Another teacher gone
Yesterday cz_unit was saying that he has no plans to ever join Facebook, but I'm kind of glad I'm over there now, so that I can keep up with some folks from my hometown. For instance, today I learned that one of my high school teachers died a few days ago. Links here and here.
I had Mr. Weighill for AP Calculus in senior year. After dozing through three years of Miss Sutherland, I took something like 250 pages of notes in calculus just so I could keep up with what was going on. Then I felt really unsure of my performance on the AP Calculus test, especially since it was scheduled the day after the AP English test, which I also took. In fact, after I took the AP Calc exam, I was in study hall and Mr. Weighill poked his head in the door and said, "Boy, that was a tough one, wasn't it? I'm still trying to figure out problem number four!" You could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out that I got a 5, the highest possible score on the test. (I got only a 4 in AP English.) That grounding in basic calculus helped me a lot when I went back to study physics a dozen years later. (Yeah, I had to take Calc I again, but at least it all came back to me pretty fast and it was an easy A.)
Mr. Weighill also taught the half-year computer programming class I took in sophomore year. This was nothing like any computer class you young 'uns might have taken. This was the year 1975. The "computer room" was a glorified closet on the third floor. We could fit only six students plus Mr. Weighill into the room and that was only if some of us sat on the table. The computer was a PDP-8 that was probably already on its way out. It had no computer "screen." Instead, it had a teletype-like device with a keyboard, a roll of paper, and a punch-tape device for recording and playing back programs. (If you snagged your homework on your locker door, you were out of luck.) We learned how to do some simple algebraic things in the FOCAL programming language. Of course I don't remember anything about FOCAL. I do remember that one assignment was to write a simple program for finding prime numbers. It would find the first bunch right off and then take longer and longer to run as the program got into larger and larger numbers, until I'd get tired and interrupt/terminate the search.
The PDP-8 had to remain plugged into the wall at all times, or else Mr. Weighill would have to reboot it. Rebooting would involve Mr. Weighill flipping the switches on the front panel for an entire 45-minute class period. You can see how he was so not eager to do this. But the janitors kept unplugging the computer so that they could plug in their vacuum cleaner (this tiny computer room was one of the few rooms in the old high school that had carpeting). Finally Mr. Weighill secured the plug into the socket with about half a roll of duct tape. Seriously, that pile of duct tape would have impressed any SCAdian.
Calculus class had only seven students -- and I was the only girl. I was the student who would always notice when Mr. Weighill would do an indefinite integral on the board and forget to add "+ C" to the end of the expression. So I became known as "Patty Plus a Constant." I also took a lot of ribbing from everybody because my mother was the manager of the high school kitchen. This was the era of the "Big Mac Attack" TV commercials, and this phrase kept getting incorporated into Mr. Weighill's jokes (I wish I could remember more details). Somebody gave him a poster of a Big Mac for the classroom wall.
Yes, Mr. Weighill was the business manager for the school musicals -- and I certainly did my share of hustling for sponsorships and selling tickets door-to-door -- but he was also the stage manager for Mr. Williams, the drama/music teacher who was a stickler for details. This led to the gun incident.
For my junior year -- the spring of the Bicentennial year, and the last year my high school was in the old building -- we did "Oklahoma!" for the spring musical. Mr. Williams wanted everything to be just so. Somewhere he found an ancient old surrey and had it revarnished and reupholstered just for this show -- and the thing appears on stage for only the last minute or two. And then one character couldn't pretend to kill another character with the tiny "pop" from a cap pistol. No, it had to be a real "bang."
So Mr. Williams got a real pistol with real blank bullets. And he sat the entire student cast (some 90 of us -- including the huge chorus) down for a mandatory meeting. He told us that blanks can kill if they are fired close enough. Mr. Weighill was going to be in charge of the gun and no student was allowed to touch it except the actor who was using it and only then when rehearsing the shooting scene. Any breaking of these rules would result in getting thrown out of the show and all sorts of other disciplinary actions.
OK, we got the message. So there were no problems ... except for one evening when some of the lead actors were rehearsing a scene from a totally different part of the show. I wasn't in that scene, so I was sitting out in the auditorium, probably trying to read something for homework. Suddenly, from one of the wings of the stage, there was a huge BANG. Mr. Williams -- a short, trim guy, kind of like a Scottish leprechaun -- turned white as a sheet and leaped from the orchestra pit onto the stage in one huge motion. As 90 students fell stone-silent, he rushed stage left -- and unleashed a loud torrent of swear words aimed straight at Mr. Weighill. It turned out that he had accidentally shot off the blank. No one was hurt, and Mr. Weighill couldn't exactly be "fired" from his behind-the-scenes role. But I've never heard one teacher cuss out another teacher like that, before or since.
