Letters to the Editor: 11.06.97

Stick To Issues

East Hampton

November 3, 1997

To The Editor:

I call on all political parties to refrain from name-calling and slanderous innuendoes in future campaigns.

It is okay to find fault and criticize an opponent's job performance when seeking to replace them in office. We need to make our political parties stick to issues relative to maintaining East Hampton Town. We are very fortunate to be able to express ourselves as citizens at Town Board meetings, etc. I encourage more citizens to attend these meetings.

We are a community of neighbors, shopkeepers, etc., that are always working together for our town. Let's keep it this way.

JULIA KAYSER

Problem Is Parents

Southampton

October 27, 1997

To The Editor,

An innocent child is dead! The life of a young girl is ruined! I do not know exactly what happened with the nanny story on TV, but I do know that no one has said anything about how difficult it is to be a nanny and about how badly babysitters are often treated.

I have babysat off and on over the years, with mostly delightful experiences. I have also stayed with children for as long as a week, even with the parents overseas. I, the babysitter, was treated wonderfully. I have had the appreciation I deserve.

Nannies are often deliberately lured from overseas, precisely so that they can be exploited. They "live in" with good situations, of course, but there are plenty of nightmare experiences.

Everywhere, the complaints are about the nannies and the child care agencies and the day care centers. The parents chose parenthood. The problem is the parents! Many couples today want everything. Many mothers do not have to work. Children are often treated like "projects" and like commodities. And, all too often, nannies are virtual slaves. I have worked for some billionaires. They are not superior people, but they can be expected to afford servants!

I know a lot about child care and do not like to have the caretakers' needs neglected in the discussions!

MINA BARSTOW

Letter Home From Boynton Beach

October 23, 1997

Dear Editor,

In the '20s and '30s, and until the social revolution of the '60s, the lack of discipline among children in school was not a serious problem, which made teaching a more enjoyable profession. Most children learned their Thou Shalt Nots very well before going to school. After they entered school, they did not present a problem to the teachers, as they had been taught at home to behave well wherever they went, and not to be an embarrassment to their parents.

Of course, there were incidents when a problem arose, but most teachers handled it very well. If a teacher was unable to do so, the problem student, usually a boy, was marched to the principal's office, where appropriate corrective action was taken. Most students would rather not interrupt a class, because they knew that if it were serious enough to warrant disciplinary action in class, the punishment received at home would be much more severe.

There were several teachers in my school days who would take no nonsense or class interruptions from any student. I do not recall my first and second-grade teachers, Katherine Wade and Effie Osgood, respectively, ever spanking or shaking a student for causing any disturbance in class. In the third grade, however, I remember one incident, and after that, no more classroom disturbances occurred until we were in fifth grade, but that was nipped in the bud in rather an unusual way.

A new student, Jimmy Dixon from St. James, Long Island, entered our third-grade class sometime after the school year commenced. He was a hell-raiser, more in innocent fun than malicious mischief, and enjoyed pulling a prank, which made members of the class laugh, but which was viewed by our teacher as being not very humorous. After he had been in class for a while, he thought he'd test Miss DeCastro. Isabel DeCastro, a Sag Harbor girl, had seen many students pass through her third grade, and Jimmy Dixon was no different from the other bratty kids she had handled. He pulled his prank, but when she finished with him, he was a very meek and embarrassed young boy, and never again did he upset our classroom routine with one of his pranks.

Mrs. Harry Parsons was our fourth-grade teacher, and I do not recall anyone causing any classroom disturbances. That school year passed rather smoothly, with Miss Alice Pugh, a music teacher, teaching us a football fight song, in preparation for the Far Rockaway game which the Maroon and Gray won 13-12.

Mrs. George Jones was our fifth-grade teacher, who came from upstate New York, and had three children of her own, Ben, Betty, and William. At that time, each student was required to buy a geography textbook. Our particular book was titled "Our State and Continent." Geography was a subject which Mrs. Jones taught quite well, especially the section relating to the upstate area. One morning, while she was teaching it, one of the boys persisted in whispering to the student in front of him, and it annoyed Mrs. Jones. She told him to be quiet and to pay attention, because he was interrupting the class. He kept quiet for a few moments, and then resumed whispering. As he became engrossed in the subject about which he was whispering, he failed to notice Mrs. Jones drift toward the rear of the classroom, and then proceed up the aisle to approach him from the rear. When she came to his desk, she lifted "Our State and Continent" and it came crashing down on the whisperer's head driving him down in his seat. From that moment on, he was careful not to whisper while she was teaching.

