Miss Hunnicutt could have been a twin to my maternal grandmother. Tiny and energetic, she had the same pixie-like sense of humor, a tendency toward mischief and a hunger to solve mysteries. I never did figure out exactly what she meant when, on the first day of my high school algebra class, she wrote on the chalkboard, “A banyan tree is a banyan tree.” I kept expecting her to explain or ask us to tell her what we thought it meant, but she never did. She dealt in puzzles, algebra being a series of puzzles that led us through a maze of increasingly difficult but fascinating challenges.
Some of the freshman boys, at age 14, were at least twice her size, but she had few discipline problems. I remember one particular instance when the class “hot-shot” tried to give her a hard time as she was explaining a new method of problem-solving to us. When he started getting supportive chuckles and mutterings from some of his buddies, she moved to the back of the room where he had staked out “his” territory and stood beside him. When she did or said nothing further, he became bolder, grinning at his perceived victory. Miss Connecticut said nothing about his behavior but reached down and took his large, muscular hand in her small, wrinkled one, continuing with her lesson. She was still holding his hand at the end of the class period; he had ceased grinning and had given up his efforts to disrupt the class. I doubt if any of us remembered the algebra lesson (it had to be repeated the next day.) When the dismissal bell rang, she released his hand, patted his shoulder, smiled at him and returned to her desk while we filed out of the room. Miss Hunnicutt had her own way of solving problems.
Mr. Remy coached boys’ basketball and football as well as teaching the first “elective” class we encountered in our journey through the Knoxville school system. I was called Speech Class but was unlike any idea I had formed of what it entailed. Oh, we were challenged to give impromptu speeches, informational speeches, persuasive speeches, humorous speeches and several other speeches whose purposes I no longer remember, but in my memory, most of my speeches were simply about dogs. At that time in my life, my dad was raising pure-bred dogs and we attended many dog shows. I read the American Kennel Club book from cover to cover and fancied myself to be an instant expert on the raising, training and showing of all dogs. My informational speech was about the judging standards for Dalmatians. My humorous speech was about the difficulties and pitfalls of training puppies. My persuasive speech was a sales pitch to sell my own dog Buttons – well, I’m sure you get the idea.
As a coach, Mr. Remy gave a talk at pep-meetings before all the school ballgames, and they were all the usual fast-paced, rah-rah, slightly humorous and overly-enthusiastic speeches that we still hear from excited coaches and athletes on those brief television interviews today. The well thought-out, carefully researched, formal speech was unknown in that classroom. It was all about being able to stand up in front of our peers and deliver a message without fainting or at least being able to remember what we wanted to say, and getting the message across in a voice that was clear enough to be heard and understood without too much trembling or too many “uh’s” and “you-know’s.”
The students who were or had been on teams coached by Mr. Remy had the definite advantage of a certain degree of comfort from familiarity in a more relaxed situation, so nervousness was less of a problem for them. In an effort to eliminate some of the self-consciousness, he provided a “radio studio” where we could broadcast from an adjoining room, unseen by our classmates. This cut down on the stage-fright a little, but some of us still had problems with the jitters. Most eventually overcame the worst of it and one of the shyest boys (one of those who shuffle, mumble, forget what they are saying and blush a lot) became, in later life, a motivational speaker, speaking at colleges and corporate offices across the nation. Growing up helps, I guess. I expect Mr. Remy knew that.