Several former PCHS teachers have been suggested as subjects to be remembered in this column. Surprisingly (to me, at least) the most frequently mentioned has been Mrs. Mary Tom Sphangos. Like Miss Ruth Clayton, she arrived in Benton on a Tennessee Coach bus in 1948, but she came from Knoxville and did not get there until the second or third week of school. I remember the principal, Mr. Price, calling contacts at UTK searching for someone to fill the position previously held by Margaret Poe Trotter. Mrs. Sphangos was recommended, and in time she appeared.

She was a small woman in her thirties (I estimate) with slightly gray-streaked dark black hair, parted in the middle with two fashionable puffs on either side of the part. She had piercing eyes, a slightly protruding chin, and she always wore sensible shoes. That year she lived with the Senior Lillards across from the First Baptist Church during the week, bussing back to Knoxville every Friday to be with her very young baby, a girl named Angel, in the care of a nanny, she liked to report.

Unlike poor Miss Clayton, Mrs. Sphangos was an excellent teacher. I was in her 5th period Speech class, which was easily the best general knowledge course I had at PCHS or any where.. An avid magazine and newspaper reader, she had two degrees in English and Drama from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was full of information about the world outside of Benton, which she happily shared, though with a slight sense of superiority, which understandably irked some people.

The most important lesson she taught me was the art of organizing a speech or an essay. She had a shaggy-dog "joke" which she told several times during the year, each time couched in a perfectly executed different dialect, but I will forego the dialect for a quick version of the "joke."

<< Once there was an old preacher who had a church ten miles down a dangerous dirt road that was dusty in dry weather and axle-deep muddy in wet and people had to ford five creeks in good weather and risk being swept away in the floods in wet weather, . . .[the perils of the trip went on and on]. In spite of all these difficulties, he always had a full church whenever he preached.

One day someone asked him: "Old Preacher, why is that whenever you preach you always have a full house even though all your congregation has to travel ten miles down a dangerous dirt road, etc., etc.

The Old Preacher thought a minute then replied: "Well, I'll tell you the nature of my success, the reason why whenever I preach people travel ten miles down a dangerous dirt road, etc., etc.: it is because. . . I tell them what I am going to tell them; then I tell them, finally I tell them what I told them!" >>

Pause. . .confusion! I warned you that it was a shaggy dog story, but it gets across the idea of the importance of the organization of a speech or an essay: An opening in which you introduce your subject, a body in which you fully explore your subject, and a conclusion in which you summarize your ideas or in some way take amiable leave of your audience/reader. A beginning, a middle, and an end. Simple as it is, it was the best preparation I had for making my A's in Freshman English at UTK.

Actually Mrs. Sphangos had taught Freshman English and Basic Speech at UTK before Angel's birth, and early in my freshman year I became acquainted with several UTKites who had known her there. In the meantime, at the beginning of her second year, Mrs. Sphangos had moved to Benton with her infant daughter into the Franklin Apartment, now called (I am told) The Wigwam, where Miss Clayton and her mother also lived. She stayed at PCHS for two or three years, perhaps leaving at the same time as Miss Clayton.

I could stop there, but I do have additional information which may be of interest to those who remember Mrs. Sphangos. In the spring of 1955 or 56, I received in Benton a formal invitation from Mrs. Sphangos to a wedding, her wedding. Why I never knew except perhaps she thought I was still in contact with our mutual acquaintances at UTK (which I was) and would pass the news on to them (which I did).

What she did not know was that I was in the army, stationed at Fort Bragg, NC, just about a forty-minute bus ride from the scene of the wedding. It was on a Sunday afternoon in June when I had nothing else to do--so I went

A piercing scream . . . shock. . disbelief when I showed up in the receiving line. In fact, everything stopped and people gathered around while she tried to explain to her new husband her reaction at seeing me. The groom , I had learned earlier from two of her grammar school teachers in front of me in the receiving line, had been her childhood sweetheart and owned a furniture store in the town.

That was over fifty years ago and I have no knowledge of her since. Does anyone out there have more information? You can contact me at nowandthenbhm@msn.com or Apt. 4-B, 300 W 6th St., Chattanooga, TN 37402.