“There’s a couple of girls who want to come to our next meeting,” Miss Flory announced one night. Our Walnut Hills High School team was in full prep mode. Harriette Flory, English teacher and debate coach, had worked us weekly at her apartment, hoping we could build from our regional championship the past year into a State tournament contender. I was now a senior, having joined the team in eighth grade at the insistence of my parents. I forget what inducement they used, but I discovered it was a great channel for three of my innate characteristics: analysis, argument, and competitive aggression.
During my junior and senior years, I was paired with Bobby Reckman, the BMOC of our public college prep school. Kids from every grade school in Cincinnati took a test in the sixth grade; those in the upper 20% of their school were offered the chance to go to Walnut Hills, where everyone who graduated ended up at some college or other. This made our high school unique in several ways. First, our student body reflected the city as a whole; 20% of the kids from the poorest, or blackest, or richest parts of town were all there. Second, academic achievement and “smarts” were as respected as athletics or social status.
Bobby easily moved among all the categories. He was co-captain of the swimming team. He was President of the student council. He was a National Merit Finalist. And, with me, he was co-captain of the debate team. He knew everyone, and everyone, it seemed, loved him. Me, while I was also a National Merit Finalist, and on the swimming team, I seemed to be drifting somewhere outside the orbit of who’s who at the school. I don’t remember feeling left out, just not a part of it at all.
But I knew where I was going. I was already accepted into Wesleyan University, one of the “Little Three”, as distinct from the “Big Seven” of the Ivy League, in Middletown, CT. I would be studying biology, preparing for medical school. And I would become a psychiatrist.
Bobby, while he also went to a Little Three school (Williams), ended up drifting a bit after that, becoming a carpenter, rather than the law profession he seemed destined for. But during that winter and spring of 1966, our debate duo did the work, researched the topics, and honed our skills, winning every dual meet contest with other public schools, coming in first at the league, then the regional competition, sending us on to Columbus as one of the favorite squads.
Our school paper, The Chatterbox, documented these exploits as closely as if we were playing hoops; we were almost heroes. The paper had assigned one of the girls on the sports staff to cover us. Coming to some of our meets, she found the rapid paced arguments enthralling. She thought that we needed cheerleaders, just like the football and basketball teams. Then, she asked Miss Flory if she could come to one of our practices.
Miss Flory, while a stickler in class, had a very informal attitude with the debate team. She half-smiled as she went on. “Is that OK? They’ve got something they want to ask you.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Let’s see, I think it was Carol Downs and Susie Wise,” she responded.
They were both juniors, so I knew very little about them. I was basically a shy mess when it came to girls at that age. I had been asked out earlier that year to some school event by another junior, Liz Schneider, who was a cheerleader. While I wished I could have made something happen with that – who knew I would be attractive to anyone, much less a cheerleader? – I had such minimal social skills when it came to dealing with girls that all I could do afterwards was pine for her.
Carol and Susie showed up next week. Carol lived in my neighborhood, just up the street from the Episcopal church where I had sung in the choir, and been an acolyte in my early teen years. She had a friendly, but quiet smile, a small mouth, dirty blond straight long hair, and a pronounced but gently rounded chin.
I stood slack-jawed, or maybe my face was totally blank. While I could become quite animated when I got going, I was a very slow starter when it came to anything or anyone new. I don’t remember who spoke first; these two seemed joined at the hip in their little project.
“We noticed you guys have been doing so well at the regional and state meets last year and now. But nobody pays any attention. So we think you need cheerleaders. This is Walnut Hills; we shouldn’t just be paying attention to the football team.”
“So we want to be your cheerleaders.”
“What, like pom-poms and chants? That won’t go over very well during a debate,” Bobby noted, somewhat sardonically. He actually knew Susie pretty well; they lived in the same neighborhood, on back-to-back streets, While Carol and I were in the very aptly named Pleasant Ridge, which was about as white bread and boring a suburb as Cincinnati had, Bobby and Susie lived in Clifton. This was an inner-city enclave near the University, close to the art museum, filled with churches, cemeteries, and forested parks. The upper crust lived there. Bobby’s father was a lawyer, also the Speaker of the Ohio State House (or maybe it was the Senate.) Suave, sophisticated, knowledgeable, he always had a smile for everyone, always knew what to say.
“No, we’ve got another idea. We’ve seen a couple of debates…You guys have to hold up those time cards for each other, when you should be thinking about what you’re going to say next round.” It was true. Each speaker had 10 minutes to first present arguments; then, 5 minutes for rebuttal. Going over the limit incurred a severe penalty from the judges, so instead of just letting the time creep up, we had cards which we flipped over, counting the minutes down by 1, until the final 30 seconds, when another card flashed up.
“We could be your timekeepers,” Susie said. Susie had luxuriant black hair, cut in bangs above her eyes, but flowing down past her shoulders, held back with a paisley headband. Her head seemed a bit large for her body, and she used every bit of that face in her smile. Dark eyes, dark brows, with a voice and diction beyond her years. While Carol still kept a fair amount of little girl in her, Susie seemed so sure of herself.
“We made time cards to use.” She brought them out, fanning from 9 to zero. They were white thick paperboard, numbers hand cut with pinking shears from paisley fabric.
Bobby and I were proud of our appearance on the debate stage. Pressed slacks, white shirts, and ties. Paisley was considered cool and hip that year, so our ties were filled with amoeba-like ovals and assorted squiggles. Carol and Susie had noticed, and made the time cards to match.