numerous funny things she would do when she was excited about something class members did. I can hear her voice cascading, “Wonderfulwonderfulwonderful” with her hands clasping together right up under her chin — hands resting on her heart. When you heard that, you would giggle — but it did give you a lift and as it turns out it lasted.

I do recall wondering, “could it be true that Julia Sharkey had been a tennis pro?” Many students thought it was unlikely because she did not seem to be the athletic type. I know I was always tickled when she would stoop over to pick something up off the floor — it was a sight etched into my memory — and to my horror, I find myself often doing it now occasionally — and I always straighten up — with a hard laugh and shake my head and say, “OH NO!”   She had been a tennis enthusiast in her day but I am so thankful the arts netted her instead and became her racket.

As I went off to the Dayton Art Institute and then graduate school at Tulane University in New Orleans, I had no idea of how really unique and special our arts training had been. Really, now I can say it was truly full of variation that most areas of the east coast did not have at those grade levels. Example: Ms. S. had a floor loom for weaving in her small back room off the regular class area. When we got to experience weaving it was so special and it has served me well as a professional arts administrator to have had so many varied art experiences enabling me to understand and talk about various art mediums with artists or funders. Recently I was doing research for a fiber arts studio and I was so comfortable with the idea starting from this early experience with her. I do believe that loom was hers although I do not know that for a fact — I’ll later explain how I came to that conclusion*.



Mr. Norman Feuer was Principal of Fairview High School from 1967 - 1974. Many of us, of course, remember him as Assistant Principal. He was always ready to greet us as we walked in the main hallway of FHS. Dan Wolfe was inspired, after meeting with Mr. Feuer on December 9, 2009, to write a story which brings back important memories about Mr. Feuer and how he helped create an atmosphere at Fairview for personsal growth and excellence in education. Thank you Dan.

Mr. Norman Feuer pictured at his home in Columbus, Ohio on December 9, 2009

Mr. Norman Feuer
by Dan Wolfe, Class of '65, submitted December 2009

So, the gods lived on Olympus, right?  If that’s the case, they worked in Fairview’s first floor offices, just north of 3rd and Main.
 
I’m just old enough to remember Mr. Longnecker, started teaching in 1921 and became principal of the newly built Fairview High School in 1929.  You didn’t speak to him, other than to smile, say a perfunctory greeting and answer whatever question was posed…simply and directly…making sure to include the word “sir” at least twice in each sentence.  It was more like agreeing with him than actually answering the question.
 
When he retired at the end of the 1960-61 school year, Miss Folger took over and with seamless continuity continued the policies that the two of them had developed over the preceding 40+ years.  And why would you change?  If it works…..
 
But clearly Mr. Longnecker’s departure left a vacancy in the administration and who better to fill it than a bright young Dayton boy, Norman Feuer.  There is no doubt in my mind that back in the early 50’s Mr. L and Miss F recruited Mr. Feuer, fresh from a Bachelors Degree at OU and a Masters at Miami of Ohio, to teach science…all the while knowing that they would not be there forever and wanting to make sure that the seeds of good stewardship were planted, nourished and well on their way to flourishing before they left.
 
My first recollections of Mr. Feuer were as a precocious eighth grade brat, coming up from Fairview Elementary to take a course during a ninety minute lunch period.  My parents knew Mr. Longnecker since my sister Lois and brother John had preceded me at Fairview.  That would be as in, “Oh dear God, no.  Please tell me it’s not another Wolfe.”   On my behalf they got permission from Mr. Longnecker that if, on occasion, I got to the high school early, would he mind if I sat in on whatever classes caught my fancy…in the back…no interruptions...just a fly on the wall?  Of course, the gentleman was happy to oblige, since he was all about getting the most out of school.
 
Ever since I tried unsuccessfully to burn down the family’s house with my chemistry set, I had been fascinated with science…all science...any science...and since there happened to be a General Science class immediately next door to the class I was there to attend, I snuck in one day in September of 1960.  Imagine what it was like to be an impressionable 12-year-old child learning about bits of chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, and biology.  Heady stuff.
 
Teaching that class was Mr. Feuer.  At first glance he seemed a bit puzzled, but didn’t miss a beat.  Ten minutes later, as the class ended, he stopped me on my way out and asked if I might be Dan Wolfe.  I confessed to the sin and he acknowledged that Mr. Longnecker had mentioned at a staff meeting that some tiny FES student might be ducking his head into classes on one side or the other of lunchtime.
 
Wow, name recognition…couldn’t that at least wait until my first detention next year?
 
After that I became a regular.  Mr. Feuer enjoyed teaching.  His eyes sparkled and I don’t mean that as a figure of speech.  He took General Science, usually an entry-level freshman course and gave it life.  There was a textbook, not one of the Dayton Board of Education’s best efforts as I recall, but it only served as a springboard for discussion.  I would sit quietly and absorb…almost not even wanting to blink for fear of missing something.  This went on several days a week well into the year…just little hit-and-miss 10-15 minute visitations as time allowed.
 
