NEWS

Emmie Alexander Hancock

Every year when school starts again, my thoughts go back to the time when I was a high school English teacher at Myers Park High in Charlotte. I now realize that those three years were the last of the “happy days” before the world changed dramatically in the sixties – from happy days to hippie daze.

The 1970s TV show “Happy Days” was touted as an idealized version of teen life in the 1950s, but, in my experience, the show was more true than idealized. In 1956, I was a naïve 21-year-old teacher assigned to Myers Park, the crown jewel of the Charlotte public school system. It was, like the TV show, a time of innocence and of confidence that life would always be predictable and comfortable.

Built in 1951, MPHS was the model of the suburban high school, the first campus-style school in Charlotte. A series of one-story buildings spread out in a spacious suburban cul-de-sac surrounded by green lawns and bounded by woods, it was located in one of the city’s most prestigious neighborhoods.

Myers Park High School

Superintendent Elmer Garinger told me he had purposely chosen the best veteran teachers in the system to be the first faculty of Myers Park. When he asked me to teach three different courses that first year, and I was provided no curriculum guides, lesson plans, textbooks, or collateral, and when he asked me to teach six periods instead of the usual five, and when I learned that one of my classrooms would be the Home Ec kitchen, I agreed to all without questioning. It was a time of obedience to authority.

Fortunately, I had great informal coaching in the teachers’ lounge from the veteran teachers, especially Mag Newland, my mentor. She made me aware that adolescent boys tend to develop a crush on their young teachers. Because I had attended only schools for girls since I was in sixth grade, I was clueless about adolescent boys. I thought they paid attention because they shared my fascination with diagramming sentences.

My biggest concern was how to keep control in the classroom. I tried to emulate Miss Newland’s strictness and toughness, as well as the way she set high standards for academic work. There was no “grade creep” at Myers Park in the fifties. As a result, some of my students complained about my strict grading, but the pressure was mostly from the parents. I remember one parent conference when the mother of an eleventh grader expressed her unhappiness with the C grade her son had received in my class. “I just don’t understand,” she said. “His father went to Duke.”

Teen culture in the late fifties in Charlotte was still relatively innocent and conservative before the rock-and-roll explosion of the sixties. In “Happy Days,” Richie, Fonzie, and the others hung out at Arnold’s. Myers Park kids hung out at Hardee’s Drug Store on Selwyn Avenue and the Town House at the intersection of Providence and Providence. In appearance, boys and girls chose a conservative, preppy look. Neat crew cuts, button-down shirts, khaki dockers, and penny loafers for the boys, and short curly hair styles, Peter Pan blouses, circle or pleated skirts, and saddle shoes for the girls. This neat, conservative look was hugely different from the “unwashed, unshaven” look of the sixties.

I was surprised to learn that Bible classes were offered twice a week to the 7th and 8th graders. Parents could request that their children be excused from these classes, and some Catholic and Jewish families did. Non-participating students were sent to the library. In the sixties much greater attention was paid to the first amendment.

In the fifties, a “fad” that briefly surged at Myers Park had student couples sneaking away to York, South Carolina, to get married before a judge. Fortunately this fad seemed to subside after the Charlotte Observer highlighted the practice.

Faculty photos

In 1957 one of my bright eighth graders extensively researched the Civil War and wrote a one-act play called “The Lost Cause,” which he and his friends produced for our class. No one questioned the appropriateness of this production. This was soon to change, as Charlotte was beginning its long struggle to comply with the demand for integration.

Given the culture of drugs and free love of the sixties, the behavior of MPHS students in the fifties seems tame. Most of what they did was creative naughtiness. One day when I, as a 21-year-old college student, was preparing for my “practice teaching” with Mag Newland, I was seated at the back of the classroom observing her as she taught “Macbeth” to a class of 18-year-olds.

