This small autobiography was written by Ron Kahl '50 and submitted on 8/1/2010. It is published here in the Misc. Directory just the way your editor received it. LS '57
Corrine & Ron Kahl
I was a Mount Loretto boy. My first year of high school was
at the orphanage. 1947 I came to Tottenville and hoped for German and Mechanical
Drawing. I got French and was told “you couldn’t afford Mechanical Drawing
because I was a poor orphan! In French Class I gave the teacher a letter a
French priest wrote to my Dad thanking him for food, money and new clothes my
Dad bought him. The teacher cried reading that letter, but lost it when I asked
her to translate it into English. I failed French.
I spent a full semester with Miss Green and remember her stories of Japan and
China to this day. I was told that the year book for 1950 was dedicated to her.
My best friend teacher was a Mr. Lisser, from Brooklyn, NY, my birthplace. Mr.
Lisser’s mother sent a shoe box of baked cookies to me with a note not to give
any to her son, as he was getting a little fat. Mr. Lisser taught history.
I had a crush on Mrs. Bloomer, my homeroom teacher, before she became Mrs.
Bloomer. I was in love with Edel Norlander for a long, long time. I married a
Czechoslovakian woman, Alice Marie, and she passed in 1978. I have five
children, two sons , three daughters. I spent twenty years in the U.S. Army from
9 January, 1949 to 31 January, 1969. I’m a vet of both Korea and Vietnam Wars
and spent over fifteen years overseas.
In 1948, New York City turned fifty years old and T.H.S. put on a stage
production ahead of its time. TV was new and nothing like the show of shows put
on by the teachers and students was even possible on TV. I printed the tickets
for the show and the place was packed wall-to-wall and standing…no firemen were
around.
I turned seventeen on 21 Dec, 1948, and twenty days later was in the Army! The
few teachers I disliked are not worth a line of writing. I married my current
wife, Corinne, in 1990, in her home state of Iowa.
One thing I remember fondly is a classmate, Sullivan, as the best, fastest and
nicest guy who ever played basketball. Could this guy move!
I write poetry and we have a fantastic poetry group in Burlington and Mt
Pleasant, Iowa, The Society of Great River Poets (SGRP). I print four quarterly
pamphlets and an Anthology each year. As past President of the Iowa Poetry
Association (IPA), I was quoted in STROPES, their national publication, saying,
‘even some stinky poetry is good.”
Drop me a line if you got time. No computer. No e-mail. Only telephone and U.S.
Mail.
Mr. Ron Kahl
2431 Clearview
Burlington, IA 52601
(319) 752-4459