'Ave, Greenwald': MUHS Latin Teacher Retires

Thanks to Google Alerts, I learned today that Mr. James Greenwald, who has taught Latin at Marquette University High School (my alma mater) since 1968, is retiring as of the end of this academic year.

Jim Stingl writes on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel web site today:

Greenwald is retiring from Marquette High after 41 years. He was 25 years old when he arrived at the school in 1968.

"When I started there, every freshman had to take Latin. But that was the last year of that. Then it stabilized at about two classes of Latin I, two classes of Latin II, and one or two advanced," he said.

Many schools have dropped Latin over the years, favoring instead foreign languages such as Spanish and German that you're likely to encounter around here. Milwaukee has just one public school, Rufus King, that still teaches it; it's more common in the suburbs.

I asked this hometown Mr. Chips to make his best case that Latin matters.

"I would say it's no longer the argument that you learn Latin grammar, you learn English grammar, although that's true to a degree. I think it's more a matter of learning the ancient world, mythology, history, derivation of words - that's something I've worked very, very hard at," he said as we spoke in his kitchen last week.

Although I never had the pleasure of being taught Latin by Mr. Greenwald, I had the nearly unique experience of playing him on stage.

In the November 1976 production of Blazing Seniors, the Class of '77's Senior Follies, a musical revue whose conceit was that each scene was a different period of the school day, from homeroom to dismissal, I played Mr. Greenwald as both Latin teacher and Astronomy Club faculty advisor. Note from the two nearby photographs how we dressed alike. (I'm the one in the color photo, with space aliens.)

In our scene, Mr. Greenwald lamented to his class that he had seen a UFO but nobody believed him. (His/my song: "Hey, Has Anybody Seen My Neat UFO?", a parody of the Tony Orlando pop ditty, "Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose?")

It was for this show -- the one that caused me to fall in love with the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd -- that I memorized what Monty Python's Flying Circus had identified as the world's most lethal joke, in Latin:

Erant duo homines.
Primus vir dixit, "Meus canis habet nullam nasem."
Alius vir rogavit, "Quomodo olfacit?"
Primus vir respondit, "Atrociter!"

(If you need a translation, you should have taken Latin in high school!)

In his profile article, the Journal-Sentinel's Stingl quotes one of my classmates at Marquette High:

George M. Schimmel, now a lawyer in Milwaukee, a profession still relying on Latin phrases, graduated from Marquette High in 1977 with four years of Latin under his belt.

He remembers Greenwald as a fair and helpful teacher, and said that back then his folks used to invite Greenwald to their home every Thanksgiving for dinner....

Greenwald said he has spotted a rather arrogant T-shirt out there that says, in Latin, "If you can read this, you're too smart."

It seems odd to say about a language one would study, but "you didn't have to speak it. That's one of the good things. I remember translating 'Winnie the Pooh' from Latin," Schimmel said.

Even Greenwald himself does not converse in Latin except haltingly on rare occasions.

Schimmel said Greenwald also turned him on to astronomy. "Because of him I own three telescopes," he said.

Greenwald will ponder the stars in his retirement. And he wants to study Greek.

Marquette plans to fill his spot. Think there aren't many Latin teachers out there anymore?

"They had 40 applicants," Greenwald said.

That's good news. There's still a place for classics in the 21st century.



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Mettez vos mains sur le volant!

An amusing viral video that has attracted almost 200,000 hits on YouTube in about three days turns out to be a publicity gimmick by a company that manufactures hands-free mobile telephone equipment.

The video, which appears under the misleading title "Kid fails driving test 5 times in a day," is a sort of "candid camera" prank, in which several California driving teachers are the targets of the joke.

Here's the video:

As you can see, the "kid" is not "fail[ing] his driving test," but rather is taking driving lessons from exasperated instructors.

Since the video ends with a plug for "Parrot.com," most people should have got the clue that this was a commercial production, and not some teenager playing amateur "Punk'd" with a hidden dashboard camera.

The truth came out in a FishbowlLA post earlier yesterday:

The video is part of a marketing strategy for a company called Parrot.com to raise the awareness of the new laws in California, as well as, to raise the brand awareness of their hands-free mobile devices in the US. Parrot funded the production of the video.

The video is not scripted. The company installed hidden cameras in the car and hired "John" to test the limits of these driving instructors using his cell phone.

Who is Parrot.com, you may ask?

According to its corporate web site,

Based in Paris and founded in 1994 by Henri Seydoux, its Chairman and CEO, Parrot S.A. is one of the profitable, fast-growing companies that have emerged from the "start-up" generation. Since its beginnings, Parrot's core competence has been the technologies for embedded noise-robust voice recognition and signal processing, with applications in mobile computing and mobile communications.

