"New" old classmate Marc Chappe

During my years as a teacher, I attended a workshop where a speaker asked whether we had ever experienced having a student in class who was somewhat “invisible” to us. From the reaction of the others attending, it was obvious I was not the only one. I too had noticed that as I looked out over the class at its start, when certain people were absent, I noted that fact immediately. But with others, the whole period could go by and their absence went unnoted.

I had several similar experiences in relation to the reunion. While collecting materials for the thumb drive, I was urged by several people to contact Larry Stephenson. The name was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t put a high-school face to it. So I looked for his picture in the Clarion.

Still nothing.

I mentioned this to my cousin who was in the Class of ‘63. “You mean the guy who arranged the beer parties?” he instantly replied.

To be honest, I had no idea and I told him so.

“That’s probably because at the time we were interested in different things,” he said grinning.

There may have been some truth in that observation. My folks always had a case of beer in the basement and I was welcome to have one anytime I chose to. Beginning when I was 13, I accompanied my parents and older brother to night clubs in Chicago and had drinks just as the others did. So alcohol held no particular attraction to me. At the banquet, Larry mentioned that the senior beer party was not as much fun as the junior one had been and he suggested it was because most participants were then of legal beer-drinking age. So, perhaps a good deal of the attraction of the junior beer party was the “getting away with something” aspect and I hadn’t remembered Larry because those parties meant nothing to me.

But at best, I think that is only part of the story. As proof, I offer something that happened quite recently. A short time after the reunion, I received an e-mail from “classmate” Marc Chappe. The quotes around classmate were included because Marc was with us at AHS only in our sophomore year as his father was then transferred.

But as soon as I saw his name pop up on the screen, I remembered him clearly. In fact, so clearly, that I thought I must be mistaken and so searched for his picture in the Class of ‘60 Clarion.

Nope! I was right.

I then tried to recall why I remembered him. No clue!

Again I checked the Clarion, this time seeing what activities Marc was involved in. It became clear that we had nothing in common.

This same hit-and-miss recollection pattern I had noted at the banquet. Gloria and I sat at a table with classmates Linda Spooner, Andi Polisky, Kathy Crowe, Pat Peterson, Natalie French and Larry Stephenson. I recall Linda, Andi and Natalie well, despite having little interaction with them in high school. Kathy, Pat and Larry were just familiar names from the past.

So what is the difference? Once again, no clue.

I’m including, with his permission, his note and some pictures he shared as I found his comments and personal experience quite interesting.

Art Vaughan

"Art,

"I've been following the reunion prelude and aftermath online and thought I'd write you this. My family moved to Appleton in the summer of 1957 from Brooklyn, New York when my dad got a job working with Penny Brownell's father at Kurz and Root. I spent two years at Roosevelt JH and my sophomore year at AHS. My dad was transferred [1960] to Milwaukee to run a Kurz and Root factory in Cedarburg, and I graduated from Nicolet in 1962.

Marc in high school

"My experience in Appleton was transformative. I grew up in an entirely Jewish environment in Brooklyn. Almost every child at P.S. 238 had immigrant grandparents. Mine had come through Ellis Island in 1908 from Odessa and Minsk, and spoke Russian, Yiddish and a heavily-accented English. I was fascinated by hunting and fishing, and subscribed to Field and Stream and Outdoor Life, though, in Brooklyn, I neither hunted nor fished.

"So when we moved to Appleton, and saw ring-necked pheasants running across the lawn of our house near the river [we were initially renting a place from a Lawrence prof on sabbatical], I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I thought I'd been reincarnated as Tom Sawyer. Then some kids at Roosevelt took me fishing on the Fox River, where we caught yellow perch and bullheads. I was ecstatic!

"I imbibed the whole Midwestern ethos of the time. The hayrides, skating parties with bonfires on the margins of the lake, the Terror's Den. In retrospect, it seems a time of great innocence, when the cataclysmic events of the 60's and beyond had not yet come to pass. We had teachers at Roosevelt whose own lives were formed in the early days of the 20th century. They had wonderful names - Merlin, the math teacher and Orville, the gym teacher.

"My wife and I have lived on Mount Desert Island in Maine since 1969. We're just down the road from Acadia National Park, where we frequently hike and look out over the Big Water. I've carpentered, run a saw mill, farmed and taught school. It's been a full life.

"It was great to see pictures of former schoolmates on your excellent web site and to get a thorough "backgrounding" about AHS and the town. Thanks.

"Marc Chappe"

After his initial e-mail, I asked Marc a few questions about what he was doing and all and some of that material is below.

"Thought you'd be interested in a little Americana as it pertains to the part of Maine where we reside. Almost everyone burns wood as part of their winter heating needs. You see piles of split hardwood in almost every dooryard hereabouts. We've been heating with wood exclusively since we moved to the state in 1969."

"In the picture, I'm standing on 10 cords of 8 foot maple, red oak and birch [about three winter's wood] holding a peavey.

"A blacksmith named Joseph Peavey invented the tool in 1857, and it's still being manufactured in Bangor, Maine, about an hour away. I work the wood up into stove lengths with my trusty chainsaw, and split it with a hydraulic splitter. For years I used an 8 lb. maul for splitting, but as I got into my 60s, it became too much for my arthritic shoulders.

"I've included a link to a video about a long-ago log drive on the Machias River, downeast of here. You'll see the log drivers using long-handled peaveys and pick poles. The drive ends at a sawmill down river, where a band saw cuts the logs into lumber. For several years I ran a small sawmill with a 4 foot rotary blade with replaceable teeth. Folks would bring us their logs and we'd do custom milling at so much a board foot. We had an edger and a lag-bed, single-sided thickness planer. Pretty cool stuff!"

NOTE: This film ... except for the accents ... could have been shot in Wisconsin early in the 20th century.

Logging Video

"I've attached a couple of pics. Anne and I on our Honda Shadow a few years ago, and our pond and house. We cleared the land [yielded 8 cord of hardwood] and built the house [which I designed] a while back."