Posted by Michael N. Marcus
on April 2, 2008, 10:37 pm
If you've ever spent any time wandering around airports or municipal buildings, you’ve probably passed by a Freedom Shrine.
The shrine can be a spotless and spotlighted room, a few feet of hallway, or a dust-shrouded basement corner. It displays replicas of historical documents provided and maintained by the local Exchange Club.
The documents range from obscure articles of surrender and presidential correspondence, to the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.
Several dozen different pieces are usually displayed. There is seldom any discernable order, sequence or pattern; but the unmistakable themes are rebellion against tyranny, and FREEDOM.
Hillhouse High School had a Freedom Shrine Room. It measured about eight by eight by twelve, had bright lights, a glass wall and no ventilation.
In the ultimate irony, our shrine to freedom was our detention room! — the place where the bad kids were kept.
The shrine was not quite as inhospitable as a Viet Cong “tiger cage,” or a prison cell in Abu Ghraib, but temperatures were often above 100. And of course, boys in Hillhouse — a public school — were required to wear ties and either sport jackets or sweaters.
Each morning during homeroom period, assistant principal George Kennedy’s voice would boom over the PA system: “The following students will please report to the Freedom Shrine Room;” and we’d hear the names of hooky-players, class-cutters, test-cheaters, glue-sniffers, toilet-stuffers, library-smokers, fire-alarm-yankers and sundry suspected terrorists.
There was a regular group of hard-core Shriners. Camille Frosolone, John Belbusti and Gus Dubovik made the list almost every day. Occasionally there’d be a new name, but it wasn’t always a real name.
In an effort to free the Freedom Shrine, the class of ’64 took the “Who’s Dick Hertz” joke to a new level.
Our school had a nice swimming pool, and we went swimming each week, with instruction available for those who needed it. At the first class in September, teacher James J. (“JJ”) Davin distributed index cards for us to record our name, homeroom, division, swimming ability, next-of-kin, and so on.
Someone got an extra card and signed up a phantom named “Steve Schmuck.”
Steve became part of the official class roster, and JJ read his name when he took attendance at the beginning of each class.
For the first few weeks, one of the co-conspirators would yell out “yo” or “here” to establish credibility for our invisible classmate. But there was no way we could come up with an extra body to take the upcoming swimming test, so we stopped answering when Steve’s name was called.
After Steve seemed to miss a few classes, JJ inquired about his welfare and whereabouts, and some of the guys said that they had seen Steve earlier in the day in biology or algebra.
J reported Steve for skipping class, and the following morning our phantom friend achieved a new level of legitimacy and fame.
More than 3000 students and teachers heard assistant principal and resident tough guy George Kennedy announce, through loudspeakers in every classroom, hallway and other place of actual and potential habitation, “Steve Schmuck, please report to the Freedom Shrine Room.”
That was the only time our Freedom Shrine deserved its name.
The Shrine was freed by the Schmuck. I can still hear the cheering and laughter.
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