From the Bob Willard Collection, Volume 1
June 2, 2020 First Edition
The last day of elementary school in 1962 was Thursday, May 31st. At least this was so in Denver at Henry M. Teller Elementary. Every boy and all the girls throughout the school were excited. And eager! It was simply impossible to sit still. It was always impossible to sit still on the last day of school.
In every classroom, on all the floors, up and down and throughout the hallways going left to right, young colorful eyes watched the second hands on the school clocks click and tock, click, tocking… Counting. Waiting. Expecting.
Meanwhile, dark clouds the size of the Rocky Mountains bonded together tightly outside like a menacing fist and scolded into a black storm. Thunder shook the ground.
At the end of the 2nd lunch period, with the clock’s hour hands approaching 1:00p, we all jumped like startled cats at a sudden bright flash and an explosively loud KABOOM! An instant downpour of cold rain and cold sleet banged the windows and ricocheted off the asphalt streets. This was shaping up to be a furious storm. We remained captive inside Henry M. Teller.
For it to rain on the last day of school was unusual. The sky had been sunny and the air warm on the last day of school for all the past years. Yet, still, as Dennis Blum correctly recalled:
Leaden clouds hung low.
The black storm stayed until 2:30p and then began to soften and move away. The sky overhead slowly lightened in cadence with the ticking school clocks. Every kid had one more class period to endure!
With blue eyes and brown and green and gray eyes and probably hazel, too, frozen on the classroom’s ticking clocks, at 3:10p, right on time, the year’s final school bells clanged loudly throughout the long hallways. It finally happened. The clanging bells sounded so sweet and every kid screamed out in excitement as loud as their lungs could bellow and screech. Just like every year. Crazy. Hallelujah. Teachers covered their ears. Buried their heads. Students screamed louder. ‘Summer vacation! Summer Vacation! SUMMER VACATION!!‘
We all had our final report cards in hand, in sealed manila envelopes that you couldn’t see through. Rats! These sealed life determinants were to be opened only by our parents once we arrived home. We had all done it before. Many times. Each of us could do it in our sleep. Every single one of us. We all knew the drill. And each of us knew what was waiting at home…
But as it was the beginning of summer vacation, more important things occupied on our minds… like playing with our friends each day. Beginning early when the mourning doves cooed and ending when the red and purple and white frosted tulips folded their petals for the night.
On this last day of 5th grade, with report cards clutched tightly, Frisell and I flew down the iron stairs from the 2nd floor to the 1st, and exited the school by bursting through its broad front doors. It was those large, tall, heavy oak doors that faced Steve Irwin’s house directly across Garfield Street.
The air was still rich from the redolence of blossoming roses showered by the storm’s pungent ozone.
Miles Kubly and Tim Crow were already outside. With Frisell and I, the four of us quickly agreed to play softball at 9:30a on Teller’s playground the next morning. Friday. June 1st. We divided up lists of other kids to call to round out the lineups.
With plans in place, Frisell and I left Miles and Tim, and passed the enormous pink and white snowball bushes guarding the school entrance. Glancing up at the rain soaked American flag drooping against the flagpole, we tiptoed around the reflective ground puddles as we approached the gutter of Garfield Street.
Lightning continued to flash beyond and thunder continued its boom, and echo, and boom. The gutters were still swollen with rushing rainwater, heading from 11th Avenue down to the storm drain at the end of the block on 12th.
It was at that moment that Frisell and I both saw a paper boat floating precariously down the gutter toward us. It was moving quite fast.
‘Hurry. Don’t let it get by,’ I shouted.
With professional-level skill, Frisell snapped the paper boat out from the rushing current. It was like watching Poseidon pluck the Argo out of a turbulent sea. Together, we unfolded the paper boat, only to discover that it wasn’t just a paper boat. It was also Robert Steven Willard’s year-end report card headed to a certain watery grave. Big Bob, his adopted nickname, was a classmate and a close friend.
With C’s and a D printed on the inside of the paper Argo, we carefully refolded Big Bob’s final opus back to seaworthy. We understood what we’d seen, nodded, gestured, and then Poseidon bent over and placed the paper Argo back into the raging torrent, sending it on its travels down toward the storm drain, now a powerful waterfall that dove into the black darkness below.
And then, like each of the prior years, Frisell and I continued home… anxious to play softball on the first day of summer. Neither of us were surprised by the report card that became the Argo. It epitomized Big Bob.
Even back then, as elementary school kids, we admired Big Bob’s daring and his lack of shame and his constancy to go against the rules. It was those things that spoke for him, that differentiated him from all the other kids. It is how he was known. He never changed. He had his own way. Didn’t like his report card? Send it to the Styx.
Big Bob died peaceably at age 69 due to a cancer-ravaged body from a life of poor choices. He thought he would live to be 100. He came up short.
I was proud to be his friend.
Cantations 