Last Sunday, I introduced you to the 2013 winners of the Adele Knight Excellence in Teaching Award. They are Steven Nedlik, a teacher and athletic director at Willoughby South High, and Deanna Elsing, an English teacher at Eastlake North.

Today, I will expand on the reasons why they were chosen by their peers for the prestigious award, which carries with it a $500 stipend and a handsome, engraved plaque to be placed on display in the schools.

To recap, the award was first given in 2000 to honor a much-admired Latin teacher who taught primarily at the former Willoughby Union High School and then at North.

One of her students back in the 1930s, Dr. Wesley J. Pignolet, came up with the idea for the award as an appropriate way to pay tribute to a teacher who impacted many lives while instilling in them the joys of learning a language that most of them regarded as a very difficult but necessary prerequisite for going to college.

The first award in 2000 went to a teacher at North and the second in 2001 to a teacher at South. They were rotated in that fashion until 2005, when enough money was raised to honor a teacher from each school.

Steve Nedlik, this year’s South winner, has taught physical education and health in the Willoughby-Eastlake Schools for 21 years, including stints at Willowick and Eastlake middle schools, Longfellow Elementary and North and South highs.

He and his wife, Ellen, have five children. He has held the athletic director post at South for the past six years.

Steve has also been a volunteer youth coach for more than 20 years and enjoys camping and the outdoors with his family whenever possible. He describes himself as a diehard Cleveland Browns fan.

He was recreation director for the City of Willowick for 12 years and a recreation department employee there for 24 years.

His teaching philosophy is to try his very best to make a difference in his students’ lives, both short-term and long-term.

Now a resident of Mentor, Steve is a member of St. John Vianney Parish and a volunteer usher.

One of his greatest civic accomplishments was to organize an areawide basketball fund-raiser last year that included the South and North communities. Proceeds of more than $35,000 were given to Chardon High School as a memorial to its slain students.

Working with other coaches and friends, he helped boost the spirits of people in the Chardon area.

“People are looking for a platform to show support for our friends at Chardon High, and they want to contribute to a good cause,” Steve said at the time. His efforts galvanized that cause.

Deanna Elsing, this year’s winner from North, went through the Mentor Schools system and graduated from Kent State University, with a master’s degree from Ashland.

She started her career at Villa Angela St. Joseph in Cleveland and joined the faculty at North in 2005.

She is always one of the first to volunteer for new and innovative projects. She is a volleyball announcer for home game at North, has been a co-chair of the English Department, and wrote a model curriculum for grades nine through 12 for the new common core standards for the Ohio Department of Education.

She contends she “felt fortunate that this profession found me and called my name,” but admits she “fought being a teacher” because for years she watched her father, a middle school science teacher, come home late after coaching one of the three sports he took on to support his family, “and he still needed to lesson plan and grade papers.”

But she confesses that after being “bribed,” along with her sisters, to grade multiple-choice sections of tests, she found it inevitable that she would “catch the teaching bug from her dad,” who is now retired after 30 years of public service.

She credits working with former Adele Knight Award winners Mary Slak, Lorraine Gauvin and  Sherry Wagner in the English Department at North for motivating her to “teach with passion and compassion,” adding that “last year’s winner, Pat Kwaitkowski, leads by example day in and day out with a teaching philosophy involving the rigors of academic freedom that is contagious and has rubbed off on many of us at North.”

So there you have Steve Nedlik and Deanna Elsing, two more outstanding — and deserving — winners of the Adele Knight Excellence in Teaching Award.

JCollins@News-Herald.com

The legend of Adele Knight marches on.

Miss Knight was a beloved Latin teacher when I was a student at Willoughby Union High School in an era that predates the current one by a few — quite a few — years.

She was, in addition to her other duties, a homeroom teacher, and she was my homeroom teacher in my freshman year, which began in the fall of 1942.

That was a time when many of the graduates were marching off to war. But we of fuzzy cheek were much too young for combat, so we stayed at home and tended to our studies.

Everybody took Latin for two years in those days. Most of us recall little of it. But I do remember sitting in the front row for those two years because Miss Knight, a taskmaster of note, reserved the back rows for her better students, one of which I was not.