Then one day it happened.  He was asking the class a question and seemed a bit frustrated that no one was raising a hand.  The subject was Cosmology...what the universe was, how it started and where it was going.  Keep in mind this was before The Big Bang was much more than a sparkle in physicists’ eyes.  Why we hadn’t gone much beyond the Milky Way being pretty much all there was.  As if to send that message to the class, he called on me.  Me?  Somehow OMG does not begin to express my feeling of complete shock and disbelief.   
 
I guess he knew I was fascinated with the subject.  He took quite a chance asking me the question…investing considerable political capital…hoping that I would have the correct answer…and telling the class, not so subtly, that if an 8th grader knew, why didn’t they.
 
“Alpha Centauri?”
 
No, Dan, it’s not necessary to put the answer in the form of a question.
 
Exhale.
 
“Thank you, Dan.”
 
The next year I took Biology from Mr. Vance and while it was fascinating, I missed the magic of learning science from someone who was genuinely thrilled to be teaching it.  Mr. Feuer would often ask questions that he didn’t even want students to answer.  He would ask, smile and then just leave them out there…letting the following conversation surround you with information…never bothering to make it back to the question since the answer was now all too obvious.
 
That was teaching.
 
That was education.
 
That was Fairview High School.
 
Thank you, Mr. Feuer.

The End

I visited Mr. Feuer and his wife, Barbara, at their home in Columbus, Ohio on December, 9, 2009.  He is 83 years old and in decent health.  It would be less than truthful to say that his memory of his years at Fairview is good.  He struggles to remember specifics.  What he does know is that his time at Fairview was special and special people made it that way.
 
“Other schools could only try to compare themselves to us.”
 
And yes…his eyes still sparkle when he says it.

Dan Wolfe, class of '65, was fortunate enough to spend an afternoon with Mr. Bruggeman. They toured Fairview together. Take time to read this engaging story. We would like to thank Mr. Bruggeman for sharing his thoughts about teaching with us and for all his memorable years at FHS. He was a role model many of us gladly remember and a perfect example of one of Fairview's finest faculty members. He cared about teaching and about us.  Note that the sparkle in Mr. Bruggeman's eyes and that large warm generous smile are still there.

Mr. and Mrs. Bruggeman pictured at their home of over fifty years in Dayton, Ohio on October 1, 2009.

Maybe You Can Go Home
by Dan Wolfe, Class of '65, submitted October 2009

“Call me Bob.”
 
“I don’t think I can.”
 
That’s how my first face-to-face conversation in 45 years with Mr. Bruggeman started.   I didn’t explain and he didn’t ask why.  Something about respect, I’m sure.
 
Rewind to the first day of the 8th grade.  Having walked from FES, Jim Swank, Susan Fisher, Peggy Miller, Bart Schwartz and I were sitting in Room 206, of Fairview High School to take first year Latin.  As was obligatory in the day, the teacher wrote his name on the chalk board.  But after he printed it with his left hand, he wrote it in cursive with his right hand.  Then he did the same with his left hand.  Then both hands at the same time.  Then backwards.
 
Such sensory overload would be my constant companion for the next three years.  Mr. Bruggeman didn’t just teach us Latin, he imbued us with an appreciation for language and communication.  To a person, we learned as much English as we did Latin.  Every day he’d go off on tangents to explain the derivation of a word, the origin of a cliché or idiom, how the connotative value of a word came to be or how the announcer on Channel 2 had butchered the mother tongue the evening before during the 6 o’clock news.
 
Who knew learning could be fun without Muppets?  Not a rhetorical question, since the answer was Winnie the Pooh.  Make that Winnie ille Pu.  Hot off the presses, the Latin translation became our textbook.  The tortures of ablative absolutes and passive paraphrastics faded to insignificance in the realm of Pooh Corner.  In any case it sure beat, “Omnia Galia in tres partes divisa est.”  Ad nauseum.
 
Fast forward to 2008.  Find stack of ancient k-to-8 class pictures…start to name the kids I could remember…Google Fairview…meet Nancy Marker Steinert, Class of '66…and the next thing I knew millions of unused brain cells that hadn’t seen service since childhood were being called up for active duty.  But as one thing will inevitably lead to another I started thinking about the teacher who had had the greatest impact on who I am…Mr. Bruggeman.  A quick trip to the ’65 yearbook confirmed my recollection….almost no hair, 5 o’clock shadow and that you-won’t-know-the-answer-to-my-next-question smile.
 
Mr. Bruggeman.  That was all the caption said.  Why then was I remembering that his name was Robert Joseph Bruggeman?  I could barely remember what I had for breakfast today and it wasn’t like I ever referred to him by his given name.
 
