On That Day

Fauver Hill School was out in the country. It had four bright, airy, sparkling-clean classrooms. When the Venetian blinds were raised to the top of the huge windows you could gaze out onto giant oak trees on the playground and beyond to the endless farm fields and pastures dappled with gorgeous, grazing Guernseys. In the distance were lush bluffs with sandstone outcroppings that formed a verdant backdrop for chugging freight trains wending their way through the valley of the La Crosse River headed to big cities in far-off places I had only heard of. Madison. Milwaukee. Chicago. It was my school, my world. And it was built of clear blue sky and daydreams.

Students who would have been entering the 5th and 6th grades at Fauver Hill School were bussed to Irving Pertzsch Elementary School when the Town of Medary School District consolidated with the School District of Onalaska those many years ago.

I didn't like it at all.

Pertzsch was in Onalaska, a town of three thousand people. I might have known about six of them. The treeless playground was surfaced with blacktop. Baselines of a ball diamond and squares for hopscotch were painted on with yellow stripes like you'd find in the center of the highway. The only real earth on the school property was a sand bur patch. An unnecessary rule prohibited playing there.

There were only two things I liked about Pertzsch. One was the name. I couldn't think of another name with eight letters and only one vowel. The other was Mr. Urban.

Mr. Urban was our principal. He was the first man I ever saw who worked in a school who wasn't a janitor. Mr. Urban was as neat as a pin. He wore glasses with tortoise shell rims. His suits were perfectly tailored, his ties precisely knotted. His shoes were the same shade and as shiny as his, wavy, auburn, Brylcreamed hair.

When I was ten years old I was shy around grown-up men, a little bit afraid of them. But not Mr. Urban. Mr. Urban liked you. He shook your hand and said he was pleased to meet you. And he was. You were glad that Mr. Urban liked you. You wanted him to like you.

In stature, Mr. Urban was a small man. He was effeminate. That was something I couldn't have explained when I was ten and would have ridiculed when I was thirteen. Everything about Mr. Urban's manner put me at ease.

The 5th and 6th graders who came to Pertzsch from Fauver Hill were assigned to a makeshift classroom sandwiched between the lunch room and the music room. It was below ground level, windowless, dreary.

Since daydreams didn't come as freely here as they did back at Fauver Hill it was easy to misbehave. We were the charges of Miss Hyatt in her first year of teaching. She had not yet become a forceful woman so it wasn't unusual for Mr. Urban to visit our classroom from time to time. He would come into the room quietly, smile broadly, walk around the tightly-grouped desks, give an approving but barely discernible bow, and walk out. You hardly noticed him.

But on that day, an especially dreary one, he walked square-shouldered to the front of the class and turned sharply, facing us. He was crying. I had never seen a grown man cry. Mr. Urban's tears came without restraint. "I don't like to interrupt you with news unless the news is so very good that I just can't wait to announce it." The words came calmly, deliberately. "But today, I'm afraid the news is very bad. Our president has been shot. His condition is grave. As soon as I know more I will come and tell you."

We sat in silence. Within moments he returned with the news that the president was dead. He sat down with us in one of the small empty desks and stayed for what seemed like a long time.

We were sent home early. I remember sitting on the bus staring numbly at raindrops trickling down the window and thinking nothing bad had ever happened before now.