Nevertheless, we persisted, did our homework on occasion, and graduated — better persons for our exposure to Miss Knight.

One of those who was indeed a better person because of her influence was a student who was afflicted with polio, walked with a heavy brace on his leg ever since, and went on to become Dr. Wesley J. Pignolet, a physician engaged in the general practice of medicine in Willoughby.

After many years, he went back to school, became a specialist in ophthalmology, and returned to Willoughby, where he remained in practice until retirement.

Wes was always a bundle of ideas, almost all of them worthy of pursuit. One of his finest brainstorms was to form a committee to honor Miss Knight.

The group decided to raise money in tribute to her, but not for scholarships, because any enterprising student could find financial help for college if he or she tried hard enough, we opined.

So after giving the matter considerable thought, the committee decided to honor outstanding teachers in the Willoughby-Eastlake Schools — one at North High and one at South High each year.

Wes herded together a committee of a dozen or so individuals who just couldn’t say no, and we went about our business of raising money.

Miss Knight was still alive at the time, and she heartily endorsed the idea of honoring the district’s top teachers.

So we wrote thousands of letters and raised thousands of dollars, enough to sustain the project for several years.

We determined that each recipient would received a $500 stipend and a handsomely engraved plaque, to be placed on public display at the schools.

We started somewhat modestly, being able to honor only one teacher at the beginning. So we presented the award to a teacher from North in 2000 and one from South in 2001.

We rotated them until 2005, when we gained a little financial stability and were finally about to achieve our goal of honoring a teacher from each high school each year.

With the passing a couple years ago of Dr. Jim McCann, a Mentor dentist for many years and a Union High grad, there are now but two of us remaining from the original, rather large, Adele Knight committee.

Ann Kassing, a teaching colleague of Miss Knight, and I are the two, and we had our annual luncheon the other day with the others who comprise the group, including Superintendent Steve Thompson, North Principal Jen Chauby, South Principal Paul Lombardo, some of the previous winners (sorry, I didn’t take notes on who was there), plus this year’s winners.

I am pleased to report that the 2013 winners of the Adele Knight Excellence in Teaching Award are Steven Nedlik, an educator and athletic director at South, and Deanna Elsing, an English teacher at North.

These awards are especially meaningful, because finalists are nominated and winners selected by their teaching peers. Thus they are the best of the best, the proverbial cream of the crop.

But they deserve much greater praise and recognition than those few words, so I will employ the tactic I used last year.

I will use next week’s space to go into greater detail about the two winners, so that those of you who have never met them will feel you have become better acquainted with them.

One week from now, you will have a greater appreciation of why they were selected for the honor.

And, oh yes, I would also like to tell you how you may contribute to the fund. Simply write a check (any amount is appreciated) to the Adele Knight Excellence in Teaching Fund and send it to Superintendent Thompson in care of the Willoughby-Eastlake Foundation, 37047 Ridge Road, Willoughby OH 44094. It will be placed in its own separate fund within the foundation to use for future awards.

JCollins@News-Herald.com

The arrival of the mail each morning is an occasion that generates great excitement and breathless anticipation, because one never knows what the mailman might bring.

The daily event is something of a Roman Carnival at our house. The arrival of Dave, our mailman (I suppose in the looney world of the politically correct he would be called a “mailperson”) creates more excitement than he dreams exists, because it elicits an uproar of barking by our two darling puppies, Maggie and Tricia. They can probably be heard for blocks around.

We dare not verbally announce his coming. Either word, “mailman” or “Dave,” will set off the hub-bub, because the dogs understand English. They haven’t learned to spell yet, however, and that allows us an escape from the din.

As long as they don’t look out the window and see his truck on the street, we can spell either word and fool them — for now.

But I expect they will soon be learning to spell, and we will then have to come up with code words to announce the arrival of the mail – virtually all of which is worthless.

But that is another story for another day. If all of our junk mail were shredded and dumped out of an office window on Euclid Avenue in Downtown Cleveland, the perplexed natives would probably think the Indians had won the World Series.

Relax, folks. That’s not going to happen for another six months.

Speaking of mail (I think that’s what launched me into this topic), I got an interesting letter the other day from Pat Rickman, who lives with her husband, Al, in Latham, N.Y., which is a suburb of Albany.