Would he still be alive?  Where would he be living?  Would he have any interesting opening a dialogue?  Would he remember me?  And what did I have for breakfast this morning?
 
With expectations diminished by pragmatism I typed his name into the search engine.  Nothing.  Then on to whitepages.com and there it was…Robert Joseph Bruggeman…complete with a phone number and Dayton address.  In no time at all I was staring at a blank Microsoft Word screen…wanting to compose an elegantly concise query as to whether this particular Robert Joseph Bruggeman had been a teacher at FHS in the 1960s.  Instantly there was a fear that he would open my letter, start to read it, spot some error in syntax, put a B- at the top and return it to me.
 
Into the mail it went and two days later the phone rang.  “It’s Mr. Bruggeman,” said the wifie.  I initially thought it would be A Mr. Bruggeman just calling to say that he wasn’t the one I was looking for.  I wasn’t ready for it to be The Mr. Bruggeman.  I didn’t have any prepared witty remarks…no script of engaging questions.
 
“Mr. Bruggeman?”
 
“Call me Bob.”
 
And this is where I came in.  Thirty minutes and 45 years later we agreed to get together to fill in the blanks, compare notes and maybe accomplish some revisionist history.  In the week between our phone call and the visit I thought a lot about what I wanted the meeting to be.  I even went so far as to jot down notes of questions I should ask.  I didn’t want there to be any dreadful lulls of silence typical of reunion encounters…when all the recollections have been exhausted and, as there is no longer any common thread, there is nothing more to say.
 
On the drive from Columbus to Dayton I had the opportunity to have a good talk with myself.  Lose the notes and don’t have any expectations whatsoever.  Let the conversation go where it does.   Enjoy the ride.  Good advice, Dan.
 
Mr. Bruggeman’s wife of almost 60 years, Jamie, was a good buffer helping us work through some initial hesitation about how to begin, but soon the floodgates opened.  He had been teaching Latin at Beavercreek when he was “recruited” to Fairview in 1958.  FHS, under the guidance of Mr. Longnecker and Miss Folger, needed to offer Latin if she were to be the Mecca for Dayton View’s best and brightest.
 
Our conversation was a delightful mix of memories and opportunities to discuss how language and communication continue to evolve.  Back in 1960 I remember him telling us that it didn’t matter what was correct.  If the majority spoke or wrote something “incorrect,” it became the new correct.  This time around he said that communication is determined by the listener, not the speaker.  Same message, different words.
 
We may not like e-speak, but get over it, right?  Pretty much.
 
During lunch at Bob Evans I asked Mr. Bruggeman if he would be interested in a trip to Fairview.  I hadn’t planned it; it just seemed right.  He wasted little time in saying that he’d enjoy that, as he had not been there since the early ‘80s.
 
Parking in his favorite spot outside what I remember as the Chemistry and Physics classrooms, we entered via the door where the language labs had been, hung a left, then left again at the cafeteria…heading for the office to introduce ourselves.
 
The staff of what is now the Edison preK-8 School at Fairview was most cordial in sending us off to the principal’s office...the room we remember as the teachers’ lounge.  Did I detect a hint of lingering tobacco smoke smell?  Ms. Antoinette Adkins was happy to chat with us for a while before arranging for one of the custodial staff to take us on a tour.  Given our emeritus status, nothing was off-limits and we were allowed access to locked classrooms, the kitchen, backstage…even areas currently boarded-up, like the wing where the shop classes and gym used to be.
 
Did the $.35 plate lunch include milk? 
 
We were both somewhat subdued driving back across town to the Bruggeman home.  It was unspoken that the significance of our shared Fairview experience was the people and their interactions, yet that was conflicted with the reality that so many memories would be losing their brink-and-mortar home to demolition, most likely after this school year.
 
We both enjoyed the visit greatly and now that we have the nostalgia out of the way, we will continue to get together via letters, phone calls and visits to keep the relationship growing…as any good teacher/student bond does.
 
Can you go home?   Not sure.  I did, but I was lucky.  I guess it’s all about expectations.
 
And no, he’ll never be “Bob” to me, but at least I’m not “Danny” any more.

Dan Wolfe and Mr. Bruggeman on October 1, 2009

The website would like to feature your thoughts, memories or stories about faculty and staff at FHS. Please make your written submissions in the form of an email, Word doc or pdf file and photos as jpg files. To submit your items, please contact Jeri Jones Bland by using the "66 Class Directory" page. You may also contact anyone on the website committee by using the "Contact  Us" page.

For anyone interested, contact information for the principal at
Edison PreK to 8 at Fairview is:
Ms. Antoinette Adkins
937/542-4540
aadkins@dps.k12.oh.us 8AM to 3PM 
Before visiting the school, please call to pre-arrange.