Past Teachers
(Roy Harris, WGHS ’64, gave this tribute to 5 teachers from our time at his recent 50th reunion. Roy is a career journalist who resides in Boston. Thanks to Roy for letting Class of ‘63 use his work on our site.)
...this talk ...is about the amazing teachers who helped make us who we are today.
Like most alums, I pretty much lost track of them once I left high school. But that changed when Ellen Pfeifer – now my Boston-area neighbor – told me about the death of Yvonne Lanagan. She’d been our journalism advisor, although likely she was known to many of you mainly as a dynamic English teacher – famous for her challenging 500-word vocabulary list. Ellen and I talked with Mrs. L’s sons after she died. We even helped them prepare her obituary.
As we did, powerful memories flooded back. With that in mind, I decided to focus today on our teachers, with sort of a “Whatever Happened To….” theme. I limited myself to five, finally settling on choir director Esther Replogle, Coach Ray Moss, math teacher George Brucker, Mrs. Lanagan, and social studies teacher Harold Ferguson.
That excludes scores of amazing teachers, of course; excuse the unfairness of that. But in each case, I’ll touch on my reason for picking who I picked. And at the end you’ll have a chance to offer a personalized toast.
...this talk ...is about the amazing teachers who helped make us who we are today.
Like most alums, I pretty much lost track of them once I left high school. But that changed when Ellen Pfeifer – now my Boston-area neighbor – told me about the death of Yvonne Lanagan. She’d been our journalism advisor, although likely she was known to many of you mainly as a dynamic English teacher – famous for her challenging 500-word vocabulary list. Ellen and I talked with Mrs. L’s sons after she died. We even helped them prepare her obituary.
As we did, powerful memories flooded back. With that in mind, I decided to focus today on our teachers, with sort of a “Whatever Happened To….” theme. I limited myself to five, finally settling on choir director Esther Replogle, Coach Ray Moss, math teacher George Brucker, Mrs. Lanagan, and social studies teacher Harold Ferguson.
That excludes scores of amazing teachers, of course; excuse the unfairness of that. But in each case, I’ll touch on my reason for picking who I picked. And at the end you’ll have a chance to offer a personalized toast.
1) Esther Replogle
If you think about it, Esther Replogle introduced most of us to the world of Webster Groves High School teachers. As supervisor of music for the entire school district, she brought her “Sings” to every elementary school, even as she was running the A Cappella Choir for high schoolers.
She’d had those grade school programs for three decades before we knew her; Miss Rep was hired in 1927, as a 24-year-old Mizzou music graduate. So, over her 41-year career, every child in the district got to know her – and her passion for singing, and for the history of song.
In the Webster community, she may have been best known for her Christmas Vespers program – a huge draw at the high school, with her choirs as the centerpiece. She based the service, virtually unchanged over the years (except for the graduating participants) on a concert she once had seen in a French cathedral.
Some of you may recall that in 1963 Miss Rep was named the Woman of Achievement in fine arts, for all St. Louis. (Some may also recall the Globe-Democrat, the newspaper that made the award. It folded in 1986.) Miss Rep’s honors continued after we left; she was Webster’s 1967 Citizen of the Year, the year before she retired.
After retiring, at age 65, Miss Rep stayed in Webster. She kept leading music at the Congregational Church, and conducting small singing groups that featured former A Cappella Choir members. An alum two years ahead of us, Barb Love (now Barb Sarich), was involved with a group called the Pitch Pipers. And when Miss Rep died in 1982 – in a Colorado nursing home, after suffering a stroke – Barb and our late classmate Mark Huneke were asked to sing at her funeral there. I’m told quite a number of Webster alums went. (Did anybody here attend?) [There was also a huge memorial service in St. Louis at Central Presbyterian Church.]
It was after that service, amazingly, that a new singing group, the Statesmen Singers, was started in Webster. The group still performs Miss Rep’s Vespers. If you’re here for the holidays, the next one will be on Sunday, Dec. 21st, at Webster’s United Methodist Church. You’re welcome to join the 25 or so singers, Barb says. [*Barb (Love) Sarich is at [email protected].]
