Trying to cut back on diet of crow (04/02/08)

Please pass the crow.

It's part of the reality of writing a column like this that you have to acknowledge your mistakes in public.

You can't bury them or sweep them under the rug.

You have to dine on them, so let's serve up a couple of helpings.

Several weeks ago, The CR made mention of one of Jay County's favorite sons, Darrell "Pete" Brewster, a football stand-out at Purdue University who went on to a distinguished career in the National Football League with the Cleveland Browns. That was back in the Paul Brown coaching era, when Jim Brown was racking up NFL records that still put players in awe.

In doing so, we referred to Brewster as a defensive end.

Not so, my friend Tom Kennedy told me a few weeks later when our paths crossed. Brewster was a receiver, an offensive end.

I was convinced Tom - and Bud Finch, who agreed with him - had it wrong. I clearly remembered Brewster as a defensive end, because that's the position my older brother, Steve, played for the Portland Panthers and later for an undefeated Earlham College squad.

But guess what?

I was wrong.

Brewster did play defensively now and then for the Browns, but most of his stats in the NFL are as an offensive end. Tom and Bud had it right, and I had it wrong.

As long as I'm eating crow, I may as well have another helping.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a nostalgic column about memories of kindergarten while growing up in Portland.

Ninety-nine percent of the column was accurate, but at one point I referred to my neighbor Arthelma Cox as the founder of the community's first kindergarten.

I was wrong, as my friend Luetta Bowen reminded me nicely but firmly in a note.

It seems that in 1948-49, about the time I was busy being born, the wife of physician George Morrison was getting the first kindergarten off the ground.

Luetta graduated from Ball State Teachers College in 1950 and was hired as kindergarten teacher in the 1950-51 and 1951-52 school years.

"Bill Hinkle, Tom Strohl, and such were in that first class of mine," she wrote.

Those first classes were indeed in the basement of the old library, later moving to the "rec" building on South Wayne Street, now home to the Portland Street Department.

"The 'rec' hall building was like paradise after the library basement," Luetta wrote.

"I left in '51 to raise my family and dear Mrs. Cox took over as the teacher for the next several years," she added. "She was a wonderful teacher to young children."

After a seven-year interruption to raise her family, Luetta returned to teaching, first as a kindergarten teacher in Pennville, then in 1964 after she had received her master's degree as a first grade teacher at General Shanks Elementary School.

She remained at Shanks for 29 years, retiring in 1993, though she has continued to substitute teach.

My thanks to Luetta, not only for setting the record straight, but for all those good years in shaping the education of Jay County school children.

And as for me, I'm going to try to keep crow off my diet for awhile.[[In-content Ad]]