Rest in peace, Mr. Weighill.
I had Mr. Weighill for AP Calculus in senior year. After dozing through three years of Miss Sutherland, I took something like 250 pages of notes in calculus just so I could keep up with what was going on. Then I felt really unsure of my performance on the AP Calculus test, especially since it was scheduled the day after the AP English test, which I also took. In fact, after I took the AP Calc exam, I was in study hall and Mr. Weighill poked his head in the door and said, "Boy, that was a tough one, wasn't it? I'm still trying to figure out problem number four!" You could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out that I got a 5, the highest possible score on the test. (I got only a 4 in AP English.) That grounding in basic calculus helped me a lot when I went back to study physics a dozen years later. (Yeah, I had to take Calc I again, but at least it all came back to me pretty fast and it was an easy A.)
Mr. Weighill also taught the half-year computer programming class I took in sophomore year. This was nothing like any computer class you young 'uns might have taken. This was the year 1975. The "computer room" was a glorified closet on the third floor. We could fit only six students plus Mr. Weighill into the room and that was only if some of us sat on the table. The computer was a PDP-8 that was probably already on its way out. It had no computer "screen." Instead, it had a teletype-like device with a keyboard, a roll of paper, and a punch-tape device for recording and playing back programs. (If you snagged your homework on your locker door, you were out of luck.) We learned how to do some simple algebraic things in the FOCAL programming language. Of course I don't remember anything about FOCAL. I do remember that one assignment was to write a simple program for finding prime numbers. It would find the first bunch right off and then take longer and longer to run as the program got into larger and larger numbers, until I'd get tired and interrupt/terminate the search.
The PDP-8 had to remain plugged into the wall at all times, or else Mr. Weighill would have to reboot it. Rebooting would involve Mr. Weighill flipping the switches on the front panel for an entire 45-minute class period. You can see how he was so not eager to do this. But the janitors kept unplugging the computer so that they could plug in their vacuum cleaner (this tiny computer room was one of the few rooms in the old high school that had carpeting). Finally Mr. Weighill secured the plug into the socket with about half a roll of duct tape. Seriously, that pile of duct tape would have impressed any SCAdian.
Calculus class had only seven students -- and I was the only girl. I was the student who would always notice when Mr. Weighill would do an indefinite integral on the board and forget to add "+ C" to the end of the expression. So I became known as "Patty Plus a Constant." I also took a lot of ribbing from everybody because my mother was the manager of the high school kitchen. This was the era of the "Big Mac Attack" TV commercials, and this phrase kept getting incorporated into Mr. Weighill's jokes (I wish I could remember more details). Somebody gave him a poster of a Big Mac for the classroom wall.
Yes, Mr. Weighill was the business manager for the school musicals -- and I certainly did my share of hustling for sponsorships and selling tickets door-to-door -- but he was also the stage manager for Mr. Williams, the drama/music teacher who was a stickler for details. This led to the gun incident.
For my junior year -- the spring of the Bicentennial year, and the last year my high school was in the old building -- we did "Oklahoma!" for the spring musical. Mr. Williams wanted everything to be just so. Somewhere he found an ancient old surrey and had it revarnished and reupholstered just for this show -- and the thing appears on stage for only the last minute or two. And then one character couldn't pretend to kill another character with the tiny "pop" from a cap pistol. No, it had to be a real "bang."
So Mr. Williams got a real pistol with real blank bullets. And he sat the entire student cast (some 90 of us -- including the huge chorus) down for a mandatory meeting. He told us that blanks can kill if they are fired close enough. Mr. Weighill was going to be in charge of the gun and no student was allowed to touch it except the actor who was using it and only then when rehearsing the shooting scene. Any breaking of these rules would result in getting thrown out of the show and all sorts of other disciplinary actions.
OK, we got the message. So there were no problems ... except for one evening when some of the lead actors were rehearsing a scene from a totally different part of the show. I wasn't in that scene, so I was sitting out in the auditorium, probably trying to read something for homework. Suddenly, from one of the wings of the stage, there was a huge BANG. Mr. Williams -- a short, trim guy, kind of like a Scottish leprechaun -- turned white as a sheet and leaped from the orchestra pit onto the stage in one huge motion. As 90 students fell stone-silent, he rushed stage left -- and unleashed a loud torrent of swear words aimed straight at Mr. Weighill. It turned out that he had accidentally shot off the blank. No one was hurt, and Mr. Weighill couldn't exactly be "fired" from his behind-the-scenes role. But I've never heard one teacher cuss out another teacher like that, before or since.
Rest in peace, Mr. Weighill.