REMEMBERING BOBBY MERRITT, TENDERLY

When I recently learned  that a long-time friend and colleague of mine, Robert Merritt (Bobby)  died after an agonizing, painful bout with cancer, my heart became very heavy. It is hard for me to accept that this funny, intelligent, droll man is no longer on this Earth. Bobby and his beloved wife, Anna-Merle helped me so much to make the transition from college graduate to teacher at Slidell High School. Their combined philosophies of life and education kept me in the field of education, which I very nearly abandoned that first year of teaching, 1966-1967.

Although most of our fellow faculty members at SHS, as well as students who knew us both, assumed that the first time we met was when I began that first year of teaching in 1966.  Bobby had been teaching at SHS for several years when I first arrived there. It was after a year or so and after sharing our pasts that we learned that we had met prior to our South Louisiana experience.

After my father died in 1952 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, my thirty-year-old mother took a good look at her life, her sketchy education, her three young children, and made a decision: she would go back to college and earn a degree in teaching. She already had two years of college work, as well as two years of nurses’ training. Mother decided that the hours for an elementary education teacher would be more aligned with our hours as students than that of a nurse, so the decision was made. And as Mississippi Southern College (now the University of Southern Mississippi) was in Hattiesburg, that school was her goal. We owned a small three-bedroom house in Hattiesburg, but Mother felt that we would do better to try to move to the Veterans Village on campus and rent out our house for a sum that would help us. We did just that. We rented our home out for $40 a month and lived in a three bedroom campus housing apartment for $25 a month. We had already made a profit, if the tenants paid their rent!

Did I say "three bedroom campus housing"?  That's a euphemistic expression meaning WWII army barracks,  hurriedly partitioned into apartments to provide the "boot strappers" [WW II and Korean War Veterans] affordable housing while they took advantage of the education offered via the G.I. Bill. 

My mother, brothers, and I had one of the only three bedroom apartments in the Village.  One heard EVERYTHING through the partitioned walls of the next apartment.  And, DO NOT drop anything on the floor because if it was small enough, it fell through the cracks on the floor and onto the ground below.  Our group of apartments (we were #20), were placed right across the street from the Kappa Alpha and Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity houses on Fraternity Row.

Fraternity row was to me more interesting than the dramas going on in the apartments of Vets Village.  I can remember looking out the window of our end apartment at night and gazing at the frat boys and their dates at the parties held at their residential frat houses. I can still see in my mind's eye the beautiful girls in their exquisite strapless evening dresses with yards and yards of tulle in their skirts and petticoats.  They usually had floral corsages on their wrists, something I had not seen before in my movie-viewing.

The  guys were just as fascinating.  There were the usual number of men in white sport coats with their black tuxedo pants.  However, while we were there between 1954 and 1958, many of the guys wore something else as part of their evening attire:  black tuxedo Bermuda shorts with Madras-looking coats, cumberbuns, and ties.  Wow!  Now that was COOL.    One member of the Pi Kappa Alphas was even "cooler" than the others.  He would drive up in his convertible dressed in his Bermuda short, Madras coat tuxedo.  His car?  It was the ONLY Edsel I ever saw in "real life."  Boy, those were the days I dreamed of being part of! I would later attend MSC, which was USM when I got there in  1962.  The campus had changed.  Those post WWII frat houses and the Vets Village were gone; so were the styles, and what was an Edsel?

Back to those earlier days. Now, not all of the time was taken up by the frat boys in partying.  There was one unseen Pike who, after everything was quiet and most people in the Vets Village and Frat Row were studying, including my mother, would pull out his trumpet and play the mournful song, TENDERLY.  Although the song was a popular love song by Nat King Cole, everytime I hear it, I still think about a lone trumpet playing it and those days at MSC in the mid-50's. And to me it conjurs up memories of charming, childhood days and dreams of future excitement and fulfillment. 

Most of the kids in Vets Village were infants and toddlers, so my brothers and I at ages 9, 8, and 5 were the oldest, and we used our advanced ages to our advantage. Everything was an adverture to us, and in spite of motherly warnings, we felt nothing was off-limits.  I hope the statute of limitations is over for our low crimes and misdemeanors, because I know we did some things my brothers and I would like to forget.