When the second semester commenced in the sixth grade, after midterm, home economics and manual training were added to the curriculum. Gladys Fink taught home economics, and Mario Fontana taught manual training. Both were good teachers but left East Hampton, Miss Fink to get married, and Mr. Fontana for a better position in one of the Nassau County schools.

Mr. Fontana was known as Babe to his fellow schoolteachers, but was known to some of the boys as the Shadow. Alfonso Cesna, a classmate of mine, named him after the popular fictional character of the time. As Mr. Fontana walked, he seemed to glide, and when dressed for the outdoors, he wore a trench coat and a dark brown fedora with the brim turned down in front and back. He drove a 1929 Model A Ford roadster, and whenever it rained, he would sit behind the steering wheel with his coat collar pulled up behind his neck, and the fedora pulled down. He looked somewhat ominous, giving him the appearance of being a man of mystery, hence the nickname, the Shadow.

He was a no-nonsense teacher and often revealed himself as a man with a short fuse. Despite those characteristics, he was well-liked by his students. One morning, Bill Crapser, a shop student, entered the classroom feeling life was like a bowl of cherries, and when he saw Mr. Fontana standing next to a workbench, he went up to him and squared off, as if to spar. The next moment, Bill was on the floor, for he never saw the right hand that Fontana threw. Just as it happened, Mr. Brooks, the principal, entered the shop room and witnessed Bill being struck. He told both of them to go to his office, where he would call Mr. Crapser, Bill's father.

Levi Crapser, an automobile salesman, was employed by the Hedges Ford Motor Agency, located across from the Methodist Church. It did not take long for Mr. Crapser to arrive at Mr. Brooks's office. Mr. Brooks and Mr. Fontana explained what had happened, and after hearing them out, he turned to his son, and asked if what he had just been told was true. Bill replied that it was. Mr. Crapser told both men that should it happen again, Mr. Fontana was to do as he did, and Mr. Brooks was not to call him, as he was a very busy man.

Years later, when Bill told me of the incident, he added, "Pop gave me no sympathy, whatsoever."

Usually, that was how it was when a kid got into a bit of trouble at school. Parents' punishment was much more severe than what a kid received at school. Most parents, in those days, did not mind teachers using force on their children, and as a result, the use of force by teachers was rather infrequent. One must remember that when a child came home from school, usually a mother was there to greet him. Most of a kid's waking hours were spent under the watchful eye of a responsible adult.

When Sprig Gardner came to East Hampton, he had Babe Fontana make him a fair sized paddle, which he used on kids who stepped out of line. Female teachers would send a problem student to Sprig for disciplinary action, but after the word got around, the paddle remained on the shelf for most of the time.

Football linemen who Sprig thought lacked aggressiveness in line play, received several whacks from that paddle during practice. Sprig would yell, "Charge," and just as he yelled, he whacked the exposed backside of a lineman, encouraging him to charge with a little more enthusiasm.

Chester Gottschall, the high school math teacher, came to East Hampton in 1928, the same year as Mr. Brooks, and coached football during Robert MacLaury's years as the high school coach. Mr. MacLaury was primarily a baseball coach, and in 1929, his baseball team won the league championship. It was one of the better baseball teams in East Hampton High School history.

Mr. Gottschall was another teacher with a rather short fuse. Often, he would bang the blackboard with his ringed fingers when he became a bit upset and impatient with a student who had difficulty arriving at the correct answer to an algebraic problem. When he banged the blackboard, chalk dust flew in miniature clouds, intimidating the student. A few of his students thought it was his way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Some of the more timid students were elated the day they heard he was leaving the East Hampton School system to become a principal in upstate New York.

Each teacher had his or her own method of maintaining classroom discipline, and most were very successful teachers. Once a student knew he had to obey, pay attention, and not interrupt a class, the teacher had very few problems for the remainder of the school year. Many teachers spent their entire careers in the East Hampton school system, and enjoyed every moment of it.

