TERRE HAUTE —
It was with a cup of coffee and a newspaper in my hands a few Mondays ago that I discovered that Mr. Hapenny had died. I sat in the quiet of my classroom, for it was an hour before my students were to walk through the door, and I wished I had thanked him for being the teacher that he was.
Mr. Hapenny was 79 when he passed, and his obituary led me to believe that he’d led a good and full life, one in which nothing important was left out. My life, however, would have been considerably different had I never known him…
Charles Hapenny was my fifth-grade teacher at Otter Creek Elementary School. I thought he was an old man in those days, but if I have done my math correctly (it was he who told me not to add and subtract with my tongue sticking out of my mouth), he was only 35 or so then. To put it mildly, he was tough. I don’t just mean that he was a stickler for accuracy and attention — which he most certainly was — but that he clearly believed that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. In my case, he spared little, and I was the better for it.
Our classroom was at the end of a long, dim hallway at OC. A series of closets ran along the back of the room with doors made of green pegboard — more on those later. A huge heating unit sat along the south wall, its comforting blower warming our red cheeks and chilly hands after cold recesses. Mr. Hapenny’s desk sat near that heater; my desk was directly across from his.
My mother thought that Mr. Hapenny was the best thing to ever happen to me, and she may have been right. She saw to it that I was enrolled in his class, for it was obvious that I was not exactly preparing myself for an Ivy League school in those days. Oh, I liked to read, and I liked to learn new things, but I liked to read what I wanted to read, and I wanted to learn what I wanted to learn. Mr. Hapenny had a slightly different agenda.
I was stubborn. For most of the first half of the year, I thought that he’d crack before I would. I wasn’t mean; I wasn’t a bully or destructive. I daydreamed a lot and liked to draw World War II battle scenes in my notebooks. I thought it would be nice if Mr. Hapenny would let me sleep or read near that homey warm heater while everyone else went about their business in the early afternoons; they wouldn’t have disturbed me, really. I enjoyed history and geography, and I liked to cut and paste construction paper into destroyers and aircraft carriers and maps, but I had little use for math and handwriting and grammar.
It’s odd what I’ve recalled in these days, some 45 years or so later. I remember that Mr. Hapenny almost exclusively wore white shirts and narrow ties. He had a crew cut, and after he’d told our class that he’d been in the military, I just knew that if any of my teachers had been involved in secret missions and espionage and hostage rescues, he’d have been the one. I couldn’t imagine a North Korean soldier giving Mr. Hapenny any lip at all; I certainly wasn’t going to.
He must have used his boot camp training as inspiration for the various methods of punishment he used with me, and in today’s school culture, Mr. Hapenny probably would have been called onto the carpet, but my parents believed that he was acting in my best interest. He was doing what he had to do to get my attention; I can see that now. It worked, and although in those days I suspected he was on my mom’s payroll, receiving weekly installments toward what would be my final immolation, I began to understand something that I could have realized a whole lot earlier in fifth grade: He just wanted me to learn.
His punition came in numerous forms. For instance, when it became obvious to Mr. Hapenny that I wasn’t paying attention to his instruction one afternoon (I was probably sharing a drawing with Marilee Moore), he walked to my desk, asked me to stand, then dragged desk and chair (They were all in one piece then, remember?) into one of those walk-in closets. He told me very firmly that when I decided to act like a student, I could rejoin the class. And with that said, he slid the door closed, leaving me in pin-holed darkness among the coats and shoes and empty lunchboxes, his muffled voice still audible enough to hear that we were moving on to our science books.
More than a disciplinarian, however, the man knew how to teach, and despite the time I spent in the hall sitting in a chair with my head between my knees — another oldie, but a goodie — or awaiting the occasional paddling (yes, we are talking about the fear of God here), I knew that if he hadn’t cared about me, he’d have given up. Thankfully, he didn’t.
Eventually, Mr. Hapenny found the key. He knew I loved to read, and in those days, we had a book cart filled with multi-colored readers in our room; a student could move from one color of book to the next as he or she reached a new reading comprehension level. I remember that one day he called me to his desk (I went there swearing I hadn’t done anything), and he told me that not only was I reading at a high level, but also that he was sure I could read every book at every level before the year was out. I answered the challenge, and even though we still had an occasional rough spot in our relationship (there was a notorious incident involving a fight during a game of checkers involving Ronnie Archer and Mark Miller), I wanted to do my best for him from that moment on.
I can hardly claim I went on to be a Rhodes Scholar. I wandered and strayed, and still had a few adjustments and tweaks to make in junior high school academics, but I think Mr. Hapenny did as much to set me on the straight and narrow as anyone in my life. I wish now that I had run into him, that I had thanked him, that I had gone back to school before he retired from teaching to tell him that although I didn’t always appreciate his methods, I was beholden to him for the results. I wish I had done that for many of my other teachers, too.
I’ve had a lot of teachers in my lifetime, and I’ve known many, many more through 30-plus years in the profession, but when I think of those who made the most impact on my life, Mr. Hapenny stands with them.
Mike Lunsford can be reached by e-mail at hickory913@aol.com or by writing to him c/o The Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Read more of Mike’s stories at http://tribstar.com/mike_lunsford, and visit his website at www.mikelunsford.com. He is currently working on his third collection of stories.