Even after her death, the tributes to Miss Rep continued. Two years ago she was one of several Webster teachers – others were Hans Lemcke and “Pete” Myers – cited in a Statesmen Alumni Benefit Concert, which raised money for the school’s fine arts department. (Some tributes to Miss Rep are more private; the lullaby I sang to my oldest boy every night was “Vigil,” from her Vespers program – the only place I ever heard the song sung.) For our first toast:
Here’s to you, Miss Rep.
If you think about it, Esther Replogle introduced most of us to the world of Webster Groves High School teachers. As supervisor of music for the entire school district, she brought her “Sings” to every elementary school, even as she was running the A Cappella Choir for high schoolers.
She’d had those grade school programs for three decades before we knew her; Miss Rep was hired in 1927, as a 24-year-old Mizzou music graduate. So, over her 41-year career, every child in the district got to know her – and her passion for singing, and for the history of song.
In the Webster community, she may have been best known for her Christmas Vespers program – a huge draw at the high school, with her choirs as the centerpiece. She based the service, virtually unchanged over the years (except for the graduating participants) on a concert she once had seen in a French cathedral.
Some of you may recall that in 1963 Miss Rep was named the Woman of Achievement in fine arts, for all St. Louis. (Some may also recall the Globe-Democrat, the newspaper that made the award. It folded in 1986.) Miss Rep’s honors continued after we left; she was Webster’s 1967 Citizen of the Year, the year before she retired.
After retiring, at age 65, Miss Rep stayed in Webster. She kept leading music at the Congregational Church, and conducting small singing groups that featured former A Cappella Choir members. An alum two years ahead of us, Barb Love (now Barb Sarich), was involved with a group called the Pitch Pipers. And when Miss Rep died in 1982 – in a Colorado nursing home, after suffering a stroke – Barb and our late classmate Mark Huneke were asked to sing at her funeral there. I’m told quite a number of Webster alums went. (Did anybody here attend?) [There was also a huge memorial service in St. Louis at Central Presbyterian Church.]
It was after that service, amazingly, that a new singing group, the Statesmen Singers, was started in Webster. The group still performs Miss Rep’s Vespers. If you’re here for the holidays, the next one will be on Sunday, Dec. 21st, at Webster’s United Methodist Church. You’re welcome to join the 25 or so singers, Barb says. [*Barb (Love) Sarich is at [email protected].]
Even after her death, the tributes to Miss Rep continued. Two years ago she was one of several Webster teachers – others were Hans Lemcke and “Pete” Myers – cited in a Statesmen Alumni Benefit Concert, which raised money for the school’s fine arts department. (Some tributes to Miss Rep are more private; the lullaby I sang to my oldest boy every night was “Vigil,” from her Vespers program – the only place I ever heard the song sung.) For our first toast:
Here’s to you, Miss Rep.
2) Ray Moss
Coach Ray Moss wrapped up his career as Webster’s head football coach one year after we graduated. In that 1964-65 school year he turned 52, and he became full-time athletic director – leaving behind an extraordinary winning percentage that approached 60 percent.
That record contained 151 wins, 88 losses, and 17 ties – with the most memorable tie being our last Turkey Day Game: 0-0 in 1963. In his final coaching season, his 8-1-1 record made Webster Suburban Big 10 Conference champions. But that wasn’t the best year of his career; that was the 1954 undefeated season, when Webster was ranked tops in the state by the Associated Press.
Coach Moss – who had four children attend Webster High: daughters Gentry, Candice and Kim, and son Woody – retired from the school district in 1975, at the age of 62. The next year the city of Webster Groves named the old Memorial Park for him: Moss Field. It was something that honored and amazed him, say Woody and Gentry.
Retirement let him enjoy more time with his wife, a teacher in the Clayton School District. And to visit with his children and grandchildren, who had settled from St. Louis, west to Colorado and the Bay Area. He loved gardening – with a special fondness for his tomato patch, where he’s shown in the photo on the screen. He also took up golf, and began an association with a shoe store in Old Orchard.
Coach Moss died young, though – VERY young, at 68, from prostate cancer that had been diagnosed when he was 66. It was in 1982, the same year Miss Replogle died. Good for us to know, though, that his name lives at Moss Field for all time – an honor that he got to experience in his lifetime.
Here’s to you, Coach Moss.
Coach Ray Moss wrapped up his career as Webster’s head football coach one year after we graduated. In that 1964-65 school year he turned 52, and he became full-time athletic director – leaving behind an extraordinary winning percentage that approached 60 percent.
