By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
When schools go back in session for another year, as they are now, it always triggers memories for me. That includes for both my life as a student in grades one through twelve, plus as a full-time classroom teacher for 28 years.
I can still see myself on my first day of school during the last part of August, 1959. I would be attending Grant’s Lick Elementary School, a few miles away from our family home outside Grant’s Lick on Highway 27.
We had a big front yard, and it was adorned with a stone birdbath and standing close by were two pink, plastic flamingos. A picture taken on that morning shows me standing tall on the porch, proudly holding my red and black book satchel in hand. I remember having a pretty good day at school, especially with the uncommonly kind and experienced “Mrs. Dorothy” being my teacher.
But it was what happened on the school bus ride home that brought on anxiety overload for little Stevie Flairty. Mom made arrangements with an older next-door neighbor girl, Mary, who also rode the bus. Mary agreed to assist me in getting off at that yard with the birdbath and pink, plastic flamingos in front. Mom’s oldest little boy (and first in school) crossing the busy Highway 27 after getting off the bus was probably her biggest concern of the whole memorable day.
Anyway, I remember the bus stopping near my house, one of three homes in a row (though only one with the pink, plastic flamingos). There, riders living at any of the three were to unload. I clearly remember watching Mary stand and walk off the bus with others as I froze in my seat close to the back of the huge bus. Guess I simply did what Mom told me: Don’t get off the bus until Mary comes and gets you.
Well, Mary just plainly forgot me, and Mr. Reinhardt, the rather elderly bus driver, pulled the big bus away after unloading my neighborhood students and headed northward at what a five-year-old could see was pretty fast. Never one to scream or even cry loudly, I nevertheless shed tears that were obvious to the upper-elementary-aged girls sitting near me.
Luckily, a few of them dutifully made their way up aisle — while the bus was moving, to Mr. Reinhardt and told him something while pointing toward me in the rear of the bus. Soon, he pulled the big yellow vehicle off the side of the road, got out of his seat and walked back to me, an absolutely petrified, vulnerable little being.
All on the bus were silent. I don’t remember the words I said, if any, but somehow Mr. Reinhardt learned where the bus stop I missed was.
I remember exactly where he turned the bus around and turned back, about two miles from my home. It was a southern Campbell County roadside park between what is now A.J. Jolly Park and the turnoff to downtown Grants Lick, where Phillip and Joy Smith ran the grocery our family patronized. Mr. Reinhardt’s heavy foot navigated that bus right back to the house, where Mom—frantically, I’m sure—waited in the driveway.
It was like being snatched out of the mouth of Jaws (though that movie wouldn’t arrive until decades later). I remember Mom not being very happy with Mary, but I don’t believe she let the adolescent know, either.
Overall, my years in the Campbell County school system were quite good. In the first grade, I had a crush on Billie Jo Belcher, a real cutie. That was partly fueled because when our class drew names for Christmas gifts, she drew my name and gave me a cowboy pistil and holster to wear on my hip. Remember, it was 1959, and things were different in those days. Christmas gifts and toy guns in school were not issues of community concern.
I was a scrawny little boy, and I generally gained “don’t bully” status in my grade school classes because I helped the big, rough, and intellectually-challenged boys do their homework. One of those students actually drove a farm pickup truck to school, and he was allowed to park it on the school grounds. Sounds a bit far-fetched, but it is a statement of fact.
At Campbell County High School, I was a quiet, reserved, and fairly nervous student. But sometimes I did stupid things, like getting spanked in a football coach’s health class for chewing gum. I once mouthed off at a young teacher, but later, with no prompting other than a guilty conscience, went back to her directly and apologized.
I dated occasionally while in high school, but must admit I was probably a pretty boring date, and, again, quite nervous. I do remember a few high school dances I attended and I specialized in slow dancing, though not sure what I was doing.
My 28-year teaching career, though, saw a more confident me than one others saw as a student all those years before I went to college.
My first position as an educator took place at Trapp Elementary, a small, rural elementary school in southeast Clark County. I recall that my mother, over two hours away geographically, was very supportive as I started my career. I came home to my apartment one of those first few days to find a letter of support, and she reminded me of being a first grader at Grants Lick.
One doesn’t forget things like missing your bus stop at age 5.
The job at Trapp was as a special education teacher, and I was happy being a large fish in a small pond. Most of the students were rural, similar to my background growing up in southern Campbell County, and my relationship with the students’ parents was good. My salary that year, in 1975, was about $7400, and my finances ran close and the clothing I wore was not of GQ quality. But my tastes were simple, the lunchroom staff supplied me extra food, and I loved being in the classroom.
I was asked to take on the school’s PTA presidency the second year and also was appointed “head teacher,” in charge when the principal was on location at the other tiny grade school he directed cross county. I have no doubt that my designation as head teacher was because I was the only full-time male on the staff.
That was 40 years ago. I visited my students’ homes, mostly a poor population, and saw my work as a mission. Several times, I took students home with me to visit for a weekend in northern Kentucky with my parents and me.
I’ll never forget one Trapp student telling me, trying to be nice, that he liked my new eye glasses. “They make you look smart,” he commented.
After three years at Trapp, I moved on to Providence Elementary, near Ford, for two years, then the next at George Rogers Clark High School, where I also coached girls’ basketball. When the opportunity came to move to a regular classroom, I took on a fourth grade job at Central Elementary.
There I stayed, happily, for 14 years. I then moved with my first wife and two step-children to Lexington and continued as a fourth-grade teacher at the School for the Creative and Performing Arts (SCAPA) for the last eight years of my full-time career, a total of 28. I continue today, along with writing, to do a limited amount of substitute teaching in nearby Jessamine County.
For this lucky guy, being both a student and teacher was, and is, a matter of joy and excitement. Both roles help define me. I’ll never regret the commitment I made to make teaching a career. The chance to grow personally and help others grow is unquestionably invigorating.
Yes, the start of school will always be a time of reflection in my camp, mostly positive. I must say that I have the highest regard for our educators, and I cringe when the public jury speaks harshly of them. Never said I was the most objective sort when it comes to this subject.
But truly, good luck this year for those attending classes and for those teaching them … and I’m hoping all will realize that school time is special time.
Steve Flairty is a teacher, public speaker and an author of six books: a biography of Kentucky Afield host Tim Farmer and five in the Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes series, including a kids’ version. Steve’s “Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes #4,” was released in 2015. Steve is a senior correspondent for Kentucky Monthly, a weekly NKyTribune columnist and a member of the Kentucky Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. Contact him at sflairty2001@yahoo.com or visit his Facebook page, “Kentucky in Common: Word Sketches in Tribute.” (Steve’s photo by Connie McDonald)