Parrot also hosts a web site called "ParrotSafeDriving.com," which provides a guide to hands-free driving legislation across North America. Among other things, it offers this useful map of U.S. states and Canadian provinces that prohibit (or are soon to prohibit) driving while using a cellphone or PDA or similar device:


This gives a whole new meaning to "red, blue, and purple states."

Thomas N. Brennan, S.J.

It is with sadness that I pass along the news of the death of one of my favorite teachers.

During the recent Marquette University High School 150th anniversary commemoration in Milwaukee, I searched in vain for Father Thomas N. "T" Brennan, S.J., who had been listed in the program as a concelebrant at the anniversary Mass at the Al McGuire Center. I wanted to speak with him and thank him for being such a terrific teacher. Only now have I learned that he was seriously ill.

Here is the text of a letter that was sent out by the president of MUHS, Father Warren Sazama, S.J., to faculty, students, and alumni:

Let us pray in thanksgiving for our brother, Fr. Thomas N. Brennan, who was called to eternal life this morning, August 28. He was 75 years old.

Fr. “T” Brennan was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 6, 1932. After graduation from Marquette University High School (MUHS) he entered the Society of Jesus at Florissant, Missouri, on August 7, 1950. “T” received an A.B. degree in philosophy from St. Louis University (SLU) in 1956 and then taught Latin, history, and theology at MUHS. In 1961 he received a M.A. degree in history and in 1965 a S.T.B. in theology, both from SLU. After theology studies he taught Latin, history and drama at MUHS for one year, before doing tertianship in Decatur, Illinois, under the direction of Fr. Charles Hunter, S.J. Returning to MUHS, he taught history, drama and theology from 1966 through 1980. During the sabbatical year that followed he did studies at the Jesuit School of Theology in Chicago, Illinois, the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago, and at the Gild Hall School of Drama in London, England. He took time also for study at the Center for Ignatian Spirituality in Rome. From 1981 to 1988 he was again teaching theology, history and drama at MUHS. In 1988 he was assigned to Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where until 1996 he was chaplain to, and taught theology in, the school of Business Administration. After a year of sick leave, he returned to the same ministry until February of 2005, when he moved to St. Camillus due to failing heath.

Visitation will take place starting at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, August 31 in the first floor chapel of San Camillo (10200 West Blue Mound Road) followed by mass at 7:00 p.m. Burial will be at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, September 1, at Calvary Cemetery.

T Brennan was one of the most influential teachers I encountered in 18 years of formal education. At Marquette High, he taught me theology and AP European History. In the latter class, he raised the bar for me and my classmates, teaching us not only the subject matter but also how to do historical research effectively and how to present one's findings in a comprehensible and analytical manner.

Moreover, as the director of Senior Follies and the Prep Players, T deepened in me my already burgeoning love for the theatre. His instructions about how best to create a character, how to project vocally and physically across a large auditorium, and how to maintain one's dignity before, during, and after a performance have stayed with me for more than 30 years. Working under him as a member of the Follies writing committee was a whirlwind course in sketch writing, parody, and the structure of musical comedy. His standards (no scatological humor, no drag characters in Follies, no condescension) may seem quaint today but they are nonetheless enduring.

Father Brennan was an excellent academic counselor: He was one of the teachers who wrote letters of recommendation for me to apply to Georgetown University, but beyond that he undergirded my confidence so that I would take the risk of seeking a place at a highly-selective institution rather than play it safe by applying to schools closer to home with lower standards. I took his advice in these matters seriously ("Learn French," he said wryly, upon learning of my plans to study at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service; wry, of course, was his metier) and the lessons he taught served me well in college, graduate school, and beyond.

He was also a spiritual guide. A small group of us students often gathered in his office, overlooking the stage in the MUHS auditorium, for a short Mass during lunch hour. (So short it made Freeze's Breeze, which I later encountered at Georgetown, seem like War and Peace.) These quiet quarter-hours were welcome during the hectic and often anxious months of senior year.

Earlier this year I posted the videos of Guys & Dolls and the Class of 1977's Senior Follies on YouTube and on this blog. In tribute to T Brennan, here again are excerpts from Blazing Seniors. (You'll see him, in his usual seat in the middle of the auditorium, at 00:18 on the first video.)

If the world had more teachers of T Brennan's caliber, it would be such a much better place -- more literate, more erudite, more appreciative of light, beauty, and laughter. He will be missed by the thousands of students who passed through his classroom, and by thousands more who may never have met him but who feel his influence indirectly.