I noticed a student immediately in front of me picking up a piece of wood with a large nail attached. Without breaking eye contact with Miss Newland, he slyly poked the posterior of the student sitting next to him – and of course the startled victim yelled. When Mag looked to see what happened, the perpetrator maintained a sublimely innocent expression. But I knew that he knew that I knew what he had done. And I realized I was going to be teaching this same class the next day.

Emmie at a faculty meeting

One fall as the new school year got underway, I noticed that one of my students appeared to be wearing hearing aids. I tried to speak more clearly to ensure that he could hear well. A few days later I learned that his hearing was fine – he was actually listening to the World Series on a hidden transistor radio.

One of my 8th grade students severely challenged my limited ability to keep the class focused and under control. I finally realized the problem was more my lack of skills than his lack of focus. He was clearly extremely bright and talented, and also very active and talkative. I have regretted for years that I had neither the knowledge, training, nor tools to help him develop and channel his abilities.

The majority of our students in the fifties turned out well, some of them spectacularly well. The student who poked his friend with the nail was Jimmy Villas, who became a Rhodes Scholar, a Fulbright Scholar, a university professor of French literature, food and wine editor of “Town and Country” magazine, and author of 15 cookbooks. An article in “Forbes” described him as “erudite, whip smart, hilarious, and doggedly southern.”

The student who wrote and produced the play about the Confederate South, Frank “Trey” Snepp, became chief analyst of North Vietnamese strategy for the CIA in Saigon during the Vietnam War. He is now a journalist, author of several books, and writes regularly on Substack.

One of the students who had enjoyed the National Geographic while others studied the Bible was Walter Dellinger, who became a Constitutional expert, professor at Duke Law School, and Acting Solicitor General in Clinton’s administration. He argued more than 20 cases before the Supreme Court and was a frequent expert commentator on Constitutional issues on cable TV news. His obituary ran a full quarter-page in the New York Times. He clearly had one of the most brilliant and insightful minds I ever encountered. The Dean of the Duke Law School called him “…a true intellectual.”

Another outstanding Myers Park alumnus from this period is Graham Allison, for many years Professor of Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He attended Davidson College for two years, then transferred to Harvard, where he earned a PhD.

The eighth grader that I failed to help turned out extremely well in spite of me. He became Chief of Staff to Congressman Jim Martin and later to Governor Jim Martin. Turns out the Governor is a much better teacher than I!

There were so many talented students who became successful adults. Mike Stenhouse became an aerospace engineer and an excellent writer. Philip Hazel became manager of the Statesville airport. Marnie Broach became a successful author of children’s books. Many others became college or university professors, physicians, attorneys, and business executives.

The Myers Park students I knew in the late fifties were unaware that the safe, calm, peaceful, normal environment of their high school years was about to explode, though there were hints. Their Senior Follies in 1959 included an Elvis impersonation. But they did not yet know that Janis Joplin would soon replace Doris Day…that police dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham would dominate the evening news…that they would be exhorted to “Turn on, tune in, and drop out”…that the Cold War in Europe would be replaced by hot napalm in Vietnam. Happy days did become hippie daze, but the Myers Park Mustangs from the late fifties came through it all.

There were so many energetic, brilliant, fun students in those three years when I had the privilege to teach. I still see their eager faces and remember some of their names. Instead of TV’s Richie, Fonzie, Potsy, and Ralph, I had Goose, Beav, Dell, Martin, Butch, David, Mike, Punch, Bonny Kate, Doodle, Marnie, Carole, Anne, …and so many more.

I still see their handwriting on all those papers I read and graded. When I announced that I was “retiring” in June of 1959 to start my family, a group of my students presented me with a gold charm bracelet with a gold heart charm engraved “Never have so many owed so much to one.” It was really the other way around. I owe so much to each of them.

One of Emmie’s former students, Bonny Kate Curry, revisits Myers Park in her cheerleading outfit

I’m a Mustang, couldn’t be prouder.
If you can’t hear me, I’ll yell a little louder!