The "Life Seems To Bring Back Many Memories Of The Past" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Trying to remember back to when I first began my teaching career in Lancaster County.  I graduated from Manheim 'Township High School, which is located in the small village known as Neffsville, PA in the spring of 1962 and entered Millersville State Teacher's College the following September of 1962.  I began to teach in the fall of 1966, even though I hadn't graduated from Millersville as of that date.  Teachers were so hard to come by that the state of Pennsylvania offered temporary certificates to teach before you had graduated from Millersville.  I obtained the necessary credits and graduated the following January of 1967.  I began teaching Industrial Arts at York Eastern High School and close to the end of that year I received a call from Manheim Township High School inquiring if I wanted a position in the school from where I had graduated.  You bet!  My second year of teaching began that following fall at Manheim Township.  I taught wood shop and mechanical drawing during the first year.  During that year I asked my Industrial Arts chairman, Mr. George Ehemann, if I could start a class in Graphic Arts.  The Industrial Arts Department already had a room that held two foot operated printing presses, a large guillotine paper cutter, a few cabinets that held metal type letters, wooden spacing blocks known as furniture, an imposing stone that was used to place the type in chases with metal quoins which in turn were placed in the printing presses to print whatever was needed.  Mr. Ehemann agreed and the following year I began teaching Graphic Arts.  Mr. Ehemann taught mechanical drawing in the room next to me, but had a small room without windows at the rear of his room.  I talked him into allowing me use that small room to start a class in photography.  Before long it had grown into two....and then three classes, since the room was so small my classes could only hold about a dozen students.  I loved teaching photography and before long an addition was added to the high school which included a large darkroom and adjoining classroom.  I also added a darkroom in the basement of my home at 925 Janet Ave. in Lancaster.  All three of my own children learned the art of photography while students at Manheim Township with their dad as their teacher.   Really wasn't quite fair to the rest of the class since my three children already knew how to take photos, develop the film and make black and white prints before they were in high school.  Many of my class members won photography awards in the National Scholastic Arts and Photography competition which we entered every year.  My youngest son, Tad, went to Antonelli's School of Photography after high school and then went to work for another of my photography students, Jerry Driendl at Driendl Photography.  In Today's Lancaster Sunday News I opened the newspaper to the "Through The Viewfinder - Exploring The Art Of Photography" article which appears every week in the Sunday News.  One of the photographers for the newspaper published a photograph they had taken with an explanation as to how it was taken...with camera settings and lighting and where it was taken.  Today's "Through The Viewfinder" article was by Andy Blackburn.  Instead of a photo he had taken as the feature photo, he used a photograph of himself when he was a child holding a camera.  The strap on the camera was so long for him that the camera came down to his knees.  In the accompanying story he told about using his father's trusty Zeiss Ikonta 35mm film camera.  He told the story of gaining an interest in photography due to his father.  His father built a darkroom in the basement where Andy got to see his dad work printing photographs.  Hey...boy did that bring back memories!  Andy went to college in 1983 to study photography, just as my son did.  Well, the photo in the paper today was from a negative that Andy found from his father's collection.  The entire story today in the "Through The Viewfinder" article could have been a story told by my youngest son!  I had to reread it over and over and it brought a few tears to my eyes as well as a flood of memories from the past.  Life never seems to be predictable.  Just when you think you have heard it all or witnessed it all...something pops up that brings everything rushing back.  I just love the memories!!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.