Class of '79 Hall of Shame

As Mr. Brown told Bob Wampach one English class in the Fall of 1975 -- "The class of '79 is a marked class, Mr. Wampach!"

En route to graduation, we forced several teachers into retirement, destroyed school property and otherwise made Joliet prison look like a halfway house.

Here are a few gems from our reign of terror...

Mrs. Greer

Episode #1
When we weren't making fire engine noises or pretending that a cattle drive was coming through the classroom by stomping our feet and mooing, one of our favorite ways to irritate Mrs. Greer was to put our knees up under those blue desks and sneak them forward a few feet every time she turned around, eventually winding up with all of the desks at the front of the room.

During one such episode, she turned around from the chalk board, drooped her shoulders, and said, "I see what you're doing. Go ahead. Why don't you keep going into the hall?"

Kevin Lilley looked back at the class, and with a wave of encouragement, shimmied his desk forward, opened the door, and proceeded into the hall with Julie Enzweiler, Steve Milano and the rest of his row in close pursuit. We made it all the way across the hall, and as Kevin was opening the door to the French class to begin going into their classroom, Father D. came into sight down the hall. If you've never heard 40 metal-and-woods desks simultaneously being quickly dragged backward, it's a cacophony not to be missed.

Episode #2
On another occasion, Mike Lisk finally went too far, and Mrs. Greer told him to leave and go the principal's office. Lisk, who knew no fear, refused. As this was during a quiz (Lisk had yelled out an answer), Mrs. Greer couldn't leave, so she sent Bob Rapp (who was excused from the quiz because he had been absent the day before) down to Father D's office with a note. Ten minutes later, Rapp comes back with the note, saying, "I couldn't find Father D. anywhere." Mrs. Greer, ready to kill Lisk at this point, sputtered, "I told you to leave the note in the office!" As Buck was also excused from the quiz, she sent him next, with pointed instructions to LEAVE THE NOTE WITH THE SECRETARY! Fifteen minutes and two Marlboros later, Buck returns with the note, saying, "I couldn't find Father anywhere Mrs. Greer." Mrs. Greer is now beside herself, as she has been trying to give a quiz for the last 25 minutes in a deafening classroom, with students who won't shut up, pennies (courtesy of Margie Boyle) bouncing off the chalkboard every time she turns around, a defiant student who won't leave and 30+ others who have banded together to defend their classmate. Finally, Elaine Dominach shows up 30 minutes tardy and is met at the door by Mrs. Greer before she can enter and told to bring a note to the principal's office. With a bewildered look on her face as the entire class if screaming at her something about, "Don't...go...pretend...Lisk is getting kicked out..." Elaine delivers the note, and we see Mike Lisk for the final time in our class rooms.

Somone snuck a tape recorder into the room that day, and a live tape of that entire class survives to this day and will be played at the reunion. An MP3 or RealAudio sample may soon be available at this site, as well.

Episode #3
One day, for no apparent reason, Peter Ladesic brings a raw egg to school. Milano takes it from Lad and brings it to Mrs. Greer's class. The egg gets surreptitiously passed from Milano, to Milder, to Dreisilker and so on, ending up in Bob Rapp's desk without his knowledge. Rapp, too tall for his desk, puts his knees under the desk, raises it up, and the egg rolls out and smashes in middle of the aisle. Of course, Mrs. Greer is all over Rapp, who, for once in his four years at Francis is actually innocent of a disruption. As he tries to protest that he has no idea how a raw egg wound up in his desk, she gives him a detention and tells him to clean it up. At exactly this moment, Father D. opens the door, and yells, "Why is this class so loud? Why do I have to constantly come down here?" Mrs. Greer stands silently, and for about eight seconds, everyone holds their breaths. Could she be this cool and not tell on us? "Father, come and take a look at this..." To make a long story short, Father D. traces the egg back to Ladesic and Milano, who wind up with detentions.

Adios Muchacha
One day, the bus riders (who arrived to school 30 minutes early each day so Kammes bus line could do a second run of the public schools) decided to pimp the room before Mrs. Greer arrived. They brought Mrs. Greer's desk to the back of the room, turned all the desks around and toilet papered the lights. Five minutes before class was to begin, Mr. Craver walks in. "Mrs. Greer is no longer willing to teach this class. I will be your teacher for the rest of the semester. You have five minutes to get this room back the way it belongs!"

Mrs. Stark
While those of you inclined to learn Spanish were busy terrorizing Ms. Greer;  those of us more cultured students studying French were busy driving our own teacher into early retirement.

I'll never forget the classroom watching Brendan English and Andy Ostrowski physically changing places in class while never leaving their seats.  Brendan would slide his desk into the aisle move back a few rows while Andy would slide into the aisle and move into Brendan's original space.  Brendan would then move into the space previously occupied by Andy.  This would drive petite Edith (the words in French rhyme like 'puh-teet ay-deet') crazy.  One fine Autumn day while the windows were opened, Andy and Brendan quietly rolled out of the windows and then stealthily crawled below the other classroom windows to the south end of the building; they then showed up knocking at the classroom door which baffled Mrs. Stark.  The rest of the class was doubled over in laughter.  The last straw was when someone (Liz Gajcak?) put a huge (and I mean huge) cockroach between the pages of Mrs. Stark's French text book;  When she opened the book it jumped out onto her desk. She proceeded to attempt to kill the oversized insect by pounding her book onto the bug.  I though she was going to have a heart attack.  I don't remember if she retired right then and there or if she finished the year.  We young lads studying French were finally rewarded with the young and attractive Mrs. Melin as our second year teacher.  Ah the memories.... John Duggan

Mr. Bendis
"Bumper" Bendis, an ex-Chicago cop, hated our business class, especially since we made him begin to stutter again after he had spent years overcoming this debilitating affliction. One day, as he was writing on the chalk board, we noticed blue streaks begin to appear on the back of his shirt. Jim Lief, sitting in the front row, was whipping his fountain pen at Bumper's back each time he turned around, so blatantly that the streak of ink actually started on the chalk board on one side of Mr. Bendis' body, went across his shirt, and finished on the chalkboard on the other side of his body. How Mr. Bendis did not see the ink all over the board is still a mystery, but by the end of the class, he looked like a psychedelic referee.

