harold a. katz memoir volume 1 - University of Illinois Springfield

A: No.
Q: There must have been some people who didn't quite go along with the editor on things.
A: That came later, at Vanderbilt. But at the West Wind we had no problems. It was a
modest little publication. The editors did most of the work. And I was a tireless worker,
and at some point I had had a typing course that was invaluable to me, too.
Q: Did you get involved with organized sports in any way in high school?
A: Yes. I was on the tennis team. We won the city championship, as a matter of fact. I
was not one of the top players. On tennis teams usually you would have five or six players
who would play against five or six players from another school. The number one seed would
play against the number one on the other. I was always down near the bottom, number five,
number six. But in the big championship encounter I won my match. I was very proud
of myself, and it was a lot of fun. That was the only interscholastic sport that I
played. And other than that, I would just play touch football, softball. I was not the bruiser
type and I didn't get involved in heavy contact sports at the high school level. When I was
a kid we used to play tackle football. Fortunately, no broken bones, but I learned that football
was not for me. Although I was over six feet, I was always very thin, not equipped for serious
football.
Q: What about track in high school, did you get involved with that?
A: I did some track, but not on the school team. At the Y, we once had a decathlon, which
is a wide variety of field events, and I managed to do very well. I won it as a matter of
fact that time. But I was not good enough for high school competition. I was okay among
a selected group of my peers who were at the Y, but at the high school level the only thing
that I could compete in was tennis.
Q: What about debate? Were you on a debate team in high school, by any chance?
A: We didn't have a debate team in high school. I did some debating a little later, in
college. I was rather forensically inclined in high school. I could speak up in class, and
that kind of thing.
Q: Did you have speech training in high school?
A: I don't believe that we had any speech training in high school. I have no recollection
of that until a little later, when I entered college and did a little of that.
Q: Was there anything in the high school years that you wished you had taken or you wished
had been available to you?
A: You mentioned speech. That certainly would have been useful. The education that we
were given was a fair, basic education. It did not have a lot of frill courses. I've always
been a believer in basic education. I could have taken advantage of it more. Obviously,
who couldn't? It was a little slanted. We don't talk about the Civil War in quite the same
way in the South that we do in the North. In the South, it was the War for the Right
of Secession. It was not a war for the preservation of slavery. It was simply a war that
the South fought to have the right to determine its own destiny. And that's the way we
learned about it in the history books in the South.
Q: What about social activities in high school? Did that remain much the same as the
situation you had earlier in grade school?
A: It remained much the same, yes. However, by the time I reached high school some of
the same kids I socialized with through the synagogue and religious activities were now my