Money for luxuries like drinking an occasional soft drinks or going to the  movies was tight during those days, but we three were most resourceful.  I started a woven pot holder concern with my brother Giles as my designer and pot-holder-maker and my brother Tommy as my precious, little salesman no one could turn down.  I was the "brains" behind the endeavor.  After a kind "townspeople" family gave us a full set of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy Mystery Books, I set up a lending library with hand-made cards, card-envelopes pasted in the backs of the books, and charged usury fines.  Unfortunately, my brothers were my only customers, and they didn't have any money!

Another of our money-making schemes was to retrieve metal coat hangers from the closets of the frat houses and dorms during term breaks, sand the rust from them, put them in bundles, and to sell them to the laundries and cleaners in Hattiesburg.  I would like to say that I conceived of this idea and at nine years old was a wunderkind business tycoon.  Ah, no.  Our wonderful next door neighbor in Vets Village was a combination Pied Piper and Fagin, and he got us involved in this project.  Although we dreamed of riches beyond imagining, our leader bought each of us a malted milk for our hard work!  We wuz robbed!!! To this day, NO metal coat hangers in my house!  Me and Joan Crawford!!!

One scheme which was all ours was "finding" the returnable bottles in the back of each frat house, gathering them, washing them, and returning them for the few cents each brought.  For years I felt so guilty that we were stealing the bottles, then I realized or rationalized that if the guys left town during break without returning them, somebody needed to do so!  What a service The Bryant Kids did for the environment AND the/our economy!

There are so many memories running through my aging brain right now.  I can remember my brothers dragging home (to #20) the most beautiful blue flocked Christmas tree I've every seen.  The Alpha Tau Omegas had thrown it out, and the boys rescued it.  It was still in its stand.  It was too big for our small living room, but we didn't care.  We didn't have anything with which to cut it down to size, so we stood it up and let the top bend over.  It was still gorgeous!  We didn't have much to put under it, but it didn't matter to us.  There was always something:  a family pass for a year to the movie house across the street from the campus, given by the people who owned it and whose son was a friend of our brother, Giles; a basketball from another family for us to share; a set of World Book Encyclopedia from our grandfather; a pot holder loom and materials.  These wonderful items we received approximately one per Christmas. Life was hard, but good.  We had the entire campus as our playground.  We knew the campus policemen, and they knew us! 

Although we also lived across the street from the Kappa Alpha house, my memories of the KA's seem to be warmer and fuzzier!  "Warmer" because of  an incident involving my brothers and a friend of theirs from school.  During quarter break at MSC, the boys went into the KA house (The frat houses were always left open during break.) and found a torn, single bed mattress upstairs.  They threw it out the window in the back of the house, ran down, and put fire crackers in it.  They seemed to get a kick out of lighting these fireworks and watching tufts of cotton shoot out of the mattress ticking. That is the "fuzzier" part!  They must not have had too many fire crackers, because their "fun" didn't last long.  They abandoned the mattress and left to find something else fun to do.  The next day, they must have found some more fire crackers, because they went back to have some more fun, blowing up the cotton in the mattress.  When they got there, much to their surprise, they found NO mattress. . .only a black, charred spot where something rectangular had been. . .like a single bed mattress.  I'm surprised they are not still hiding under beds, waiting for the camps cops to arrest them!

In spite of losing bedding and having to put up with three bratty kids, the KA's were always very nice to us.  Unlike the other frats, they had their Coke machine inside of their house.  From time to time, we would go over, knock on the door, give them our nickle or dime and ask if they could get us a cold Coke.  They always did so.  Some guys were friendlier than others and invited us to stand inside the foyer of the house rather than in the heat outside. I remember as my eyes adjusted to being away from the sun, I was amazed to see that it was like a big living room with furniture and a TV set.  Some guys might be sitting in front of the TV, others might be sitting at a table playing cards or studying.  They seemed to look like normal people. I had heard all of the KA jokes, although I didn't really understand them!

It would be another twelve or thirteen years before I would, again, meet one of those Kappa Alpha fraternity guys who would get us cold Cokes from their machine.  Bobby Merritt was one of those guys!

Bobby remembered the three kids who lived across the street from the KA House, and he admitted that he was often one of the guys who fetched the cold Cokes for us.  After our reunion, whenever I thought or think of any of those frat guys in their tuxes, their Bermuda short tuxes, even the face of the driver of the Edsel, I see the face of Bobby Merritt.  After I met him as a fellow faculty member at Slidell High School, he became the face of the male college student of the mid-1950's.