That record contained 151 wins, 88 losses, and 17 ties – with the most memorable tie being our last Turkey Day Game: 0-0 in 1963. In his final coaching season, his 8-1-1 record made Webster Suburban Big 10 Conference champions. But that wasn’t the best year of his career; that was the 1954 undefeated season, when Webster was ranked tops in the state by the Associated Press.
Coach Moss – who had four children attend Webster High: daughters Gentry, Candice and Kim, and son Woody – retired from the school district in 1975, at the age of 62. The next year the city of Webster Groves named the old Memorial Park for him: Moss Field. It was something that honored and amazed him, say Woody and Gentry.
Retirement let him enjoy more time with his wife, a teacher in the Clayton School District. And to visit with his children and grandchildren, who had settled from St. Louis, west to Colorado and the Bay Area. He loved gardening – with a special fondness for his tomato patch, where he’s shown in the photo on the screen. He also took up golf, and began an association with a shoe store in Old Orchard.
Coach Moss died young, though – VERY young, at 68, from prostate cancer that had been diagnosed when he was 66. It was in 1982, the same year Miss Replogle died. Good for us to know, though, that his name lives at Moss Field for all time – an honor that he got to experience in his lifetime.
Here’s to you, Coach Moss.
3) George Brucker
Few teachers in our school’s history have rivaled math teacher George Brucker in the respect they commanded, and the praise they won, among students.
But he also gained a national reputation in his field – especially in promoting what were then the somewhat revolutionary and controversial concepts of “New Math.” In his view, math was a science that, like any other, needed to undergo constant change, to allow it to support other areas of study. In the computer era, and the Space Age, he certainly was proved right in that.
Students celebrated the way he encouraged them to develop their own new approaches to problems. Over more than three and a half decades at Webster High – a career that began in 1948 – a surprising number of students inspired by him themselves became math teachers or engineers, reflecting his love of mathematics. Just look at the website comments from our classmates about the teachers that impacted them the most. You’ll see the names of math teachers, engineers, and others who developed their math skills. My best friend Charlie Edmunds, Mick Norton, Gary George, Bill Hitchens, Alan Henderson, Ernest Reeves, Scott Davis and Bob Feldmann, to name a few.
Two years after we graduated, Mr. Brucker was featured in a newspaper article in which he argued against mathematics getting bogged down in old ways of thinking. He also was honored by Yale University as one of the nation’s five most influential high school teachers, based on testimony from students.
Mr. Brucker told a reporter at the time: “Personally, I couldn’t have chosen anything I’d like better” than teaching math. “So many people just endure their jobs,” he said. “I get a terrific bang out of mine.”
Sadly, though, that enthusiasm faded in George Brucker ’s later life, years after we left Webster High. The word among school administrators was that he had various disagreements with the principal in his final years as a teacher. He retired in 1985, when he was 67. At the root of the problem may have been his sense that it was harder to reach students in the ‘Eighties. One family friend told me that Mr. Brucker believed students were displaying less interest in learning. He was spending too much time disciplining students – something he hated. (He had once been a principal himself, and hated that, too.)
Retirement didn’t seem to help his spirits much. From his long-time home in Columbia, Illinois, just across the Mississippi, he played golf and bridge, and kept in touch with Webster friends. But his feeling about the continued slide in learning, as he saw it, depressed him. In the years before his death in 1993 – at 75, from respiratory failure – he told Webster High officials that he didn’t want anything written about him when he died. Indeed, there was no funeral service for him. And only a short obituary appeared.
That’s hardly the way his students from the mid-Sixties remember him, though. They remember not only his sharp mind and his interest in guiding students toward finding their own solutions to problems, but also his playfulness in the classroom. Recently I talked to Bob Batts – a Brucker student from the Class of ’65 who went on to become an engineer in New England. Bob shared with me the story of how his entire class once showed up in Mr. Brucker’s class wearing bow ties – his own signature neckwear, of course.
Few teachers in our school’s history have rivaled math teacher George Brucker in the respect they commanded, and the praise they won, among students.
But he also gained a national reputation in his field – especially in promoting what were then the somewhat revolutionary and controversial concepts of “New Math.” In his view, math was a science that, like any other, needed to undergo constant change, to allow it to support other areas of study. In the computer era, and the Space Age, he certainly was proved right in that.
