Sad news came today — Anne Allen died Aug. 5. Anne was a dance teacher in Columbia, MD, and a gifted dancer in her day, the real thing. Her daughter, Cathleen, was a good friend in high school. I can’t remember why my friend Dana and I wandered into her ballet class at the community center. I had to be self-aware enough, at 15, to know that I had no talent. Somehow, Anne recruited me to play the Comet can in her whimsical take on the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which featured many name-brand cleansers. The Comet can required only strength and the ability to count; I had the former, if not a consistent grasp of the latter. I stole this experience and gave it to Tess Monaghan in Baltimore Blues.
My senior year, the school musical was Carousel. This was a fraught experience for me. I wanted to be Carrie, but lost the part to another girl with a much better voice. Later, she missed rehearsals for a swimming competition and she was told that I would go on in her place if she missed a certain rehearsal. She missed it, the director relented. Meanwhile, the original choreographer for the show had no use for me. But she was replaced by Anne midway through. Anne called me at home and asked me to join the chorus because “You will work hard and do what I tell you to do.” I was — and am — a big girl, but Anne was determined that one of my classmates, David Boyd, would lift me during “June is Busting Out All Over.” She told him: “You’ll have some biceps when this is over.” I’m sure he did.
Anne was a complicated person and I am too much of a fringe character in her life to do her justice. But it’s not a bad thing, when one is a teenager, to meet someone who tells you that working hard can compensate for a lack of talent.
Anyone else have such a mentor?
My junior year high school teacher-she made rules for good reason-no gum in class, not because it was a school rule, but because you couldn’t speak properly if something was in your mouth. She put readers, studious kids next to the athletes/non-readers, had us talk about what we were reading informally; and since there wasn’t “Public Speaking” offered any longer, she made each of us give talks-on our choice of topic, with displays. Trekkie that I was-I had borrowed a model of the Starship Enterprise. Shocked some of the guys. (not those in History who knew what my “history of …” series of term papers was about- science fiction. This was 1976, She was only teaching a couple of years longer, but I remember her motto of “rewrite, rewrite, erase and rewrite till you get it right!”
There are two and I may have mentioned them before. First is Ruth Morse who was my high school journalism teacher in my junior year. On my first news writing assignment, she scrawled “Not too terrible” across the top of the page. The best criticism I had ever received and it pushed me to work as hard as I ever had to improve. By the next year, I was the high school newspaper editor. Second was Shirley Newton, my best high school English teacher. She took the class into NYC to see my first Broadway show, “Pippin”. She was supportive and fearless and treated us with a respect that was very rare in adults toward high school students. We loved her right back.
My condolences on your loss. I know that the woman who gave you the Comet role has always been important to you.
My editor died last week, and he was a good one for pushing me to do better. I like your description of being too much a fringe character to do someone’s life justice–that’s how I feel about Les, though I’m honored that I got to work with him.
I still call him “Brother John” though he left religious vows 50 years ago, He was my English teacher in 10th grade, I gave him a handful of poems, penned on looseleaf front and back. The next day he gave me my poems, each perfectly centered on a white sheet, typed with a blue typewriter ribbon. They looked so beautiful, like official poems. I felt so published. That was the beginning of a long mentoring process that has never ended and that includes a million beauties of this universe, from ideas to books to symphonies and paintings, and paradoxes and reislings that I might have missed but for John.
Mrs. Alden, my high school english teacher. She taught English, Speech, Forensics and Drama. There was a small group of us that took her Shakespeare class for 3 years and she let us read Titus Andronicus among other things. I’m convinced that I can stand up and address a crowd coherently thanks to her.