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Ted Green (1962)
Here is the autobioghapical story I worte about My Hervey. The kid referred to at the end is (The Rev.) Arthur Lee. Someone tell me how to upload photos and i will post te pic Arthus sent me of the events desribed here.
"The Worst Kid in American History"
This is a true confessional tale about how the nastiest kid in a high school American history class—who was also the worst student academically—nevertheless learned a great deal of history because of a certain teacher. I was that kid back in 1961, a time when the roles available in high school were pretty much limited to squares, nerds, jocks and hoodlums. I was a hood with an Elvis haircut, black leather jacket, and a curled-lip, menacing sneer which I perfected in front of the mirror. It mattered little that this school happened to be in Seoul, Korea, and it was for army brats. We were as American in our school culture as anyone in, well, Tecumseh, Nebraska.
That happens to be where my teacher, Mr. William D. Hervey was from. I see in my 1961 yearbook that he graduated from a place called Peru State Teachers College, also in Nebraska. He was a fair-haired, 30-something, well-meaning man whom I nevertheless resented as an authority figure. I paid no attention in class, or so I thought, and I remember passing the time dozing off the previous night’s hangover or writing suggestive notes to some of the sexier girls in class, especially those brimming with school spirit who were completely out of reach of low-lifes like myself.
Mr. Hervey began each class by reviewing the daily cartoon strip Peanuts. “What a totally pathetic attempt to ingratiate himself to the class,” I sneered to fellow hoodlum Wayne. Wayne was actually meant to be a jock—he was on varsity football after all--but I took him with me to the bars and off-limits neighborhoods of Seoul and before long, he was an anti-social, fellow miscreant, becoming my best friend in the 10th grade.
Mr. Hervey was an animated teacher. He paced, he waved his arms, his voice rose and fell, and he generally bounced around the room, which behavior I remember was quite distracting and disturbing to a student committed to dozing.
One day we had a surprise quiz. Mr. H. handed out a page of test questions and told us that he’d leave us alone for the next 20 minutes while we wrote the answers. About 5 minutes into the test, my eyes drifted over to the busily writing nerd to my right. I hadn’t meant to exactly cheat, but somehow my eyes just went of their own accord to the test paper next to me.
Suddenly, Mr. Hervey came charging into the room from the back door and announced that he’d caught me cheating, red-handed! I immediately put on a great show of shock and indignation. Me? How dare this wimp of a man accuse me of cheating? So I said, “If you think I’m a cheater, why don’t you and I just step outside and we can settle this like men?”
This was proposed in my most menacing voice, also probably rehearsed in front of a mirror. I somehow knew that Mr. Hervey had been a nerd back in his own school days in Nowhere, Nebraska, and certainly not the kind of guy to get into a fist fight with the likes of me at age 16.
It seemed like no one breathed for a few minutes. I knew I had him!
Mr. Hervey ended up backing down and not really doing anything about the cheating accusation. I should have felt triumphant but I actually felt ashamed of myself, sorry about the whole situation. I sensed this might be the low point of my secondary school career.
Now we fast-forward a few weeks. I was in the high school rock-‘n-roll band and we were called The Silvertones after my cheap, brown, Sears & Roebuck, solid-bodied, Silvertone electric guitar. We were performing at our first high school dance, and we started off with the then-famous Champs instrumental, Tequila. During the break after our first set, Mr. Hervey, who I guess was there as some sort of chaperone, came up to me and quietly asked if we could play Tequila a second time and this time he could join us, because as a matter of fact, he had his tenor sax in the trunk of his car.
I was surprised this man would even talk to me. I mean, what if I had said no and sneered at him? What could he have done? But I consulted the band and they thought it was a pretty cool idea, and so we performed Tequila, but this time with the great sax part heard on the Champs’ recording. Mr. H knew his rock ‘n roll.
One night Wayne and I were having a late-night beer and our last cigarette under the stars, at a baseball field at the American army base in Teagu. Wayne looked up at the sky and had an inspiration: “Why don’t we dedicate our lives to science?” I didn’t know what that really meant but it sounded noble and self-sacrificing. I might mention this to Judi the luscious cheerleader I wanted to impress.
So I agreed, but with the provision that we not tell anyone, in case we don’t in fact go on to dedicate our lives to science.
We left Korea at different times and Wayne went on to get a PhD. in geology and I earned my PhD in anthropology, to the great relief of both our anxious mothers. Mine had been reminding me during high school on nearly a daily basis that I would end up as a "perpetual private" in the Army-- "at best"-since to be an officer, I'd have to have gone to college. And then there was that business about me being kicked out of school in the US, prior to my hasty exile to Korea. My mother reminded me, "Expelled boys can never become officers!" I guess I half-believed her.
Now here’s the funny part. In the years since high school, whenever something related to American history comes up, I find I have vivid memories of Mr. Hervey explaining, dramatizing, acting out, romancing some particular chapter of American history. For example, as the world slides deeper into global economic recession, so many details of FDR's depression-busting programs come to mind, along with visions of giant locusts gobbling up crops ...the Oklahoma Dust Bowl hobos riding the rails and living in Hoovervilles… FDR's fireside chats, Woodie Guthrie capturing the zeitgeist in his ballads… 8 million jobs created through the WPA...and somehow in my mind, Mr. Hervey still dances excitedly around all this pageantry. And these memories of history and Hervey never dim with the passing of years.
About a dozen 10 years ago, when search engines were first becoming powerful, I tried to see if Mr. Hervey was still alive. I wanted to apologize for my rotten behavior and to thank him for putting up with me and for teaching me so much valuable history in spite of my recalcitrance. A few years ago, I noticed in my yearbook that he had signed it: "William 'Tecumseh' 'Uncle Fred' Hervey." (Did his peers call him Fred?).
But I never found Mr. Hervey. I suppose he’s no longer among the living. But perhaps some descendant in Tecumseh, Neb. will read this and know that Mr Hervey made a deep impression on someone. If I, the worst kid in American history, learned so much, I can only imagine the overflowing memories of other students in class, especially those who listened and did homework.
I sent this story around via e-mail to several old classmates from that school in Korea and it turned out that somebody had taken this picture of Mr H. joining me with his tenor sax when we played Tequila that night in 1961. I was beginning to wonder if that event really happened. After all, it was all so long ago.
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