Students celebrated the way he encouraged them to develop their own new approaches to problems. Over more than three and a half decades at Webster High – a career that began in 1948 – a surprising number of students inspired by him themselves became math teachers or engineers, reflecting his love of mathematics. Just look at the website comments from our classmates about the teachers that impacted them the most. You’ll see the names of math teachers, engineers, and others who developed their math skills. My best friend Charlie Edmunds, Mick Norton, Gary George, Bill Hitchens, Alan Henderson, Ernest Reeves, Scott Davis and Bob Feldmann, to name a few.
Two years after we graduated, Mr. Brucker was featured in a newspaper article in which he argued against mathematics getting bogged down in old ways of thinking. He also was honored by Yale University as one of the nation’s five most influential high school teachers, based on testimony from students.
Mr. Brucker told a reporter at the time: “Personally, I couldn’t have chosen anything I’d like better” than teaching math. “So many people just endure their jobs,” he said. “I get a terrific bang out of mine.”
Sadly, though, that enthusiasm faded in George Brucker ’s later life, years after we left Webster High. The word among school administrators was that he had various disagreements with the principal in his final years as a teacher. He retired in 1985, when he was 67. At the root of the problem may have been his sense that it was harder to reach students in the ‘Eighties. One family friend told me that Mr. Brucker believed students were displaying less interest in learning. He was spending too much time disciplining students – something he hated. (He had once been a principal himself, and hated that, too.)
Retirement didn’t seem to help his spirits much. From his long-time home in Columbia, Illinois, just across the Mississippi, he played golf and bridge, and kept in touch with Webster friends. But his feeling about the continued slide in learning, as he saw it, depressed him. In the years before his death in 1993 – at 75, from respiratory failure – he told Webster High officials that he didn’t want anything written about him when he died. Indeed, there was no funeral service for him. And only a short obituary appeared.
That’s hardly the way his students from the mid-Sixties remember him, though. They remember not only his sharp mind and his interest in guiding students toward finding their own solutions to problems, but also his playfulness in the classroom. Recently I talked to Bob Batts – a Brucker student from the Class of ’65 who went on to become an engineer in New England. Bob shared with me the story of how his entire class once showed up in Mr. Brucker’s class wearing bow ties – his own signature neckwear, of course.
Mr. Brucker didn’t notice for 10 minutes; but when he finally got the joke it totally cracked him up. Note that he took off his own bow tie for the photo – perhaps so as not to upstage the ingenuity of his students. I also heard a story about how Mr. Brucker purposely rumpled his bow ties during the day – after meticulously tying them at home in the morning – so as not to appear too formal with students. (A Facebook website is still maintained in his memory, at https://www.facebook.com/pages/George-Brucker/1447684688781835 )
4) Yvonne Lanagan
In the case of Mrs. Lanagan – so well remembered by pupils for her dynamism, and for that 500-word vocabulary list – her post-Webster life was interesting, certainly. But what fascinated me most was the story few, if any of us, knew back in our student years – about the strange way she came to Webster High in the first place.
Born in Slovenia in 1921, and raised in the Black Hills of South Dakota, she won a college scholarship that took her to Iowa, and met, and married, a Marine captain. Then, in 1952, when she was 31, a car accident in Iowa killed her husband and one of their three young boys.
At the time she was with her other two sons, Mike and Kevin, in St. Louis, where Kevin was getting medical treatment. Suddenly faced with the challenge of finding a job to help her raise her children, she went to Webster High to see principal Howard Latta. It was only days after the accident. She told him she was the best English teacher he would ever have, and he should hire her.
He did. And she began an 11-year stint at Webster that ended just one year after our class graduated. In 1965 she headed to San Leandro, California, for two years, and then spent several more years at high schools in Evanston, and Northfield, Illinois. She remarried, becoming Yvonne Lanagan Hunter. She retired from teaching in the late 1970s, and eventually moved to Mesa, Arizona. Later, she moved to Salt Lake City, where she died late last year, after a brief illness.
Last year, when Kevin and Michael realized that she was seriously ill, they reached out to several ex-pupils, who wrote her notes about what an inspiration she had been. Some Webster alums said that 500-word list had helped build a lifelong passion in them for language. (Mrs. L instructed students to scour the media for usages of the word.) Some of those notes to her have been posted on a Facebook page that features her. We’ve also got the 500-word list there, if you wonder what’s on it. https://www.facebook.com/Yvonnelanagan
Mrs. Lanagan, here’s to you.
