Daniel Snyder:
CLASS OF 1978
Stichter SchoolClass of 1978
San jose, CA
Lynbrook High SchoolClass of 1986
San jose, CA
Miller Junior High SchoolClass of 1982
San jose, CA
John Muir Elementary SchoolClass of 1980
San jose, CA
John Muir Elementary SchoolClass of 1974
San jose, CA
Daniel's Story
Life
Laura B. Stichter Elementary School...gone nearly thirty years, a subdivision now. Who remembers our beautiful library with its auditorium and the spelling bees staged there, or assemblies where we watched dental hygiene cartoons and Mr. Fisk led choruses of Bingo, and who recalls the games you could check out from the desk and spread out on the library floor: Memory, Connect 4, Smess, and that marvelous set of hollow blocks with which you could build tunnels down which metal balls ran, and many others.
I loved running in the halls and skidding down the glossy floors, loved the Halloween costume parades, games of dodge-ball, the annual walkathon, the ritual of putting my coat and lunchbox in the big wooden closet every morning. I liked less the first real homework I had, the dread California Report over which I labored all night long with my mom at my back, having put it off for weeks. And oh...the terrible time in 2nd grade when a substitute teacher passed out multiplication problems that were several levels too advanced for us. Unable to comprehend the problems and clueless about faking such things, I was kept behind to finish them when the class went to an assembly; as soon as the teacher left the room, I ran home in shame. Not always great times, not for a shy kid who wore orthopedic shoes and still wet his bed...but good times, mostly.
Remember Mrs. Bowman, Mrs. Turturici, Mr. Hilbert, Mr. MacNaughton, Mrs. Tanner? Some I had only later at Muir but all came from Stichter. In my time there we had combination classes, the teachers' strike, the unkempt dirt strip with pine trees along the back of the property where we small children felt like real explorers. We had construction-paper turkeys and pilgrim hats lining the hallways at Thanksgiving, Dick and Jane and their dog Spot, flash cards and long banners around the r...Expand for more
ooms showing the vowels and diphthongs. Sometimes Mrs. Turturici read aloud from Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and encouraged drawing in class, which I did more than I should have. We had Mrs. Pugh, the aptly named music teacher who would drop into class from time to time to try our hand at mandolins and recorders. We had a huge trampoline in a skylighted room barely large enough to hold it, where we were sometimes taken for gymnastics courses, doubtless to see, as with the infrequent music lessons, whether any of us harbored hidden talents.
I wasn't a troublemaker but I had my share of office visits. It was in StichterÂs playground, envious of the courage of bigger kids, that I learned how to swing high, reposition my arms backwards and slip off the seat at the top of my arc, flying toward the monkeybars and landing smoothly on the sweet-smelling tanbark. It terrified me every time but made me feel braver. We'd have swing fights, too, angling into each other while guarding our hands against the harsh impact of twisting chains. No doubt we terrified the playground monitors but did we care?
I loved that school and was heartbroken when an arsonist burned the office building to the ground, because we knew that would spell the END. After the fire, my best friend Chris Gennert and I wandered over the charred ground looking for priceless artifacts, over the site of that same office where the former principal, Mr. Fisk, kept a paddle in his desk that he'd display menacingly (half-humorously?) to never-do-wells.
Near the end, the administration began a community garden behind the school and Chris, one year younger but cleverer than I, convinced me to share a plot where we hoed the earth into neat furrows, planted corn, and saw it sprout. Soon after, Chris moved away, I forgot to water, and the school was soon plowed under anyway.
- Dan Snyder
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