Mike Lunsford
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Tribune-Star columnist Mike Lunsford
Discussion
THE OFF SEASON: It’s taken long time to say thanks…
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Taking a road less traveled in this illogical life
If you can still recall reading the poetry of Robert Frost in your high school English class years ago, I imagine that you can conjure up a line or two from his “The Road Not Taken.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Windy companion finally gives him the cold shoulder
The wind came to visit us this week. We live on the knob of a hill that overlooks a Raccoon Creek valley, and it is a breezy spot year-round, but this wind was the kind that ushers in a full-blown front from Canada, perhaps just to remind us that cold weather is going to be the boss around here for a while. No matter how surprising our mild winter has been so far, this kind of wind tells us not to expect many more warm days over the next few months.
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SIDELINES: Good for even a traditional Classic buff
Lights down, tree out, another year gone at the Classic.
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THE OFF SEASON: The more things change, the more they keep changing
I must have had at least a dozen people ask at my son’s wedding a few weeks ago whether I cried, or “how I was handling losing him.” I think they all knew just how tight I am with my two kids, and thought I must have come completely unglued when it finally hit me that he was on his own for good, that the rules had changed nearly as much in my life when he said ,“I do,” as they did for him.
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Lunsford signing new book at Brazil Coffee Grounds
Parke County writer Mike Lunsford will be signing his latest book, “A Place Near Home” (Shade Tree Press; $15) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Grounds, Bakery and Coffee Shop in Brazil.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox
As we drove home late one night last week, my wife and I, both a bit drowsy and anxious for a warm bed and a long nap, were surprised to see a red fox as it darted across the road. He made his appearance in a flash — just a bit of nose and fur and bushy tail — as he jumped out of a ditch in front of our car and was caught in the glare of our headlights on his way to the relative safety of an apple orchard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The lizard wore long johns, and other Halloween tales
We stocked our house with a supply of Halloween candy last week; Joanie and I stopped into the new dollar store in town and filled a grocery cart with Butterfingers and Baby Ruths and Three Musketeers bars. Every aromatic bit of it has been calling to me from the orange-and-black baskets we keep on a living room trunk ever since.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Here’s to the simple beauty of an untended garden…
I can hear a combine eating its way across a nearby cornfield as I write this on a Saturday evening. It is a sound that signals the end of one season and the beginning of anot
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The Off Season: Listening to Mozart is a ‘purr-fect’ way to relax
Regardless of what some people may believe, classical music fans are not snobs. They come from all walks of life, fall into all income brackets, and they’re not required to understand or analyze anything to which they’re listening; they just need to enjoy themselves.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Fall’s arrival heralded in ever-present fencerows
As much as I hate summer to leave us, I am happy that fall is just around the corner. It has been a bone-dry season, one in which I’ve watched my yard bake and crack like an old pie crust. My wife and I are still spending our evenings going about the business of watering flowers, standing with a dribbling hose in our hands, optimistically hoping that our drought will be broken because we’ve tempted the weather fates to do us one better and give us a good rain.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The value of hard work goes well beyond a paycheck
Years ago, I used to drive into Rosedale to get my workday started with a big cup of black coffee. Every morning, Monday through Friday, until the town grocery store’s business dried up and blew away, you could have found me slipping through a back door — left unlocked for the early birds — of the old Red and White, 15 minutes before it opened for official business.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Life’s little conveniences actually can be quite annoying
I am aware that much of the language I use is outdated, stodgy, old-fashioned; I apologize.
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The Off Season: Another sad passing: One-time trendsetter can’t keep up
I wandered into the local mall bookstore the other day. My wife and I had come to town with a list of chores to do and things to buy, but whenever we venture anywhere near a place with book shelves and sales tables and racks of paperbacks, we’re attracted to the scent of ink and the sight of book covers like bees to clover .
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Overheated in Hobart and other vacation tales…
My family climbed into our van and headed to Michigan a few weeks ago, just as we do every other year or so, to stay on the great lake there, for we have come to love its cool breezes and blue water and lighthouses.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Silence is wonderful, as long as you don’t take it too far
I have visited this topic — how it is often only through inconvenience that we come to appreciate the comforts we have in life — before.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: His tolerance for insects ends with sawyer beetles
As I sloshed a can of water over a pot of red petunias a Sunday morning ago, I saw a pine sawyer beetle make its way slowly up the vinyl siding near my front door. I swatted it to the concrete, and smashed it with my shoe … with impunity, I might add.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Storm damage makes you appreciate home
My wife and I hadn’t been into town for a good while when we drove in from our place to visit her doctor and my favorite hardware store last week.
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Paying respect in more way than one way…
It has become a habit of mine on Mother’s Day to go to Rosedale Cemetery and lay a few irises on my mom’s grave.
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The Off Season: On the trail with Max the Mushroom Cat
The wet weather and a busy calendar have kept my wife and me from doing what we’ve really wanted to do for a while. Ever since the thermometer began to stay consistently above 40 and the grass started to green, we’ve wanted to get outside, get some sun on our arms, and get down to the wetlands to watch the geese make their landings with a flourish and a honk.
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THE OFF SEASON: So much to do; so little time…
My wife’s aunt, Martha Jean McCarthy, passed away earlier this month; she was 85 years old. Martha Jean was kind and generous and busy her entire life.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A lesson plan for public schools
I am an advocate of public education; I pull no punches about that. I have taught in public schools for 32 years, and I think it is an inherently American institution.
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THE OFF SEASON: Craning to see elegance in flight
Just before midnight last night, spring officially slipped quietly into our back yards, but I doubt that any of us noticed it much this morning as we slurped our coffee or downed our eggs over this newspaper.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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