In the case of Mrs. Lanagan – so well remembered by pupils for her dynamism, and for that 500-word vocabulary list – her post-Webster life was interesting, certainly. But what fascinated me most was the story few, if any of us, knew back in our student years – about the strange way she came to Webster High in the first place.
Born in Slovenia in 1921, and raised in the Black Hills of South Dakota, she won a college scholarship that took her to Iowa, and met, and married, a Marine captain. Then, in 1952, when she was 31, a car accident in Iowa killed her husband and one of their three young boys.
At the time she was with her other two sons, Mike and Kevin, in St. Louis, where Kevin was getting medical treatment. Suddenly faced with the challenge of finding a job to help her raise her children, she went to Webster High to see principal Howard Latta. It was only days after the accident. She told him she was the best English teacher he would ever have, and he should hire her.
He did. And she began an 11-year stint at Webster that ended just one year after our class graduated. In 1965 she headed to San Leandro, California, for two years, and then spent several more years at high schools in Evanston, and Northfield, Illinois. She remarried, becoming Yvonne Lanagan Hunter. She retired from teaching in the late 1970s, and eventually moved to Mesa, Arizona. Later, she moved to Salt Lake City, where she died late last year, after a brief illness.
Last year, when Kevin and Michael realized that she was seriously ill, they reached out to several ex-pupils, who wrote her notes about what an inspiration she had been. Some Webster alums said that 500-word list had helped build a lifelong passion in them for language. (Mrs. L instructed students to scour the media for usages of the word.) Some of those notes to her have been posted on a Facebook page that features her. We’ve also got the 500-word list there, if you wonder what’s on it. https://www.facebook.com/Yvonnelanagan
Mrs. Lanagan, here’s to you.
5) Harold Ferguson
In 1955, Harold Ferguson started teaching Social Studies at Webster. He was 29; had already served in the Navy in World War II and the Korean War; and had his masters degree from Mizzou.
There’s one very personal reason I include him in this group, though. One of high school's strongest single memories for me has been a single brief exchange I had with a teacher in a hallway, 51 years ago. I’d always thought it was Mr. Ferguson, but I wasn’t positive.
It was just after lunch: Nov. 22, 1963. There’d been a buzz in the cafeteria – in that age long before twitter or Facebook alerts – that shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas.
As I made my way to my next class I encountered a teacher, and asked him if he had heard about it. The teacher’s reply was “Er Ist Tot,” quickly followed with the stark translation: He is dead. Was it Mr. Ferguson? I decided to use my research for this evening’s talk to help me confirm it, or disprove it.
I checked school records for a clue, just as I’d done with Mrs. L, Ray Moss, Mr. Brucker and Miss Rep. I did find one hint, though it wasn’t conclusive: In his employment folder I saw that Mr. Ferguson had taught German at a high school before coming here in the ‘50s.
My next discovery led me to a definitive conclusion, however: 38 years ago, when he quit teaching here, Mr. Ferguson had moved to Rogers, Arkansas – to start a dry-cleaning business, of all things. And there in Arkansas he was still living, now 88 years old.
I phoned Harold. (I have permission to call him that now.) And I found him happy to talk, even though he didn’t remember me, even after looking at my picture in the yearbook that he had on hand.
He had retired in 1976, at age 50, because he always wanted a business of his own. He chose dry cleaning even though he’d never even ironed a shirt. “You learn,” says Harold. Now retired from that, he’s grateful he can still drive, take care of his house, send and receive emails, and read Time, and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “Current events seem to just keep coming daily,” he says, “and someone, somewhere has to grab the problem by the horns and deal with the bad guys.” There you have it: your social studies lesson for the day.
Then I thought of my mission: I told him about the hallway encounter that I thought we might have had. And I asked if he recalled running into somebody, anybody, on that horrible day in November 1963. No, he said. Could it be, I asked, if he had run into someone, that he might have said something in German? Without skipping a beat came those same chilling words again I’d first heard so long ago: Er Ist Tot. And I knew then, of course, that it had been him.
