Central High School - Centralian Yearbook (Kansas City, MO)

Page 23 text:

MK. NOLAN ALEXANDER IN MEMORIAM This Christmas season was saddened for students and teachers of Central by Mr. Alexanders unexpected death on Friday, December 23rd. Although he had endured a long hospitalization two years ago for a heart ailment, he had recovered to lead a normal life, except for ceasing to drive his car. He rarely referred to his weak heart nor did he ask for privileges because of it. Nebraska was his home state and there he did his undergraduate study and early teaching. On coming to teach in the Kansas City system he was assigned to Central. After the war, he left to teach the G.I.'s in Junior College, but returned to Central in 1956. During his summer vacations he earned an M.A. degree at the University of Missouri, and he did advanced study at Boulder University. Biology was his special field of science and he delighted in revealing in a lively manner the wonders of this natural science to his students. Mr. Alexander seasoned his serious teaching with a kindly humor and friendly interest in his students’ work. Having no children of his own. perhaps, drew him nearer to his classroom boys and girls. One of his students writes this of him: “Mr. Alexander was well liked by his students, who came In possess a genuine affection for him. His sparkling eyes, ready wit. and dry humor endeared him to those whom he sought to educate in the natural sciences. Yet. he laughl a greater lesson than was contained in any textbook of science, for through his actions, he taught the value »f a sunny disposition and an understanding heart. Everyone felt at ease in his presence: and it was impossible to retain a gloomy disposition in one of his classes. Mr. Alexander, always pleasant, made learning a meaningful labor.” 19

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Mr. Herbert Thompson General Science Houston University Mrs. Jessie C. Turney Common Learnings Columbia University Mr. George Waterhouse Civics Kansas University Mr. Robert M. Wiegers Crafts Kansas University Mr. James Wilkinson Social Studies, Basketball Coach University of Southern California Miss Christine Williams American History University of Wyoming FACULTY MEMBERS NOT IN PANELS Mr. Donald A. Brown Law and Typing Colorado State University Mr. Donald D. Dobbs English Pittsburg State College Mr. Everett E. Draper Driver Education Missouri Valley College Mrs. Donna Burkhart Physical Education Saint Olaf College SFC Eugene Kendrick R.O.T.C. Wayne University Dr. Otis J. Mumaw Vocal Music Washburn University Mr. David Jones Hand and Orchestra Kansas University Mrs. Juanita M. Hickson Typing, Shorthand, Bookkeeping Central Missouri State College Mrs. Andrea J. Scott Speech, Drama, Public Speaking Pittsburg State College Mr. Dan J. Stanley Physical E d u c a-tion. Coach of B Team. Assistant Varsity Track Missouri Valley College Mrs. Barbara Thompson Physical Education Lincoln University Mrs. Elsie Umland English University of Nebraska

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HAROLD VINCENT HOYLE Class of 1928 “Harold Vincent Boyle, as the saying goes, has been everywhere and done everything and yet when anything happens to, near or around Boyle it is happening for the first time to the human race. This is variously known as the fresh approach or the common touch. Whatever it is, it flourishes daily in the widely loved column Boyle turns out for hundreds of newspapers across the country. In war and peace, this Pulitzer prize winner and “poor man’s philosopher” handles the monumental and the tiny everyday fact with down-to-earth ease. He applied this unusual knack of writing on the beaches of North Africa, the hedgerows of Normandy, and in the rice paddies of Korea. At home, he finds it in a wide variety of places and events — in the adoption of a baby, a passing thought about father’s day, getting his first set of false teeth or being called down to explain things at the internal revenue department I where he pleaded “temporary insanity”). Boyle’s columns have been widely reprinted in magazines, anthologies and textbooks and dramatized on television. Many individual readers have framed his reflections on their living room wall. Others have engraved his thoughts about Christmas, Thanksgiving or St. Pat’s day inside personal greeting cards. A writer with the soul of a poet and the big, broken-nosed face of a friendly bartender, Boyle went into North Africa clutching a slender volume of Emily Dickinson. He also carried placards saying, “Vote for Honest Hal. the Arab’s pal.” The man himself, almost as his copy, became a legend. The son of a Kansas City butcher and a graduate of the University of Missouri. Boyle started with AP in Kansas City and moved on to New York. Came the war. and there was Boyle, landing half-drowned with the first assault troops in North Africa. He landed with Patton in Sicily, with the infantry at Salerno, followed the GI’s across France and Germany and ended up with a Pulitzer prize for his moving daily chronicle of the lowly foot soldier in war. When fighting broke out in Korea in 1950, Boyle was back in harness again, covering the hard combat in the Pusan perimeter, the break-out and the big drive into North Korea and finally the withdrawal back south. In February. 1951, the Veterans of Foreign Wars gave Boyle its coveted Omar N. Bradley award for “outstanding contribution to national security.” The citation was presented by General Bradley himself, an old friend of the columnist. Boyle also has earned awards from the Overseas Press Club, the University of Missouri, the Gold Star Mothers and other diverse groups recognizing his uncommonly common touch.