They are regular readers of this column. In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that they are the parents of Bill, who is the boyfriend of my granddaughter, Destiny.

They often come to Willoughby around Christmas, and we have had many interesting conversations around the wassail bowl.

Well, there really isn’t a wassail bowl. I made that up. But through the art of conversation, we have discovered many of each others’ interests.

Pat knows, for example, of my obsession with music. But she knows so much about my other interests that I suspect she learned some of them from reading these essays.

Her note arrived not at our abode, but at the newspaper, but no difference. Her message was about singer Rudy Vallee, a crooner of whom I am sure you have heard, especially if you are in your golden years.

I am not sure what golden years are, but I think they come when you are, as “Auntie Mame” said, somewhere between 40 and death.

“In the summer of 1965,” Pat wrote, “I was visiting a friend in Marblehead, MA.”

Now, I remember that summer very well. It was the summer when folks of a conservative stripe were driving around with bumper stickers that read, “27 million Americans can’t be wrong.”

Those were folks who voted for Goldwater the previous November. Problem was, LBJ got way more votes than that.

But I digress.

“Her folks,” Pat continued, “were going to go to a nightclub in Revere Beach to see Rudy Vallee. As they left I said, ‘Get his autograph.’  The next morning I was given the enclosed.”

What was enclosed was a piece of yellow paper, about two inches square. On it was some writing with a black Magic Marker, or some other dark medium. It looks as if it says “Rz Valty.” Pat assures me it is an authentic autograph of Rudy Vallee, the crooner of legend in the days of radio.

“A couple of days ago,” Pat wrote, “while looking for something in our file box, Al found it. We are giving it to you because we know you enjoy older movies and music.

“Feel free to give it away or throw it out if you don’t want it.”

Well, I’m certainly not going to throw it out. I will store it with my other autographs. I have about five. I have baseballs autographed by Bob Feller, Mike Hargrove and Pete Rose. My son-in-law, Dan, a stagehand in Cleveland, got that one when Rose, of whom I am no great fan, was in town making a movie.

I have Earl Averill, with his fingers bandaged after a July Fourth firecracker went off in his hand, and Carlos Baerga, who signed the ticket stub from the game in which he hit home runs batting left-handed and right-handed in the same inning.

So I will gladly add Rudy Vallee to my “collection.” Unless, of course, someone wants to bid on it, in which event I will give the proceeds to the Fine Arts Association, which held its annual fund-raiser gala Friday night.

We rode there with Frank and Karen Manning because he knows the way to LaMalfa better than I do (I go there only two or three times a week.)

I should have taken my Rudy Vallee autograph with me. It might have gotten some action in the silent auction.

JCollins@News-Herald.com

I wasn’t quite finished talking about obsessions a couple weeks ago when I ran out of space.

So this will sort of be like Chapter 2 about obsessions.

But first, there is something else I wanted to tell you about.

Early last month, the esteemed movie critic Roger Ebert died. I’m sure you are familiar with his succinct thumbs-up, thumbs-down critiques of films he liked or didn’t like. He was also noted for his terse comments about the “dogs” in moviedom — the dogs, of course, having nothing to do with real canines, just with films difficult to sit through without nodding off.

A couple of examples were offered in a news story on his passing. One referred to a movie he called “a long, dry slog. It’s not funny, it’s not smart and it’s interesting only in the way a traffic accident is interesting.”

Another review was of “Heaven’s Gate” (1980), of which he said, “It is so smoky, so dusty, so foggy, so unfocused and so brownish yellow that you want to try Windex on the screen.”

That is classy writing. It puts me in mind of my own all-time favorite movie review, written by John McCarten in The New Yorker, about 1951.

He wrote: “‘The Duchess of Idaho’ starring Esther Williams and Van Johnson opened last week at the Tivoli. Miss Williams is good looking, but she can’t act. She is one up on Mr. Johnson.”

That was the entire review. I loved it. But I digress. Back to the topic of obsessions.

As I pointed out, we all have them. A lot of readers confessed to having them. One, Bud Boylan of Lyndhurst, noted that one of his obsessions is sending me notes through the mail. There is nothing wrong with that, except that every time he wants to pontificate, which is good, it costs him a stamp, which is bad.