He’s still got the teacher’s gift for correcting kids, by the way. I told Harold how those two German words – “Eris Tot” – had been seared in my brain for 51 years. “It’s actually three words,” he replied. “Er Ist Tot,” he is dead. (Hmm. As a four-year Latin student of Hazel K. Farmer, I remember “he is” being “Eris.” Anybody else remember that from Miss Farmer’s class?)
Anyway, I was delighted with that little German lesson – from the teacher who had shocked me so much in an encounter more than five decades ago.
Harold sends his greetings to our class, by the way. He actually attended last year’s 50th, for the Class of ’63, but couldn’t make it for this one. He’s doing pretty well, he says, though he’s still trying to adjust to life without his wife, who died four years ago. Like many of us, he surrounds himself with children and grandchildren, as you see so charmingly in the photo above.
So, here’s a toast to Harold Ferguson.
And finally, a last toast…to all the teachers who touched our lives, and helped make us who we are. (Feel free to pick a name, and say it aloud):
Here’s to you ... [favorite Webster teacher.]
Thanks to Ollie Richards and the Reunion committee; to Pat Voss and Shannon Daniel at the alumni office; to alums who shared their thoughts about the five teachers; and to Max Wolfrum, an English teacher you may remember from our years here. He answered questions for me about the five teachers. A fascinating guy, Max later served as acting superintendent of schools here from 1983 to 1991, and later served as superintendent in the Ferguson school district. He’s 85, and still lives here in Webster.
Thanks to my 1964 classmates, for your attention tonight.
In 1955, Harold Ferguson started teaching Social Studies at Webster. He was 29; had already served in the Navy in World War II and the Korean War; and had his masters degree from Mizzou.
There’s one very personal reason I include him in this group, though. One of high school's strongest single memories for me has been a single brief exchange I had with a teacher in a hallway, 51 years ago. I’d always thought it was Mr. Ferguson, but I wasn’t positive.
It was just after lunch: Nov. 22, 1963. There’d been a buzz in the cafeteria – in that age long before twitter or Facebook alerts – that shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas.
As I made my way to my next class I encountered a teacher, and asked him if he had heard about it. The teacher’s reply was “Er Ist Tot,” quickly followed with the stark translation: He is dead. Was it Mr. Ferguson? I decided to use my research for this evening’s talk to help me confirm it, or disprove it.
I checked school records for a clue, just as I’d done with Mrs. L, Ray Moss, Mr. Brucker and Miss Rep. I did find one hint, though it wasn’t conclusive: In his employment folder I saw that Mr. Ferguson had taught German at a high school before coming here in the ‘50s.
My next discovery led me to a definitive conclusion, however: 38 years ago, when he quit teaching here, Mr. Ferguson had moved to Rogers, Arkansas – to start a dry-cleaning business, of all things. And there in Arkansas he was still living, now 88 years old.
I phoned Harold. (I have permission to call him that now.) And I found him happy to talk, even though he didn’t remember me, even after looking at my picture in the yearbook that he had on hand.
He had retired in 1976, at age 50, because he always wanted a business of his own. He chose dry cleaning even though he’d never even ironed a shirt. “You learn,” says Harold. Now retired from that, he’s grateful he can still drive, take care of his house, send and receive emails, and read Time, and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “Current events seem to just keep coming daily,” he says, “and someone, somewhere has to grab the problem by the horns and deal with the bad guys.” There you have it: your social studies lesson for the day.
Then I thought of my mission: I told him about the hallway encounter that I thought we might have had. And I asked if he recalled running into somebody, anybody, on that horrible day in November 1963. No, he said. Could it be, I asked, if he had run into someone, that he might have said something in German? Without skipping a beat came those same chilling words again I’d first heard so long ago: Er Ist Tot. And I knew then, of course, that it had been him.
He’s still got the teacher’s gift for correcting kids, by the way. I told Harold how those two German words – “Eris Tot” – had been seared in my brain for 51 years. “It’s actually three words,” he replied. “Er Ist Tot,” he is dead. (Hmm. As a four-year Latin student of Hazel K. Farmer, I remember “he is” being “Eris.” Anybody else remember that from Miss Farmer’s class?)
Anyway, I was delighted with that little German lesson – from the teacher who had shocked me so much in an encounter more than five decades ago.