Mr. Bendis retired from teaching at the end of the year and moved to Maine.

Miscellaneous
I don't have any good stories. I kept quiet and stayed out of trouble. I sat next to Chuck Murphy when he put a paper clip in a pencil eraser, then put it in an outlet when Mr. Stefan wasn't looking. There was a loud pop, and a huge spark. I saw Joe Kaenel hold an erlenmeyer flask up to a dripping faucet, and as it filled, he held it tighter and tigher against the faucet. Eventually, the bottom blew out. Judy Black and another girl lit a fire in a trough in that room, then toasted marshmellows, and passed those around, along with juice, near the end of our junior year. I brought my travelling chess set to school, and me and Chuck used to play a game or two in that science class. I think the teacher eventually got the set, then returned it to someone else, and I never saw it again. The bus driver used to honk the horn at our corner, then Tom and I would wake up, throw our clothes on, and run onto the bus. then I'd turn on Tom's portable radio, listen to Steve Dahl, and the driver would turn off the bus rafio, to let the rest of them listen to Steve Dahl. I never went up in the line for the caf, since I was new our junior year, and for fear that people would look at me. My solution was to sit with Steve and Pete, and  I brought two bologna sandwiches EVERY day, hung them in my locker until lunch, then re-used the sandwich bags and the brown paper bag, as much as possible. I probably used fewer than 10 paper bags per year. Joe Walsh

Does anyone remember Mark Kalfas sneaking into the chapel at lunchtime and hearing freshman confessions? I'd love to know what pennances he gave.

How about the time Fawda MacDawnald ranted about the "imbeciles" throwing "projectiles" at the brand new "ceiling tiles." Thanks, wrestling team.

I remember passing notes via a third-party, who had no idea the person receiving the note thought it was from them. I remember one Geometry class, surreptitiously tossing notes onto Sue Stark's desk and pointing to Bob Rapp. Sue then passed the notes to Bob, who thought they were from her. As the notes got progressively more erotic, Bob kept staring at Sue with wider and wider eyes. By the time he got, "Bob, I think you're such a man. I want you now!," he figured it out and he passed the notes to Sue. Needless to say, I wasn't invited to Sue's party that weekend. In Spanish, I tapped Juile Enzweiler on the shoulder and asked her to pass a note to the guy in front of her which read, "I think you're cute. Do you like me? Julie" He wrote back an enthused, "YES!" and could have crawled into his desk when I whispered, "Du-u-u-ude!" and he turned around to see me holding the note up. Steve Milano

As the writing on the walls of the girls' washroom became so foul that even "Hustler" wouldn't print it, Father M. decided to lock the washrooms. A quick-thinking female '79er called the health department, and under threat of fine, the school had to open it back up.

Mr. Elwart's and Mr. Craver's reactions to sitting on thumbtacks differed. Mr. Elwart, after finding no volunteers to give up the student who tacked his chair, told everyone to take out a half a sheet of paper and write down who did it. By popular demand, Milano got a detention. To add insult to injury, Milano paid Margie $1 to put a thumbtack on his chair, which she did, but upside down. Rather than waste the opportunity, Milano turned it right side up. Mr. Craver, upon sitting on a tack, showed no emotion as he quickly stood up and pretended to watch the class as we were taking a quiz (trying to see who was laughing). Every few minutes (the entire time with his posterior to the chalkboard) he'd move a few feet to his right, eventually opening the classroom door and backing out, disappearing into the hall for a few minutes. Very cool.

Remember when hobby stores began selling stink liquid our senior year? It was almost pure sulfur. Ms. Boyle dropped some of it in our classroom one day, with the stench reaching Mr. Elwart within a minute. In mid-Beowulf sentence, he stopped short and said, "Oh man! Oh wow!" His revenge? Cracking open the window next to his desk and forcing us to shut the rest of the windows and sit in stink for the next 40 minutes!

On Mr. Rigney's first day as a student teacher, he was to proctor a test that Father Riva had left on the desk for him. Of course, it had been hidden under a stack of books prior to his arrival, so we wound up with a free day. When Father Riva got back the next day, it took him 15 minutes to find the quiz. He was not pleased. BTW, the person who hid the quiz was not a Swing Singer.

Does anyone remember Miss Mclean's first day of school? Barely four years older than us, and weighing 95 pounds soaking wet, she did not move from behind her desk the entire class, holding on to it like it she was in the front seat of a roller coaster. On that day, we knew we had another victim!

During the Christmas assembly our senior year, pennies kept flying out of the bleachers as students tried to present their skits (Tom Walsh gets credit for starting this). Mr. Craver, desperately trying to catch one of us, stared intently at our section, never taking his eyes off the Class of '79. Seeing this, Milano gets into a stare down with Mr. Craver, who, when he realizes he can't win, calls Milano out of the bleachers and makes him sit with the Junior High students. When the faculty goes out to sing "Deck the Halls," the entire student body begins throwing change with no one able to be singled out for punishment. Milano stands up, looks straight at Mr. Craver, smiles, and throws his wallet.
 
 

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