Horace Mann - Spring/Summer 2011 - (Page 2)

Letters letters Then Bill and family departed and the new era began. I suppose Bill was from another time and place that ended naturally in the 70s but, at least for me, he was about the ver the last several years, I’ve read articles about John coolest role model around. And yes, I did buy a nice Buck Dorr but have not seen mention of Glenn Sherratt’s knife to take along when Paul Guberman, Josh Burack predecessor and so thought I would add a few memories of and I went hiking on the Appalachian Trail in the South. my Dorr experiences from the early 70s. It came in handy on more than one occasion. And yes, I do This was when Dorr was run by Bill Garrison and his own a chainsaw and truly enjoy using it whenever posfamily, including the pretty but somewhat daunting daugh- sible—thanks to Bill for showing me the way! ter whose name was Janie—if I remember correctly. I think for some reason they were from Oklahoma, or perhaps Nicholas Mencher ’74 the Ozarks. During the school class trips, Bill was pretty (Nicholas Mencher now lives in Atlanta, GA) strict but the summer programs—NOLS for example—were another matter. I remember Bill saying, “You boys want to Continuing the Conversation learn how to shoot a shotgun?” Of course the response was enthusiastically positive. “Well, here’s a shotgun. Go down Horace Mann Magazine appreciated receiving Nicholas Mencher’s letter, referring to the Spring 2010 issue, which covered Horace there and shoot it.” So off we went and happily blasted Mann School’s environmental sustainability efforts throughout away at Coleman fuel cans filled with water. Another time its campuses, as well as environmental involvement by numerous he saw me and a young lady camper walking aimlessly around and said, “Why don’t you two take a nice horseback alumni. We continue to update readers on the activities of alumni involved in issues the magazine has covered. Edward Flattau ’54 ride.” So off we went with only the most basic knowledge is one such alumnus. He has been writing a nationally-syndicated of how to ride a horse. Somewhere along the way, I think column on the environment for 40 years. The longest-running chainsaws entered the picture and Bill certainly was what column in its field forms the basis for Flattau’s fourth book, Green we call in the South, a “chainsaw artist.” Morality, noted on p. 41. In one of the recent letters a John Dorr alumnus from that era remembers the pigs. I remember Bill showing us Ed Flattau ’54 began his journalism career as a general assignhow to fill up the bucket of a tractor with slop and then tip the bucket right on top of the ecstatic pigs. Another time, we ment reporter in the Albany, N.Y. United Press International Bureau. Three years later he was in UPI’s Washington bureau where his beat were instructed during a summer program called, I think, included Congress, federal agencies and the White House. In 1972, Homesteaders, how to catch a live chicken and then kill it by either wringing its neck or simply shooting it in the head Stewart Udall, former interior secretary under President Kennedy, impressed by Flattau’s freelance environmental writing, chose Ed with one of Bill’s many .22 pistols. Then we had to dress it, pluck it, and cook it over a fire. Many converted to emphat- to succeed him as author of the country’s first nationally-syndicated environmental column. Along with Green Morality Flattau is the ic, but ultimately short-lived, vegetarianism on the spot. author of two other books on environmental issues, Tracking the Bill had a helper whose name I have forgotten but, and I can say this now as a Southerner, was the first true redneck Charlatans (1998) and Peering Through the Bushes (2004), and I had ever met. (They were pretty scarce where I grew up on a memoir Evolution of a Columnist (2003). Flattau’s column has appeared in as many as 120 daily newspapers over the past four de116th and Riverside.) He took us impressionable 9th graders cades. He has won ten national journalism awards, reported from five on a camping trip where we spent the night in a hay-filled continents, and covered the key issues and principle figures associatbarn in our sleeping bags and proceeded to terrify us by, in ed with modern day environmentalism. More at http://edflattau.com/ the following order, cutting a piece of bacon with the biggest Buck knife we had ever seen, eating it raw with a few raw hot dogs as a chaser, and then lighting a match to smoke a cigarette in the hay. I think he had a lazy eye to boot and it A letter from Cairo certainly glinted with amusement at our expressions. Naturally, every kid after that wanted to have a knife (Bill At the start of the revolution in Egypt in February 2011, and followwas glad to lend them out) and many evenings were spent in ing his publication of an eyewitness opinion piece in “The American Thinker” (http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/from_an_ the Lodge happily grinding away on sharpening stones. One of the last things we did at Dorr was to build a cabin eyewitness_to_the_egyp.html) James Bloom ’81 updated Horace Mann School on his work as a teacher in four countries over three along the creek for Bill’s replacement, Glenn Sherratt. I decades. Describing his teachers at Horace Mann as role models remember learning how to set posts and frame walls. The for his own work as an educator, Bloom’s letter offers an insight knowledge came in handy last year when a flood knocked down the fence in our backyard and I replaced the footings into the theme of this magazine issue, on the engagement of Horace Mann and its alumni with international society. with Sano Tubes filled with cement. Remembering the John Dorr Nature Laboratory O 2 Horace Mann Magazine Spring 2011 http://edflattau.com/ http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/from_an_eyewitness_to_the_egyp.html http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/from_an_eyewitness_to_the_egyp.html

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Horace Mann - Spring/Summer 2011

Horace Mann - Spring/summer 2011
Contents
Letters
Greetings From Dr. Tom Kelly, Horace Mann School Head of School
Greetings From Melissa Parento ’90, Horace Mann School Director of Development
Education in a Global Era
News of the School
Alumni Council Corner
Horace Mann School Alumni Events Connect HM Alumni as Never Before
Food for Thought: A Traveler’s Guide to Tasting the Fare of Horace Mann School Alumni
Bookshelf
Class Notes
Memorials
Philanthropy and You

Horace Mann - Spring/Summer 2011