If he doesn’t have a computer, he might consider going to the library and sending me an email. That way I would receive his thoughts within a day — or maybe within three weeks, depending on where he sends the email.

See, I have computer access at The News-Herald and at Lakeland Community College. But alas, I remember to turn on my computer at home only once or twice a month, because I keep forgetting.

Also, it is on the dining room table, it is kind of in the way when we are eating, and it has a lot of important stuff piled on top of it.

Every time I want to turn it on, I have to move all of the stuff, set it aside, and eventually return it when I shut the machine off.

The other day I went through all the stuff and threw away more than half of it. I now have much less stuff to move when I turn on the computer.

But back to obsessions — please. I pointed out that the lady of the house has an obsession that will not allow her to serve any kind of food if it is past the expiration date.

She is really serious about this, so I do not dispute her — ever.

But is has gotten so that whenever I go grocery shopping with her and I select, say, a bottle of tomato juice, I inspect it carefully to make sure it will not expire for about a year.

That way, if we don’t use it right away, nobody will get killed drinking day-old tomato juice.

I’ll tell you who has millions of cans of food on their  shelves — restaurants across the country and the U.S. Army.

Do you suppose it’s possible that any restaurant, or any Army base, has ever served a meal that included food from a can that expired a week ago, a month ago, or even five years ago? Hah!

Do you ever go into a restaurant kitchen and ask to inspect the cans and bottles for expiration dates? I don’t. Maybe you do.

But what I wanted to tell you about is Altoids. Around 2005 I retired from full-time at the newspaper and started at the college. About that time, we were at a party with Sam Petros, the noted builder, as in Newell Creek in Mentor, and he offered me a ginger Altoid. It was great. So I wrote a column about it. (It doesn’t take much to set my mind in motion).

A few days later I arrived at my desk at the college for the first time and was greeted by many thoughtful gifts — T-shirts, coffee mugs and several tins of ginger Altoids, lots of them.

I still have several containers. I am still enjoying them. I looked at one of the tins the other day. It said, “Best if consumed by May 2006.”

They are still very tasty. But I don’t share them with anyone because, you know, I can’t be too careful.

I understand very well how the Grand Jury operates because I once served as its foreman. We never had a case come before us of anyone who was indicted for serving an outdated Altoid, and I don’t want to be the one who mars that record.

JCollins@News-Herald.com

There are a lot of accents that I recognize immediately. Take someone from Canada. As soon as that person says “about,” I know where he or she is from.

Many other places on the globe are also dead giveaways. After spending two years in Texas with Uncle Sam’s Army, I could come close to guessing which county a guy lived in.

GIs from Louisiana? Easy. Their accents are different. Boston and New Jersey accents are not at all alike. Same with Philadelphia. All have their own individual sounds — a characteristic that allowed Professor Henry Higgins to pinpoint within a block or two from whence Eliza Doolittle came.

But a conversation I overheard a week ago last night had me stumped, because I could not identify the gentleman’s accent. Not that I was eavesdropping, mind you. Wouldn’t do that. However, sometimes words are tantalizing because the place of origin of the speaker is elusive.

So finally I asked.

Let me set the stage for you.

The lady of the house and I were dining with two of our closest friends, Kirtland Mayor Mark Tyler and the first lady of the city, Sandy.

When we made reservations for Giovanni’s, we made certain that the owner, longtime friend Carl Quagliata, would be there because without his presence it just isn’t the same.

We were assured he would be there. And sure enough, he greeted us at the door.

The place was packed, and our table was first-rate. It was in the back corner of the newly remodeled lounge area. Is that setting ever spectacular! It was the first time we had been there since the recent makeover, and the place was wondrous to behold.

The cocktails and the food, of course, were everything one would expect when dining at what we (and a great many other people) consider to be the finest dining experience in Northern Ohio.

Just for the record, Mark and I had short ribs and the two ladies ordered scallops. Not a one of us was disappointed.

At the table just at my left sat a handsome couple who, it turned out later, were celebrating a wedding anniversary. They looked as if they were enjoying themselves immensely.