Harold sends his greetings to our class, by the way. He actually attended last year’s 50th, for the Class of ’63, but couldn’t make it for this one. He’s doing pretty well, he says, though he’s still trying to adjust to life without his wife, who died four years ago. Like many of us, he surrounds himself with children and grandchildren, as you see so charmingly in the photo above.
So, here’s a toast to Harold Ferguson.
And finally, a last toast…to all the teachers who touched our lives, and helped make us who we are. (Feel free to pick a name, and say it aloud):
Here’s to you ... [favorite Webster teacher.]
Thanks to Ollie Richards and the Reunion committee; to Pat Voss and Shannon Daniel at the alumni office; to alums who shared their thoughts about the five teachers; and to Max Wolfrum, an English teacher you may remember from our years here. He answered questions for me about the five teachers. A fascinating guy, Max later served as acting superintendent of schools here from 1983 to 1991, and later served as superintendent in the Ferguson school district. He’s 85, and still lives here in Webster.
Thanks to my 1964 classmates, for your attention tonight.
Edwin H. Eggers: Educator in WG School District for More Than 60 Years Dies at 94
(1919-2014)
Edwin H. Eggers, a retired principal and teacher to generations of students and a well-known fixture in the Webster Groves School District, died Friday Jan. 17, at his home. He was 94 years old.
Mr. Eggers began teaching in the Webster Groves School District in 1950 as a fifth grade teacher at Clark School. At the time he was the only male elementary school in the district, something he often referred to as a “dubious distinction.”
In 1954 Mr. Eggers produced and narrated the first TV series to give an in depth look at prominent St. Louis area businesses and institutions. Entitled “A Look at St. Louis,” it aired on the then fledgling KETC Channel 9.
In 1955, Mr. Eggers was promoted to principal at the old Schall Elementary School in Rock Hill. An avid supporter of civil rights and a NAACP member, Mr. Eggers led the school through the turbulent transition of a demographically changing school and city in the late 1950s and 1960s….
Upon his retirement as principal from Schall Elementary in 1970, Mr. Eggers became Audio Media Director for the entire Webster Groves School District. He was behind the scenes at most performances from1971 until he could no longer maneuver the “cat walk” in 2011.
After his “official retirement” in 1979, he remained a sound and lighting consultant for the WGSD. During those years he became known as the “Phantom of the Auditorium.”
Mr. Eggers was an active member of the Missouri Retired Teachers Association and the Webster Groves Retired Teachers Association….[He] volunteered for AARP as a driving instructor for more than 20 years.
Friends and family say that Mr. Eggers served a life dedicated to education. His influences reached well beyond the classroom. He lived life to the fullest and never passed an opportunity to stop and talk to people, especially children.
(Webster Kirkwood Times, January 24, 2014; p. 14)
Note: Mr. Eggers was the father of ’63 WGHS graduated, Marg Eggers, who died in Jan. 2013.
(1919-2014)
Edwin H. Eggers, a retired principal and teacher to generations of students and a well-known fixture in the Webster Groves School District, died Friday Jan. 17, at his home. He was 94 years old.
Mr. Eggers began teaching in the Webster Groves School District in 1950 as a fifth grade teacher at Clark School. At the time he was the only male elementary school in the district, something he often referred to as a “dubious distinction.”
In 1954 Mr. Eggers produced and narrated the first TV series to give an in depth look at prominent St. Louis area businesses and institutions. Entitled “A Look at St. Louis,” it aired on the then fledgling KETC Channel 9.
In 1955, Mr. Eggers was promoted to principal at the old Schall Elementary School in Rock Hill. An avid supporter of civil rights and a NAACP member, Mr. Eggers led the school through the turbulent transition of a demographically changing school and city in the late 1950s and 1960s….
Upon his retirement as principal from Schall Elementary in 1970, Mr. Eggers became Audio Media Director for the entire Webster Groves School District. He was behind the scenes at most performances from1971 until he could no longer maneuver the “cat walk” in 2011.
After his “official retirement” in 1979, he remained a sound and lighting consultant for the WGSD. During those years he became known as the “Phantom of the Auditorium.”
Mr. Eggers was an active member of the Missouri Retired Teachers Association and the Webster Groves Retired Teachers Association….[He] volunteered for AARP as a driving instructor for more than 20 years.
