Mark Bennett
The Tribune-Star
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Kickball changed lives at Prairieton Elementary School.
Some kids couldn’t hit a baseball, even if they were swinging an ironing board. Some couldn’t make one free throw in a hundred tries. Others jumped rope as if they were falling down stairs.
Almost anybody can kick, though. One swift kick could launch one of those bouncy, red, rubber P.E. balls like a rocket into the tree in deep center field. Ordinary children felt like miniature Mickey Mantles.
Larry Stuckey was our phys-ed teacher then, in the late 1960s and early ’70s. He’s still teaching fitness to elementary-schoolers, and still using kickball and a few other “old school” activities to help keep youngsters in shape.
“I enjoy them, and the kids enjoy them,” said Stuckey.
More than 25,000 kids, in fact.
Actually, Stuckey’s all-time pupil roster probably tops 30,000. He’s served as Dixie Bee Elementary’s one and only phys-ed teacher since the school opened in February 1971. Mika Cassell, Dixie Bee’s principal, figures Stuckey has taught approximately 25,000 youngsters — every kid who ever attended the school — in the past 39 years. But Stuckey also taught at Calumet City, Ill., (in 1964-65) and then at a dozen Vigo County schools, including Prairieton, before settling in permanently at Dixie Bee.
That’s a lot of kickball players.
The current school year, though, will be his last in a full-time role. Stuckey is one of 93 teachers and administrators who accepted an early retirement package offered by the Vigo County School Corp. to cut the district budget and cope with declining state revenue. His absence will be felt. His last month on the job is “a very sentimental” moment for longtime Dixie Bee staffers, said Cassell, who — by the way — was one of Stuckey’s pupils at Davis Park Elementary in 1967.
A group of those teachers initiated the idea of naming the Dixie Bee gym in Stuckey’s honor, Cassell explained.
In a way, some of the school’s youngest students had already done that.
Years ago, when kindergartners participated in phys-ed — they no longer do — their teachers often prepared them by saying, “OK, kids, get ready — we’re going to gym,” recalled Stuckey, now 67. “And they’d come into the gym and go, ‘Hi, Jim. How are you?’ So I was Jim to them.”
There won’t be any confusion now. On Monday, the School Board officially labeled the building Larry E. Stuckey Gymnasium. It’s a fitting tribute for a man who Cassell called “a positive role model, father figure and friend to every child under his instruction.”
Calmness, she added, is part of Stuckey’s character. A couple dozen 9-year-olds can bring boundless energy to his class. With patience and a steady voice, Stuckey manages to give them a full workout that ends with smiles. “Mister Stuckey has such a nice, easygoing personality,” Cassell said. “I’ve personally never seen him raise his voice. And he treats everybody the same.”
Indeed, Stuckey still treats his current pupils to some of the same games he used when their parents and grandparents (sorry, Larry) were in his classes. Some had to be modified for safety reasons. Stuckey’s kids now play “roll-and-dodge” instead of straight-up dodgeball. But kickball remains a popular mainstay.
“I don’t think the college people want us playing kickball,” Stuckey said, because the kids stand idle too much. “But now I see they have adult leagues for kickball. So they must enjoy it.”
Fun, thank goodness, is a key ingredient in Stuckey’s fitness instruction. Without some enjoyment, most of us stop exercising as we grow up. Childhood obesity is a nationwide problem, with about 32 percent of kids and adolescents in America considered overweight, according to a task force headed by first lady Michelle Obama. Gym teachers are battling a change in young people’s lifestyles.
“They’re not as active as they used to be,” Stuckey said, “because they’re playing video games and all of that.”
At Dixie Bee, the kids in grades 1, 2 and 3 participate in phys-ed during two 25-minute sessions per week. The fourth- and fifth-graders take gym once a week for 40 minutes.
The school day begins with “Mister Stuckey’s Spotlight,” an idea of Cassell’s to capitalize on Stuckey’s penchant for telling jokes. Stuckey reads the opening of a joke over the school’s intercom, and challenges the students to find the punchline during the day. The winner gets his or her name announced, along with their answer. (Stuckey never runs out. He still guides school visitors to the library to see a dictionary in which “everything begins with an E.” Of course, that word — “everything” — begins with an E.)
His days don’t end after the bell rings. Stuckey also serves as assistant coach of the Terre Haute South Vigo High School girls basketball team, a role he’s filled since 1991. He’d coached basketball at Deming, Glenn, Otter Creek and Sarah Scott before that. He also served as assistant coach of South’s girls tennis team. The two South jobs helped Stuckey earn a rare distinction for a Vigo County coach.
“I was pretty lucky there,” he said, because “I’ve got two state championship rings.” The Braves won the tennis title in 2001 and the basketball Class 4A crown in 2002. (He intends to continue serving as basketball assistant coach.)
He’s also taught driver’s ed at South, where his daughter, Cara, also teaches math. “A student asked me, ‘Mister Stuckey, is the math teacher your granddaughter?’” he remembered, with a laugh. “I don’t need that.”
Stuckey and his wife of 27 years, Dianne, have four children total. Stuckey and Dianne met after Larry lost his first wife, Beth, to pancreatic cancer.
Dianne said her husband seemed surprised when he was told about Dixie Bee naming its gym after him, especially as he considered others who’d been similarly honored. “He said, ‘Those guys were exceptional people,’” Dianne recalled, with a chuckle. “And I said, ‘Well, Stuckey, you’re no slug.’”
Stuckey participated in basketball, baseball and track at Riley High School, but didn’t make the basketball squad when he began his college career at Indiana State. But he kept active by coaching, teaching and officiating. Recently, a procedure on his heart ramped up Stuckey’s own fitness regimen. “I do more walking than I ever used to,” he said.
He also plans to play more golf, something his daughter does rather well. (Cara is a nine-time women’s city champ.) Stuckey may even fill in as a substitute gym teacher, now and then.
“I’m going to miss those kids,” Stuckey said, “but I’ve had a good run. It’s time to move on.”
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
