Riverside High School - Mercury Yearbook (Milwaukee, WI)

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Jur 1959 Mercury If Mercury were to wing back to the past, he would see Mrs. Mary Smith in room 115 helping students create each month the magazine that bore his name, the MERCURY. Here she guided these students to an understanding of literary standards and an appreciation of the magic of the carefully chosen word. When other assignments involved her in counseling and the chairmanship of the English Department, she could not continue her work with the MERCURYg but her interest in it, in its successor the ROCKET, and in the MERCURY AN- NUAL has been a continuous interest in things literary. As a teacher of English, she who has found that all of life is mirrored in books strives to stimulate her classes to that same experience. It is her phi- losophy that mastery of the art of read- ing and writing and speaking is the result of constant effort, that to learn is to experience not only pleasure but pain. Those who graduate from classes with Mrs. Smith truly have been prepared to accept the stern realities as well as the enchantments of life. ERNEST A. MAY MRS, MARY B. SMITH Being named business manager of the Mer- cury Annual and the Mercury monthly maga- zine was'the first important assignment for Mr. Ernest A. May among his many activities at Riverside. When the Commercial Department offered a course known as Sales and Advertising, Mr. May taught it. He has a keen and imaginative mind. He was brimming with ideas for successful advertising. To prove to himself that his ideas were usable, he entered an advertising contest sponsored by the Standard Oil Company. His confidence in his ideas was justified when he won first place and was offered a position in the advertising department of the company's ofiice in Chi- cago. How fortunate for Riverside that Mr. May's love of teaching won out and he stayed here. When other duties, such as managing the bookstore and doing the accounting for all of the scl1ool's funds, were assigned to Mr. May, they required so much time that it be- came necessary for him to relinquish his work with the school publications. Mr. May accomplishes a great deal of work with very little fuss. He never seems too busy to answer questions from students or faculty members, concerning subjects ranging from buying used books to income tax and pension problems. Surely the many students with whom Mr. May has worked on the Mercury business staff as well as those in his classes have been greatly influenced by this man's ability and personality.

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To These We Dedl Q MERTON s. LEAN So many worlds, so much to do, , So little done, such things to be. From the wellsprings of the ancient civilization of Greece and Rome has emanated the inspiration for many of the developments of the Western Worldg for schools, in particular. A classical cultural background has been considered a necessity for an educated man. Above all else, our principal, Mr. Lean, has been a classical scholar. To many generations of high school students he has opened the wider horizon of the Roman world, as revealed in its literature, training students in accuracy of thought and expression, arousing an appreciation of a by-gone day as interesting not only in itself but also in its application to modern life-a source of mental discipline, of pleasure, and of beauty. Though reveling for many years in the great of old, Mr. Lean was chosen to become the chief administrator of a modern high school in a period of constant change, even confu- sion, in educational standards. His is not an easy task. However, mid the diversified and conflicting demands made upon the principal of a large, city high school, mid all the sounding jargon of the schools, Mr. Lean has been able to direct his course, guided by a sure light, a firm and just sense of values, whose source lies in the wisdom and experience of both the old and the new worlds, preparing the way not only for the present generation of high school students, but also for generations to come, confident that Si1inis bonus est, totum bonum eritf'

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FACULTY ,X ' a 0 dn.. gil Instruction enlarges the natural powers of the mind -Horace A