This being Easter Week, I thought it good to re-publish the post below, “Something Lost”, especially considering the comments by the old schoolteacher towards the end of the post.
I do not doubt that he was right: “I feel there was something lost, truly I do.”
Since I also remember the days he refers to — when the Bible was read and prayer made in class — that marks me as a Troglodyte. Maybe so, but my sense is similar: there was something lost.
I wish you all a good Easter Week.
Something Lost
A few years ago, I visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on a personal matter, after an absence of close to four decades.
To drive and walk around was to invite affecting memories, not only of Bethlehem, but of family, of childhood friends, of the steel company, of Venezuela, of what could have been. I was offered the opportunity to visit my uncle’s old former apartment site on Market Street, from which the Bethlehem Steel stacks are clearly, and augustly, visible decades after her bankruptcy in 2001 and dissolution in 2003.
While in town, I came across the transcript of an interview of the late Earl J. Bauman, a teacher in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania high schools for 30 years, who also worked for several years at Bethlehem Steel during World War II, and who otherwise led an eventful life.
Our teachers in El Pao were recruited in Bethlehem, although not all were from there. For instance, one of my teachers, Mrs. Miller, was from New Mexico and boy did she resent Florida being named “The Sunshine State”! She firmly believed, and could “prove”, that New Mexico was the true Sunshine State.
Mr. Bauman’s comments seem to be coming from my own Bethlehem Steel teachers in El Pao, Venezuela.
I believe the reader will appreciate the commentary by Mr. Bauman (1910-January 12, 2000), born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He was the son of George and Matilda Bauman née Shearer. He was married to Grace E. Bauman, née Shoenberger.
Mr. Bauman taught history, government, and economics. A full transcript is linked below for those readers who would appreciate reading more of what he had to say.
Excerpts:
Well, I was born here in Fountain Hill [now a suburb of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania] in 1910. We’ve been residing here ever since that time.
I attended the Fountain Hill School, and then went to Liberty High and then I quit. I was making more money than my dad was playing with a dance orchestra. We used to make as much one night as he made in a week just playing with the big bands. And then one thing led to another, and the Depression hit. And finally, there was no music market. I went to South America in one summer playing with a band, and come back, and then it was difficult to find any kind of work, because the Depression hit. It hit pretty hard. And then I had an opportunity to go back to school, then I went to Moravian Prep. And I finished up my high school work there.
Then I went to Moravian College and earned my Bachelor’s. And then, of course, it was still difficult to get work. I worked at the steel company as a clerk in the beam yard offices, and on their police force during the early period of the World War II. And then finally a teaching job.
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And then I taught until I guess it was about the late Forties [1948] when I decided to go back to Lehigh for my Master’s degree in history, and I finished that, I believe it was 1954, somewhere around in there. Men like Dr. Harmon was the head of the history department, Dr. Gipson, Dr. Brown, and I don’t think any of them are there anymore. Some may have died, passed on, retired. And then I kept on teaching.
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Teaching wasn’t quite the pleasure it used to be. Yeah, that changed quite considerably.
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That’s the flu epidemic you’re talking about, yes. I remember because, and I can even take you where the hospitals were and they died like flies [emphasis mine, RMB]. It would have been right across the street from where I did my undergraduate practice teaching where this junior high school is now, right across the street in that area there, they had built these temporary wards. The hospital up here couldn’t handle it. It was too small. I remember that, yes. I remember a lot of— You’ll see in the pictures, see at that time I would have been nine years old, and I did get around and my parents talked, but that wasn’t the only thing, we had a lot of things like there was scarlet fever, and diphtheria, and polio. So many of my classmates were afflicted….
…. You had to put on your porch, your house would be quarantined, that’s the word, diphtheria here and scarlet fever there, and measles here, measles there, and today it’s wonderful how all these youngsters have been protected against these physical ailments, which make them more competitive in their life today.
[Note: the sick were quarantined. The rest went on with their work and lives. For discussions on quarantine and the current approach in most states and countries, see here, here, here, here, and here. Mr. Bauman’s allusion to the “flu epidemic” where “they died like flies” is a reference to the Spanish Flu, or The Great Influenza. See here for more.]
