GREAT TEACHERS…
I may be Distinguished with both the service and smallbore rifle but I cannot say that I was a distinguished scholar in high school. Both of my high performing daughters finished 12th grade in the top percent or two of their classes and I told them with that we shared that distinction of percentage. However, while they were at the top of their class I was at the other end. They thought I was kidding until I produced a yellowed and tattered photocopy of my high school transcript.
If it were not for George Gregory, Harry Santangello, and Maura Sullivan I might still be stalking the halls of New London High School in search of the 16 credits required for graduation. That triumvirate of “old school” school teachers cajoled and shamed me into applying myself enough to graduate.
Mr. Gregory was my rifle coach for four years and kept me on the straight and narrow with his wise insight.
Mr. Santangello was my drafting teacher and encouraged me at every turn. Years later I found myself in the odd, and slightly uncomfortable position, of being Mr. Santangello’s supervisor while he kept himself busy and picked up a few dollars to supplement his pension by substituting at the school in which I taught.
Miss Sullivan suffered me for three years as I took four of her courses; Ancient History, Europe in the Middle Ages, Modern European History and United States History.
While Coach Gregory and Mr. Santangello were avuncular Miss Sullivan was the opposite side of the coin. Stern and demanding she never let up on me. Within a few weeks of the start of my sophomore year she stopped me on the way out of the door to lunch and bade me to sit in the straight backed wooden chair next to her desk which, under the circumstances, reminded me of the electric chair.
“Mr. Rocketto, you have a good mind.” she said. I perked up because I had gotten far on adolescent charm and an amazing storehouse of trivia. I breathed a mental sigh of relief thinking that I had pulled the wool over the eyes of this flinty old maid and was on my way to charming her into a gentlemanly C.
I was quickly disabused of that notion, “But you are lazy, sloppy and disorganized. I do not tolerate academic slovenliness or wasted potential. You will change your ways or else. Should you continue on your present course you will find yourself in durance vile. Do you understand? Now get on your way and see that we do not have to have another one of these meetings.”
