School teachers in public schools cannot use the Socratic method for 20-35 kids in one classroom.
In any class half the kids are below average and one will be slowest, and one quickest.
Humansville’s greatest storyteller is Distinguished Professor Emeritus Dr. Alonzo Hamby, Humansville High 1956.
Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman
Amazon.com: Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman: 9780195045468: Hamby, Alonzo L.: Books - https://a.co/d/3vk0kru
For the Survival of Democracy: Franklin Roosevelt and the World Crisis of the 1930s
For the Survival of Democracy: Franklin Roosevelt and the World Crisis of the 1930s: Alonzo L. Hamby: 9780684843407: Amazon.com: Books - https://a.co/d/buWpGL3
He called my Mama Miss Lois and she called him Lonnie.
He called my mother for advice and to visit from the time I can first remember when I was a child until she died in 2009.
Occasionally I call him, since.
Whenever my mother thought I was too wise, she’d bring me back down to earth by saying as smart as you are, you’re no Lonnie Hamby.
But geez, who is?
My mother was 15 on December 7, 1941 and not quite 17 in early April 1943 when she’d just graduated high school a year early at Wheatland, her boss lady at a restaurant in Galmey said Lois there’s an opening at the Royal School, and she knew that the prototype for the fictional character Tatum Mashburn in her mother’s weekly Ma and Pa series in The Index was president of the Royal School Board, that he’d be out plowing, and the woman who was the inspiration years later for Daisy Mae Clampett (except Donna Douglas was a cheap blonde) took her best pair of high heeled shoes and her best Glee Club dress and flew to the parking lot, to her $20 Model A Ford sitting there polished and spotless.
(Mama drove me the route several times, later on)
Tatum saw the Model A, when it stopped and he stopped his horses plowing.
Mama said she wanted a teaching job more than anything she’d ever wanted before in her life.
So she exited the Ford, walked over to the barbed wire fence, took off her shoes, climbed over the fence and walked barefooted across plowed ground to Tatum Mashburn.
She said he was utterly speechless.
She threw her chest out, stood up tall and said
I’m Lois Agee and my parents are Eric and Myrtle Agee, and I have graduated Wheatland High School and enrolled at Southwest Missouri State Teacher’s College and I’ll have my teaching certificate this fall.
I’ve come to you to apply for the teaching position open at Royal School.
She said Tatum looked up at her eyes, still speechless, not saying a word, mouth open.
So to set the hook, Mama stood up a little taller and said
And I’m in perfect health!
At that Tatum Mashburn said Little Lady, I’m only the President of the Board but I’ll call the other board members right now.
You have the job.
After that one, every superintendent of every school came to my mother, and begged her to come teach at their school, until she retired in 1982.
But one day in 1949 a young Lonnie Hamby was being taught about the heroic sacrifice of Collin Kelly Jr. by Miss Lois at Humansville Junior High when he said to Mama:
Which Japanese battleship did Kelly’s B-17 sink off the Philippines?
She said Lonnie, would you care to give me a book report on it tomorrow?
That night she called Lonnie’s mother and said her son was a genius and should become a history professor at Columbia University in New York City.
He never got past Athens, Ohio.
en.m.wikipedia.org
A light cruiser is, a kind of battle ship, you know?
Here’s to Cawlen Kelly Two!
THERE’S A STAR SPANGLED BANNER WAVING SOMEWHERE
Sang by a pretty schooteacher
Colin Kelly died, that you can live free.