[Was crime a big problem?] No. No. You had nothing like—I can remember, we used to— I don’t think any of the neighbors really did much in the way of locking doors, no such thing. (chuckles) As a matter of fact, maybe this is something we should have kept in Fountain Hill here. In those days when I was a youngster, we had a curfew. When that whistle blew, you got off the street, you better not be out on the street unless you were with a parent.
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So they said to me, ‘Well, would you do it?’ I said, ‘You’re asking me?’ I said, ‘I know that you squeeze a trigger somewhere and the projectile comes out the front, that’s all I know.’ I said, ‘I don’t think I can do much for them.’ Somebody said, ‘Well, why don’t you try it?’ One person suggested that I call the Marine barracks and get help. So I did, and you’d be surprised how much fun I had over the years teaching safety and all this and that and I can’t hit the broadside part of a barn, and I coached for 15 years and one of my teams went to the state finals, so we won (inaudible) of the division title after I got to Liberty where we got a large student body. Two southern divisions and we had a District 11 and a Northeastern regional championship and we went to the state finals. Now my youngster has, he picked it up, but we wouldn’t let him have any rifles here at home until he became, I thought qualified. I hate to put material like that in the hands of kids. Now of course, he’s a specialist. He loads his own ammunition. He has guns and pistols. He’s in a pistol league and he can shoot. He stands 75 feet away and he’ll knock your ears off. He has terrific scores, close to 300, shooting at 75 feet with high-caliber pistol. He (inaudible) shoots better than a lot of the policemen. He says, one of the faults of the policeman, he said the policeman doesn’t know his tool that well. He said they misuse it.
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Well, I remember, you wouldn’t remember this, but I remember when the Lord’s Prayer was banned from school and that was like—I don’t know, I can’t see it because of that, but I think the morale tone of the school began to decline. The mode of dress became careless. The mode of conduct became care— Not by all the students. Some students still come from a home that’s still a home and that insists on certain moral standards.
And I guess a lot of it came from the aftermath of the wars and there would be a lot of things that influenced it, but I think the dropping of that in school was one thing that wasn’t good, because I remember we always had—I used to have my youngsters, and I never had one refuse, and I had Catholics, Protestants, Jewish students in my class, and I always used to read our schedule. And I think once a week we got a guidance period and I used to plan, I felt the kids should take part in opening exercises. It exposes them a little bit into leadership. I used to have them all read passages, and I didn’t insist that anybody read any specific passage, but they were allowed to read from the Old Testament, the New Testament, whatever they would like to read, and then they would lead the Lord’s Prayer, and then we’d have the salute to the flag. It was sort of starting the day off in a sort of moral tone in a way.
Then from then on, things would go from one thing to the other. But I missed that, and I thought it was something that was lost through it. I can’t prove it. I’m not sure. Maybe it were the other factors that made this moral tone of dress and carelessness go down, because as soon as kids start coming in my classes with jeans on and patched—And it wasn’t that they came from poor parents because they had money, because the kid had more money in his pocket as spending money than his new pair of pants and shirt would cost, and they had weeds galore in them. If they weren’t smoking Chesterfields20, it was something else. They were loaded with money. And that may have had something to do with it, the income of the families.
So, I don’t know, I think there’s a lot of factors and the fact that we dropped the reading of the Bible and the Lord’s Prayer and all that sort of thing sort of took something out of the classroom. I don’t know. I felt something was lost.
After it was gone, well, then what could you do? I mean, the law said you didn’t dare do it, so you didn’t do it. You still had the salute to the flag, and then oh, in the beginning I didn’t stop altogether, but I didn’t break the law. I asked them to have a moment of silence, soft prayer to themselves. I don’t recall ever anybody objecting to that, and then we turn around then and had the salute to the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance and that sort of thing.
But I feel there was something lost, truly I do.
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For those interested in reading further, the full transcript is linked below.
Microsoft Word – bauman_95_101.doc (lehigh.edu)
Bethlehem steelmaker headquarters imploded | Fox News Video
The demolition of the former World Headquarters of Bethlehem Steel.
