Mr. C
It caught my eye immediately … a stunning mid- ‘50’s blue Buick Riviera, right there on the corner of Scotch Hill and North Street. Oh, my. I had to stop because of the memories.
Both students and faculty were overawed when a similar vehicle appeared in the parking lot at Carmel High School in 1956. Fancier, much more fancier and more expensive than the collection of the more modest vehicles in the lot, it belonged, brand and shiny new, to Herbert B. Colcord, our English teacher.
It became part of a mythology about Mr. C. who taught most of the English classes in our small high school and directed the school plays. He had a quality about him, a separate status among what was, if somewhat shabbier in style, a great group of educators.
He dressed well. Always with a bow tie, his attire was a cut above what we saw displayed on the rest of the male faculty. Mr. Moore, our marvelous history teacher, for example, wore that same green suit for years … or was it brown? It was hard to tell. When I babysat for him I was tempted to peek in his closet to see if he either had the one suit or many of the same color.
Mr. Colcord was not handsome in the traditional sense … or any other sense. That appellation was reserved for our Driver Ed teacher, Mr. Nussbaum. Oh, how the girls swooned over him. Yes, I know, who uses the word swooned anymore? Remember, this is 1956 we are talking about. But Herb Colcord lived handsome. He was the same height as one of my classmates who played basketball. He was well over six feet tall. He had a determined, self-assured, purposeful stride, a deep basso voice and an always-on sense of humor. He was one of two senior homeroom teachers. We called him “Daddy.” “Mommy” was Kay Casey, who taught math and assisted Mr. C with the school shows.
Besides English, Mr. C taught a public speaking class. I joined that class in my senior year. What a wonderful experience. We wrote and gave speeches and acted in plays. Was it there that I stored away the name for my daughter? I played the role of Emily in “Our Town.”
I can still remember the tears on my face as I spoke Emily’s powerful lines: “I can’t bear it. They’re so young and beautiful. Why did they ever have to get old? Mama, I’m here. I’m grown up. I love you all, everything. —I can’t look at everything hard enough …” and Mr. C stood and clapped right in the middle of that scene. Heady praise for an insecure teen.
Outside of school, he was active in the local theater group. His friends outside of school were legion. Everyone from the soda jerk at Wilcox pharmacy to the owner of the lumber yard knew him. He exuded charm in a tiny hamlet where the only shoes you could buy were work boots.
So, how did this teacher afford nice clothing and a brand new Riviera on a teacher’s pay? This was a topic of speculation even among teenage students. There was a rumor shared by one of my classmates whose mother was a teacher in the district that Mr. C spent his summers in some remunerative capacity dancing with women on a cruise boat. This put him right on the edge of a delicious scandal.
It wasn’t until about five years ago, when having a discussion about influential teachers, that the mystery of Herb Colcord came to the front of my consciousness. So, I googled him. My gosh! The rumors were true … Sort of. There, page after page, were accolades for our high school English teacher who had become the full time cruise manager of the Swedish American Lines.
Apparently, his summers were not on board the ships, but working at resort hotels if you believe that written tributes to him by the company. Let me share a few lines from a post in the “The Cruise News” from the Kungsholm’s Spring Adventure Cruise in1967:
“Colcord was originally a speech and drama coach. His fling at summer stock and his summer stints on the managerial staff of a number of resort hotels have given him the poise and unruffled attitude …. Herb Colcord, with his easygoing manners, blends perfectly with the leisurely, glamour-studded cruise life on board. Always ready to accommodate a cruise passenger, to answer inquiries, give out with a joke or lead a lady passenger through the intricacies of a torrid cha-cha-cha, Herb Colcord is extremely well suited for his job.”
I smile at my memories of a time when, in school, so many kids who lived in houses without indoor plumbing sat next to others whose fathers drove Jaguars and learned Shakespeare and the rules of grammar from a teacher who spent summers at resorts and the remainder of his life in shiny suits, dancing with women during glittering nights at sea…
And who also once drove a 1956 Blue Buick Riviera.
