Retired teacher revives party
BUTLER TWP — The end of the school year parties used to feature football and baseball games, then flag football and whiffle ball contests, finally cards and conversation. Then the parties ceased altogether.
But just in time to coincide with last weekend’s Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival, retired Butler Junior High teacher Cliff Logan. 77, got the old faculty lounge gang back together.
Logan, a history and gifted-program teacher who retired in 1996, said he used to host the annual parties for Butler Junior High School teachers at his house every year on the last day of school.
“We got out earlier. We’d come here straight from school,” said Logan.
“We had it here nonstop from the mid-60s to 2000,” said Logan. “One year we had it at Gus Guenther’s house in Prospect.”
Logan said the events didn’t attract too many wives or girlfriends.
“It was too male dominated. They got scared off,” said Logan.
The parties ran for more than 30 years, but Logan said after he retired in 1996 that while he kept them going for awhile, “I was getting to know fewer and fewer teachers.”
But this year, he decided to revive the tradition and sent the word out through his bowling league and had fliers printed up.
“The last day of school this year was June 12. This had nothing to do with the Jeep Festival,” said Logan.
Fred Mullner, a former school district food supervisor, came back for the revival.
Mullner said, “I’ve been coming to these for a long time. We played football, softball, volleyball. We went to whiffle ball when we got a little older.”
George Thomas, a retired history teacher, and Larry Densmore, a retired reading teacher, both made the party and both said the contact sports have given way to card games theses days.
“We had a gap for awhile. It traditionally was on the last day of school,” said Densmore.
Logan said one retired teacher who pushed for the party’s return couldn’t make it.
“Bill Hamilton, he really pushed for this,” said Logan, “He kept urging me to do it and the day before the party, he went into the hospital with breathing problems.”
But nearly 30 party veterans did show up, and the stories flew as fast as the cards around the two tables set up in the backyard: about the time someone broke their ankle playing whiffle ball and how Logan’s wife, Penny, then president of the school board and dressed to go preside over the high school graduation, wound up in the pool minutes before she was to leave.
Logan expected to have a crowd show up for the “Let’s Do It Again” party, but he doubts he’ll be doing it again any time soon.
“I probably will talk about having it again in 10 years,” he said.