In sixth grade, our teacher was Helen Bond, a Southold girl, and another no-nonsense teacher. Her method of punishment was to take a ruler and slap the open palm that, sometimes, brought tears to the student's eyes. She was an above average teacher, and well liked by her class. She taught the Palmer Method of penmanship very well, and one of the reasons, I believe, was that she was gifted with excellent penmanship. The young kids of today hold a pen or pencil much differently from the way we were taught, but as time goes on, methods change, and nothing seems to stay the same.

Over all, we had very good teachers, most of whom never had to resort to force to maintain classroom discipline. It was not until we reached eighth grade that we had a male classroom teacher. During the lower grades, our teachers watched over us like mother hens. Some were married and had children of their own, and after the Great Depression blanketed the land, we lost some of our married female teachers, because of a controversial decision made by the local School Board.

In those days kindergarten through seventh grade were taught by female teachers, some of whom were married. As the 1931-32 school year ended, married teachers whose contracts had expired were not offered new ones, because the School Board had been pressured by some influential local residents not to rehire married female teachers. The reasoning was that there would be two wage earners in a teacher's household and in some of the others, none. In an attempt to override that decision, J. Edward Gay, a School Board member, introduced a resolution to offer contracts to the discharged teachers. He was unsuccessful, because the six-man board voted 3-3. Two teachers, Mrs. George Jones and Effie Osgood, who married Peter Zachas, were hired by the Town Board to be town welfare investigators.

During the '30s East Hampton High School had no guidance counselors. Our eighth-grade teacher, George Mercer Guery, at midterm, suggested the high school curriculum each of us should pursue. Quite a few of us ended our eighth-grade subjects at midterm and commenced our freshman curriculum months before we entered our freshman year. Mr. Guery was the only guidance counselor that we ever saw. As it was during difficult economic times, very few parents had the funds to send their children to college.

We resided in the boondocks, and there were no state normal schools in Suffolk County, as there were in some of the upstate counties. Our representatives did not have the necessary horsepower to have the state build a school in our section of New York State. It is too bad, for there were a number of smart students who were college material, but had neither the funds, nor the proper guidance to further their education.

It simply would be impossible for young people of today to understand the depth of despair and hopelessness that confronted a huge number of American families during those dark days. It took a world war and over 50 million dead to end the Great Depression. Pray God, we won't have to experience another era like that one.

Graduation brought to an end all those memorable and carefree days of school. In 1938, those days ended for my classmates and me, as we left Edwards Theater on a rainy Sunday afternoon in late June.

Over the past months I have written about an East Hampton as I remember it. The town that was, those many years ago, no longer exists, because the old-timers who made it such a pleasant town in which to live are no longer with us. Its fields and woodlands that we once roamed have been developed, true, but it is people who are the heart and soul of a community. I remember many of those old folks as being kind, and friendly, and willing to share their meager possessions with a less fortunate neighbor. A neighbor to them was not only the family next door, but anyone who needed a helping hand. One would meet them most anywhere, along the street, at the movies, on the playground, in church, and on a clam flat. Always, they had a cheerfulness about them, and a concern about one's "mutha and fahtha."

It was my good fortune that I met and grew to know so many of those fine and wonderful people. Of all the people who I have known, I believe Aunt Winnie Lester, of the Round Swamp Lesters, personified the loving and caring nature of all those compassionate people. Regardless of the number of people sitting in her home, when another dropped in, Aunt Winnie would say, "Take a chair." In her heart and in the hearts of all those kind people, there was room for one more.

Except for a few relatives, and they have been becoming fewer, there are but six people, now living, who I remember being friendly with, when we lived in Springs. They are Melvin Bennett and his sisters, Marion and Eleanor, Helen Payne Hults, her sister, Ivanette, and Clara Purinton Palma, who resides in Southampton.

I sincerely hope that my letters from Boynton Beach have helped the old-timers recall fond memories of their pasts. Also, that new residents of the Town of East Hampton might have a better understanding of the way of life as I remember it.

Take care, God bless, and happy 350th anniversary to all you Bonackers, old and new.

Sincerely,

NORTON (BUCKET) DANIELS

So ends, for now, Mr. Daniels's series of letters home from Boynton Beach, Fla. The writer, who has been sharing his reminiscences of the East Hampton of his youth with Star readers for the past year, has decided to "take a rest" from his toils. He has promised, however, to write again if so inspired. Ed.

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