Teachers make lasting imprint

The details that matter, the ones that linger long after the names, dates and mathematical formulas have disappeared, had little to do with book learning.

When a group of people gathered to reminisce about their school days, few talked about reading, writing or arithmetic. The stories that survived decades after they heard their last school bell were about people — caring teachers, strict teachers and the rare moments when they, as students, had bested teachers, if only for a moment.

About 15 people met Tuesday to remember their school days as part of the free monthly History of Whitefish program the Stumptown Historical Society hosts at the Whitefish Community Center. Topics vary from month to month; February’s discussion revolved around memorable teachers.

Pat (Wallace) Gilbertson, who went by “Butch” while she attended Whitefish schools, remembered R.D. Giesy, a teacher who was legendary among the town’s youth. Gilbertson and Giesy would walk to school together in the mornings, until one fateful day when Gilbertson heard her name called over the loudspeaker: “Butch! Come to the office!”

“I thought, ‘Oh, what did I do?’” she recalled.

When she got to the office, she found R.D. Giesy waiting for her.

“Do you want me to tell your mother I saw you out in the car smoking?” he asked her.

Of course Gilbertson didn’t. “From then on, I tripped lightly around R.D. Giesy,” she said.

Others remembered Giesy for his discipline, something Gilbertson could recall as well. When her brother played football, Coach Giesy would call to make sure he and the rest of the team were in bed by 10 p.m., Gilbertson said.

Charlie Abell remembered Mrs. Smith, his sixth-grade teacher, who taught him how to outline.

“I use her system of outlining all the time,” he said.

Gilbertson had also had Smith as a teacher. “I still do that. When I read a book, I still use it.”

Abell and Gilbertson also vividly remembered Miss Miller, whom they said taught an entire generation of Whitefish students at one point or another. Miller was strict and could drill arithmetic into students’ heads.

“If anybody in Whitefish didn’t learn math, we’d had it,” Gilbertson said.

Some teachers left deep impressions for less-than-positive reasons. Mary Guidoni remembered one teacher who had terrified her in the first grade.

Somehow, she survived the year and was more than ready to move on to the next grade.

“I got to second grade, and there she was,” Guidoni said. “I probably didn’t learn a lot my first two years.”

Joe Bilant was remembered as a good science teacher with deadly aim. He would sit in the back of the classroom, armed with a blackboard eraser. Anyone not paying attention would vanish in a cloud of chalk dust when the eraser hit the back of his or her head.

Gilbertson remembered Jack Donne, her fifth-grade teacher, for a lesson she learned outside the classroom. When Donne asked her once what she remembered most from his class, she told him, “You taught me to dance on roller skates.”

She had learned on a class trip to Lake Blaine, she said. Donne was “the best roller skater I’d ever seen,” and he taught his class to dance on wheels.

Some people at the program recalled pranks they had played on teachers — teachers who, even now when they may no longer be living, still inspire respect and fear.

One man, who asked not to be identified for this story for that very reason, recalled a prank he and his classmates had played against a Flathead High shop teacher affectionately known as “Little Caesar.”

That teacher’s pet peeve was students who whistled in class. He kept a wooden paddle with holes drilled in it to punish those who dared whistle while they worked.

One day, his class arrived in the shop before he did. When the students found his paddle, unprotected, on his desk, they put their shop skills to work and used a band saw to cut it into 1-inch cubes. When the teacher arrived, he found his paddle on his desk, loosely assembled like a jigsaw puzzle.

The teacher never said a word, the former student recalled.

“But the next day, he came back to class with a radiator hose tied around his neck” as a new way to punish would-be whistlers, the storyteller said. “We never could get ahold of that hose.”

More stories followed of a superintendent who would track students down if they weren’t in school, of evenings spent dancing to records in the gym after a basketball game, of visits from famous people.

Gilbertson recalled how her neighbor, a grown woman, fainted when Elvis Presley stepped out of the train in Whitefish and waved to the crowd that had gathered to see him.

Gilbertson was still amazed by her neighbor’s reaction. “I  was the teenager,” she said.

Walter Sayre, a historian with the historical society, sounded a little wistful as he listened to the stories.

“I think I missed something by not being raised in Whitefish,” he said. “It must have really been a fabulous place to grow up.”

The next History of Whitefish program, “Rites of Spring,” is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. March 15. For further information, visit www.whitefishcommunitycenter.org or call 862-4923.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.