They seemed to be having so much fun that I peeked a couple of times to see what kind of wine they had ordered.

Now, remember this — I was not eavesdropping. But I did pick up on a couple of phrases that were spoken with just a hint of an accent I did not recognize. Certainly not a heavy accent. Just a bit — a trace — that indicated he might not be a native Ohioan.

Native Ohioans are really hard to pinpoint, because the way in which we speak is so, well, Midwestern, that most everyone talks as we do.

We eventually introduced ourselves, and I said, in as diplomatic a manner as I could summon, “By the way, I notice a slight, a very slight, trace of an accent in your speech...”

I said no more. He finished my thought for me. “I’m from Switzerland,” he said.

Well. No wonder I failed to recognize his place of origin. Sometimes weeks can go by before we run into anyone from Switzerland.

We had a lengthy conversation, the six of us, and he turned out to be Christian, his wife is Kae, and he is an international banker — a vice president of international banking with The PNC Financial Services Group.

Kae was not from Switzerland. “I’m from Nebraska,” she said.

“I might have guessed,” I deadpanned. I proceeded to tell everything I know about Nebraska, which is that it has only one branch of its legislature, not a House and a Senate as the other states have, and that it is so flat that it takes two people to look as far as you can see. (The second one starts looking where the first one leaves off).

We exchanged business cards, and by Monday we had already traded emails. I am sure we will see them again — probably at NightTown, one of their favorite spots.

JCollins@News-Herald.com

We all have our obsessions. You have yours, I have mine.

Most of them are harmless. They don’t hurt anybody or anything. They are just things we do in a routine way, or things we believe are necessary to live in a contented frame of mind.

I would tell you about a few of mine, but you probably wouldn’t believe them, or else think I am crazy for making them public and thus drawing attention to myself in a way that is not necessarily flattering.

Oh, all right. I will reveal one of my obsessions if you promise not to tell anybody.
While I am standing in the shower in the morning, I decide what kind of after shave fragrance I will apply to my face that day.

I give it a lot of thought. It is a lengthy debate.

I know you don’t think it’s important, but it’s important to me. So please understand that it’s an important decision that I make every morning as I am soaking wet — probably around the time I am rinsing the shampoo from my thickly matted hair.

Thickly matted hair runs in my family, even among the animals. Frankly, I think the dogs are beautiful with thickly matted hair. But no. Maggie had to go get a haircut on Monday, and it was Tricia’s turn for grooming on Wednesday.

That’s so they can see out from behind all that hair, I am told. Well, I never thought they had any problem seeing, especially seeing their dinner plates when it is time to eat.

So off they went to the barber shop last week, and now they will be practically naked until their beautiful coats of fur grow back.

But I digress.

Obsessions are everywhere, and no one is immune from them. And that applies to the lady of the house as well.

She has an obsession that I find amusing, but I never argue with her because there is no point in doing that, especially when I know in advance that I will lose.

So she gets her way, and I smile and say, “Well, OK, if you say so.”

Her obsession is this: She will never use any product, especially food, if it has an expiration date indicating it has, well, expired. That is to say, too old to use.

Even a can of beans that expired yesterday. To her, too old means too old.

I have tried to reason with her about these matters. I say things like, “Look, that doesn’t mean that an egg that expired yesterday will kill you today.”

“Oh yes it will,” she insists.

“Look,” I respond, “I read the obituaries every day, and I never read about someone who died from eating an egg that expired the day before.”

Have you ever hear the expression about words falling on deaf ears?

When I attempt to make my case, applying cold, clear logic, for using expired food because it is wasteful to throw it away, the ears that my words fall upon are deaf.

Period. Discussion over. Throw it out.

Some expiration dates are really hard to find. Have you ever tried to find an expiration date on a tube of toothpaste? You know, so you won’t kill yourself in case it expired the day before.

I really think some manufacturers try awfully hard to make their expiration dates hard to read. That is foolish on their part, because if you are inclined to throw out something that is only a week or two past its prime, you are more inclined to go out and buy a new batch of it, as, for example, in the case of cough syrup.

Nobody who has a cold buys a bottle of cough syrup, takes it home and uses up the whole bottle before it expires. It doesn’t make sense. