At Wildwood, we had about 240-250 students, K-8. I think we had about 40 safety patrol members. These numbers probably are within 10-20 students of being consistent every year. We had more kindergartners, 40-50 in morning and afternoon session, because Saint Mary's. the catholic school across the street didn't have a kindergarten so their future students attended Wildwood for a year and then transferred.
Douglas Adds: My 8th grade graduating class at Wildwood was, I believe, 16 kids while the one across the street at St Mary's was nearly 100. So, attending Wildwood was almost like being at a country school instead of a big city public school. It was really disorienting to go from that to a high school with 250 boys in a class and it took me two years to adjust to it.
I wonder if Edward recalls the day in, I think, 1st Grade when a whole bunch of kids from St Mary's (the girls not in their school uniforms) showed-up in our classroom and studied with us for one day, swelling the number of occupied school desks by a factor of three. Not long ago, I read an account of how the Chicago Public Schools inflated attendence figures at all-white schools to prevent reallocation of Federal education funds to black school districts. I've wondered since whether that strange one-day appearance of the kids from across the street was due to some kind of inspection, which would mean that Monsignor O'Rourke, likely no fan of desegregation, was in on the fraud.
I met Doug at Wildwood in kindergarten and we became good friends by first grade. We use to play touch turtle at recess in first grade for some reason. I just remember us doing that and having one of the older 7th grade girls that used to watch over us laughing about it. By first or second grade I used to go over to Doug's house and we would play Corgi cars as he a great collection including a James Bond Goldfinger Corgi toy that was gold colored and had a bulletproof shield that I was quite impressed with.
Douglas Adds: Ed and I met on the third day of school, when by chance we sat next to each other along the arc of the big green circle that was painted on the floor of the kindergarten classroom. He was the first friend I made who wasn't from my own block. As Ed says, it was in first grade, after all the St. Mary's-bound kids had departed, that we got to be best pals. The Corgi toys, I think, came around Second Grade after we had a fire that destroyed the interior of our house and my dad started rebuilding my toy collection. I remember the James Bond car, which had a retractable rear bullet shield, machine guns that popped out in front, and a working ejector seat.
One memory I have of first grade at Wildwood was one day after recess when we weren't allowed back into the school building and had to wait outside the doors for a long time -- it was the day JFK was shot and we were all sent home so our parents had the job of explaining that the Presdient was dead. What a lost era -- when it was a given that a parent was always waiting at home during the day while the kids were in school. My mother had painted a portrait of JFK after his death that hung in our basement; when the firemen came through, I remember that one of them smashed an axe through his forehead -- it was strange, touring that devastated house, to see the charred Kennedy portrait, itself assassinated with a big gash in the President's forehead.
The playground game I remember was "Squirrels in the Trees," a sort of modified musical chairs where five kids be clustered at every tree and, at the whistle, had to dash to another tree -- if you weren't one of the first five to place your hand on the new tree's trunk, you had to run until you found one that wasn't already full of "squirrels."
As Douglas mentioned, the school was not very good. I am amazed that I learned much of anything. Certainly some will argue that I didn't learn anything. I leave this for scholars and theologins to decide. Bob Melko was one of our friends spent a lot of time out of class as he became a film projector boy. Whenever one of the teachers would want to show a film, they would ask the film projector boys (the worked in groups of two for some reason) to get the film projector, which we had on a cart and bring into their classroom, set it up and make sure it worked.
The teachers often had a subject they had reasonable skill at but our math and science education was poor and grammar and language was probably even worse if that is possible. Douglas is probably among the more accomplished of our fellow students because he read a tremendous amount on his own and basically studied literature and history out of interest.
Douglas Adds: Or accomplished because my mother was very easily taken in by (or, perhaps, very tolerant of) my ability to fake sickness and stay home from school -- it was a rare week after second grade that I put in the full five days. When home sick, I wasn't allowed to watch television or listen to the radio, but I was allowed to read, so that's what I did: I read everything I could get my hands on. Classroom work at Wildwood was so dull that I could hardly wait to get "sick" again so I could learn stuff on my own. I'd never get away with this in the more regimented school environment today and so, perversely, I owe my early immersion in books to the incredible tedium of classes at Wildwood School.
We had a student council that was comprised of 8th grade students as officers. I think they had class reps from the lower grades but at some point they found that was a waste of time and did
away with it. The real purpose of the student council was not clear other than to expose us to a democratic system and to encourage some kind of civic responsibility.
Student Council offices were Mayor, Assistant Mayor, Treasurer, Secretary, Indoor and Outdoor commissioner and possibly others though I can't recall.
I was elected Mayor in 8th grade and so I served as mayor and captain of the safety patrol. Safety patrol had a real function but student council was really pretty useless. Actually the outdoor commissioner was supposed to make sure there were older students, always older girls, that would watch over and help the kindergartners and 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders. They would make sure they lined up to go in the building and had some activities to do and didn't get into trouble.
Douglas Adds: I only made it to Lieutennant of the Safety Patrol (and was a total bust presenting the colors at school events as I couldn't even lift then flag pole) and rose only as far as Assistant Mayor, after manipulating the election rules in my favor. My brother Keith, 7 years older, had been Indoor Commissioner -- the last time anyone would vote for him to hold any post. Among his duties was delivering the snack-time milk to the kindergarteners and I remember getting him in trouble with one of the girls who helped out in the classroom by telling her how he would lift me up by my legs and smash my head against the floor at home -- a total lie on my part (but one I came to regret less-and-less as my brother's perfidy and sanctimoniousness was revealed in the years to come).
Years later, I believe it was 20 years after we graduated 8th grade, a reunion was held at a restaurant on Touhy Avenue that once been a Red Balloon and later Henrici's Steak and Lobster. My opponent in the election for Mayor years ealier had been Kathy Sullivan. I think I beat her by only a vote or two. All these years later she told me she was still hurt by the loss in that election. I am not sure why. She was a beautiful girl, bright and motivated and from a good family, her dad was a Doctor and she had a kind and loving mother and 5 sisters and a brother or two. She was now married to a very intelligent and nice guy and had 4 kids of her own. Maybe if I had lost I would have felt hurt? Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things being Mayor was rather meaningless, though I guess at the time it seemed important. A big fish in small pond? Not really, though I guess it may have seemed that way.
Douglas Adds: Kathy Sullivan was cute, petite and often wore one of those strange knee-length plaid skirts with an 18" safety pin holding it closed. Girls' clothes always weirded me out and made me all the more grateful I was a boy.
There is one thing that I will say. The girls that served as playground helpers should have received medals. They braved cold weather and gave up chances to socialize and goof off like the rest of us to help little kids. I suspect they learned to become better baby sitters and eventually parents because of this but that is only guess. These were children taking care of children and for the most part they did a pretty good job.
Maybe the students that took responsibility to teach themselves, to help the other kids, maybe they did learn something of value despite the pitiful education and the rather bleak condition the school was in.
The one thing that we did have going for us at Wildwood, no one, not even the 8th graders had a drug or alcohol problem or had much access even to alcohol. For some that was to come shortly after in high school. I guess Doug and I were fortunate to avoid the whole drug problem that plagued so many by being sheltered in a safe if somewhat antiquated day care facility.
Douglas Adds: It was a wildly innocent time and place -- when I got to High School, I realized how much more "knowing" the kids who had gone to the Catholic elementary schools were. We were just incredibly, maybe wonderfully naive and, I guess, kind of charmed in that way. Again, it seems to me that the small scale of Wildwood made us almost like country kids -- indifferently educated, left to run nearly wild, but also kind of protected.
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