Anyone who knew Bobby Merritt has, at least, one Bobby Merritt Story that in the telling of it can reduce the listeners to gales of laughter!  Just since news of his death, I have heard many of these from friends, colleagues, and former students. 

It wasn't long ago when former SHS coach Dennis Cousin and I (former colleagues at SHS and at Xavier University) were talking about "the good old days."  Inevitably, we got around to a Bobby Merritt story.  I recalled the time Bobby slipped away from SHS with his sixth period biology class in tow to go to the baseball field at the Jr. High to watch Dennis' team play.  Mr. McGinty was fit to be tied when he learned of this "escape."  Bobby remained in the proverbial dog house for many months until it came time to sign our contracts for the next year.

Bobby was worried as Mr. Mac was late in offering Bobby his contract.  Finally, the contract was given to Bobby; he signed it and took home his copy. A couple of days later, Bobby told us that as soon as he got it home, one of his cats fouled it.  And as Bobby put it, "You know cats do not foul an area unless it has already been fouled," insisuating that our beloved principal, Mr. Mac, had shown his anger on Bobby's contract!  The ridiculous thought kept us all in stitches for the rest of the school year.

Elodie Gomez tells of the time that Bobby showed up in the teachers' lounge, went to the fridge, got out his lunch, sat down at the table, and started eating. When quizzed as to what he was doing, he replied with just a little bit of the attitude of "can't you see what I am doing?"  "I'm eating my lunch."  He was reminded that it was just the end of the second period and lunch was two hours away. He jumped up and put his lunch back in the fridge, and ran back to his classroom.  Somehow, he had lost two hours in his mind!

I remember Bobby, Ed Gilleon, and my being in the teachers' lounge.  We three were sitting around the table, smoking.  Bobby was also playing with an empty match cover, folding it mindlessly.  At one point, Ed Gilleon looked at what Bobby was doing and commented, "That looks like a Bronze Star Ribbon."  Bobby kind of looked at Ed sideways and asked a little flippantly, "And how many Bronze Stars do YOU have, Ed?"  Ed either replied one or two, but either number almost knocked Bobby on the floor.  That was when we learned that mild-mannered, business teacher Ed Gilleon had received a Bronze Star for his part in the Battle of Monte Casino in Italy during WW II. 

The first summer after my first year of teaching, I spent almost the entire summer with Bobby and Anna-Merle.  Bobby was in school in Natchitoches, LA,  and I went up there to spend time with Anna-Merle while Bobby was in class.  We three even drove to Six Flags Over Texas while I was up there.  We had a wonderful time.

I am ashamed to admit that I have not kept up too much with Bobby and Anna-Merle since I left SHS and Slidell.  I did meet them a couple of times when they came to New Orleans and were doing Cajun Dancing.  Bobby executed the line dancing as he did almost everything else he did. . .absent-mindedly-looking, but doing it well and, seemingly, without effort! But whenever we did see each other, we took up our conversations as if we had just stopped a few minutes before.

At the beginning of this, I stated that my staying in teaching at SHS could directly be credited to my friendship with The Merritts.  My learning that one could have fun, enjoy life, and still be a teacher was important for me to learn.  I guess I had seen too many versions of "Good Bye, Mr. Chips" to really understand and to enjoy the individualism and humanism of people who chose to teach.  Some might say, "Oh, heck, Merritts.  We could have gotten rid of her had it not been for you!"  Others, might add good thoughts to the  already fond feelings they had/have about Bobby and Anna-Merle to learn how instrumental they were in my morphing into a teacher.

For the rest of my life whenever I think of Bobby Merritt, my memories of him at SHS will be pushed back by my thoughts of him as a college, fraternity guy being kind to three fatherless kids who were thrown into a strange situation of having to be around the "big boys and girls" on a college campus. My thoughts of him will be fraternity dances and 50's attire, music, and convertibles.  They will be of a lone trumpet playing, The evening breeze caressed the trees, Tenderly.  And my thoughts of Bobby as a young man on that college campus soon to meet and wed his beloved Anna-Merle will relieve my heavy heart and caress my memories, Tenderly!

I can only hope that it wasn't Bobby's mattress that my brothers blew up!

Ann Bryant Whittemore