In my continuing effort to downsize, usually thwarted by better things to do or by sentiment, I came across a picture that I am pretty sure was taken in the summer of 1974. It was of “my gang” (most of them at least) from my high school years. We were Christiansburg High Class of 1971, and this picture was taken before our senior year of college, wearing sports coats and ties and standing beside motorcycles owned by 3 of the guys. To say that we were “thick as thieves” would do us a disservice. We were thicker.

Obviously it brought back a flood of memories, some of which I could write about, now that statutes of limitations have run and some of us live out of state, but I’m not going to write about our exploits and triumphs and tragedies. It would fill a book and then some. Rather, I thought it was a good time to reflect on one of the more remarkable experiences we shared at CHS (timely, given the plug I’d like to give to the “REALLY BIG REUNION” – CHS Classes 1970 – 1974 – scheduled for this upcoming June 10 and 11 – through the hard efforts and perseverance of a multi-member committee that has suffered through a pandemic and postponements and contractual renegotiations and Lord knows what else).

So, I have chosen to write about one of the many great teachers my pals and I shared with a few other classmates and friends at dear old CHS – Mabel R. McKee. Mrs. McKee.

I always felt fortunate, as my Dad liked to remind me, that the group of guys I ran with were all good and conscientious students, and good kids, although testosterone and adolescence prevented us from admitting to these qualities. We all had college ambitions and career aspirations, even if we weren’t entirely sure what it all looked like then. We also had the notion that it took good grades and a good foundation to get wherever it was we wanted to go. So, my pals and I sort of pushed each other and competed subconsciously to do well in school. It also didn’t hurt that several of us were the offspring of teachers.

This is where Mrs. McKee comes into the picture. She taught upper level math and science courses. This was pre-AP days, but the intent of the curriculum we were put in was to prepare us for college, particularly the terror we would face from competition with the NOVA kids we would face at Tech or UVA. It was going to be bad enough to be “social goobers” with kids from McLean High and Bishop O’Connell and prep schools we had never heard of, but it would be even worse to be academically inferior. I do not think we were (I definitely fell into the social goober category at UVA though).

Mrs. McKee was one of several teachers who were critical to this “advanced program” at CHS. She was certainly the most visible because most of us had her for a total of 3 different courses our junior and senior years – Statistics and Probability (ugh), College Math (double ugh), and Physics (unmentionable). As you can tell, my “poet soul” was already showing and I had much more interest in English and social studies classes, but Mrs. McKee got me through this morass of stuff that I have not had occasion to use again in my life. Suffice it to say, there were many girls and boys in her classes who cared more for the hard sciences than I did – and who put it to good use. 

It makes a nice story to write about a prominent teacher who challenged us and prepared us for the rigors of higher education, along with other great teachers like Helen Payne (8th grade English – our first year of high school then), Priscilla Fleshman (Latin, a great teacher and one all of my gang had a crush on), Ruth Ashworth (9th grade English – a new vocabulary word every day which I still appreciate), and Ruth Fisher (12th grade English, a teacher who inspired my love of writing, although she probably cringes now at my punctuation and syntax and grammar at times – it’s called literary license Ruth). But Mabel holds a special place in our memories.

Her class became a sort of “Rowan and Martin Laugh-in” (look it up if you are too young to remember – Laugh-In was an NBC ensemble comedy that was 60 minutes of non-stop laughter and started the careers of many famous comedians and comediennes). My friends and I were the ensemble in Mrs. McKee’s classes, although usually unnoticed by her.

You see, Mrs. McKee was well-known as being a tad unfocused at times. Like most of the time. Discipline was not her strong suit. Awareness of things around her not a priority. Like my law partner Gordon, she was brilliant, but not of this world. As I recall she had advanced degrees – and she loved her subjects and her students. But she could not command a room. Certainly not our classroom.

The jokes we played are too numerous to tell in detail, so just the highlights of a few of the better ones I can recall. Like the fairly regular stunt where all 20 or so of us would hide in the supply room of the old Chemistry lab (where we had Physics). When Mabel would come in the room and be spinning in circles, trying to figure out if she was in the right place, we would all come running out, yelling hello and good morning. Occasionally, we would yell happy birthday and sing to her. She would get emotional, even teary at times, and thank us profusely. Then her reality check would kick in and she would say “but it’s not my birthday”. We would all get very glum and start pretending to blame each other for the mistake. It took several birthdays each year before Mabel caught on.

And there was the time she gave our classmate Wayne a “C” on a test. We told her Wayne was distraught, inconsolable. He then sneaked out the back door of the lab and went down to the shrubbery below our 2nd floor window. He stretched out on his back in the bushes and covered his face in ketchup and acted passed out. Or worse. Of course one of us yelled “don’t jump Wayne”and we all ran to the window and looked down, including Mrs. McKee. Panic-stricken, she went running out of the room and down the stairs. We yelled at Wayne and he jumped up and came in the other front door of the school and back up to the room. When Mrs. McKee returned, she had her typical “resigned disgust” look on her face, but just went on with class. Feel bad now about that one.

Another part of our repertoire was to put a Christmas tree blinker on the overhead projector. We would tell her “Bobby could fix it” – Bobby would then fool with it for several minutes and eventually remove the blinker and declare the projector “fixed”. Mabel would then turn her back and walk up to the screen and of course Bobby would put the blinker back on. This usually ended with Mrs. McKee going to get one of the assistant principals (Wayne Booth, our IT guy I guess) to come up to look at the “malfunction”. Mr. Booth would immediately recognize that the “malfunction”was the group of kids in the room. Wayne was another great influence on our lives, but not blessed with the ability to hold his temper like Mabel. I always suspected that he drew the short straw vis-a-vis our other great assistant principal Dick Ballengee when it came to handling Mabel’s classes.

One of my favorite stories involved the age old stunt (then) of making animal figures (rabbits, ducks) on the overhead projector screen by holding our hands in front of the stream of light. Eventually, Mabel would catch on and want to know who was interfering with the class. Despite the stream of light on the back of one of our hands (sort of a giveaway right ?), we would all point at one our better behaved classmates, Frank, and yell, “it’s Frank, Mrs. McKee, Frank’s doing it”. Despite the fact that Frank sat at one of the last tables in the lab, well behind and not within 20 feet of the projector, more than once Mrs. McKee would grab him and drag him to Mr. Booth’s office, Frank protesting all the way.

There was also the time Mrs. McKee told us that her beloved daughter, Penny Ward McKee, got her name when Mabel and her husband Pete put a bunch of names in a hat and drew out 2. Having already told us Penny’s name, Mabel played a perfect straight man and asked us to guess what names were drawn out. We yelled out “7 and 1/4” and “6 and 7/8” and other hat sizes. Flustered, Mabel yells, “no, no, Penny Ward !” We then started asking her if she got the hat at Montgomery Ward ? She gave up.

You might wonder how all this helped prepare us for college. Good question, but we always settled down and would have a normal class. Well, maybe not always.

If you are part of one of the CHS Classes of 1970-1974 (the last 5 classes to graduate from the beautiful old school on the hill), try to make the REALLY BIG REUNION – June 10and 11. Even though most of our teachers and coaches and administrators are now gone, as well as too many classmates, it will be fun to remember the good old days.

Evans King, February 20, 2022