Friends and family say that Mr. Eggers served a life dedicated to education. His influences reached well beyond the classroom. He lived life to the fullest and never passed an opportunity to stop and talk to people, especially children.
(Webster Kirkwood Times, January 24, 2014; p. 14)
Note: Mr. Eggers was the father of ’63 WGHS graduated, Marg Eggers, who died in Jan. 2013.
Yvonne Lanagan
1921-2013
Yvonne Lanagan Hunter, Yvonne H. Lanagan known to a generation of Webster Groves, Mo., and Chicago area high school students as an inspirational and demanding English teacher and journalism advisor, died Dec. 2 [2013] in Salt Lake City after a brief illness. She was 92 years old. Mrs. Hunter was born in Slovenia in 1921, and grew up in the Lead/Deadwood area of South Dakota. She began teaching at Webster Groves High School in 1953, rapidly gaining a reputation for tough but rewarding assignments. Her English students recalled, for example, her list of 500 words, which they were required to find in use in the media, and to document. As adviser for many years at the Webster Echo, she established high publication standards for her student staffers. After 11 years in the Webster school system, she moved to San Leandro, Calif., for two years. She then spent several years at high schools in the Chicago area, first in Evanston, and later Northfield, Ill., before retiring in the late 1970s and eventually moving to Mesa, Ariz. She remained attached to the Black Hills of South Dakota and associated memories such as picking chokecherries and making jelly. She maintained a lifelong interest in cooking Slovenian specialties such as poteca, traditions that are carried on by her children and grandchildren. She was married 11 years to Armand L. Hunter (deceased) and 9 years to Robert Leo Lanagan (deceased). She is survived by sons Michael Robert Lanagan of Concord, MA. a retired technology executive, and Kevin Joseph Lanagan of Lutherville, MD., an instructor at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Surviving grandsons are Sean Michael Lanagan and wife Leslie, of Concord, MA; Tad Patrick Lanagan and wife Sarah Andel of Watertown, NY; and James Robert Lanagan and granddaughter Erin Kathleen Lanagan, of Baltimore, MD. Plans call for a ceremony in Clinton, Iowa, at a date still to be set, and a ceremonial interment at St. Irenaeus Catholic Cemetery in that city. The Pape Funeral Home, Clinton, IA is assisting the family. Online condolences may be left at www.papefh.com. (StL Post-Dispatch, online Dec. 19, 2013)
1921-2013
Yvonne Lanagan Hunter, Yvonne H. Lanagan known to a generation of Webster Groves, Mo., and Chicago area high school students as an inspirational and demanding English teacher and journalism advisor, died Dec. 2 [2013] in Salt Lake City after a brief illness. She was 92 years old. Mrs. Hunter was born in Slovenia in 1921, and grew up in the Lead/Deadwood area of South Dakota. She began teaching at Webster Groves High School in 1953, rapidly gaining a reputation for tough but rewarding assignments. Her English students recalled, for example, her list of 500 words, which they were required to find in use in the media, and to document. As adviser for many years at the Webster Echo, she established high publication standards for her student staffers. After 11 years in the Webster school system, she moved to San Leandro, Calif., for two years. She then spent several years at high schools in the Chicago area, first in Evanston, and later Northfield, Ill., before retiring in the late 1970s and eventually moving to Mesa, Ariz. She remained attached to the Black Hills of South Dakota and associated memories such as picking chokecherries and making jelly. She maintained a lifelong interest in cooking Slovenian specialties such as poteca, traditions that are carried on by her children and grandchildren. She was married 11 years to Armand L. Hunter (deceased) and 9 years to Robert Leo Lanagan (deceased). She is survived by sons Michael Robert Lanagan of Concord, MA. a retired technology executive, and Kevin Joseph Lanagan of Lutherville, MD., an instructor at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Surviving grandsons are Sean Michael Lanagan and wife Leslie, of Concord, MA; Tad Patrick Lanagan and wife Sarah Andel of Watertown, NY; and James Robert Lanagan and granddaughter Erin Kathleen Lanagan, of Baltimore, MD. Plans call for a ceremony in Clinton, Iowa, at a date still to be set, and a ceremonial interment at St. Irenaeus Catholic Cemetery in that city. The Pape Funeral Home, Clinton, IA is assisting the family. Online condolences may be left at www.papefh.com. (StL Post-Dispatch, online Dec. 19, 2013)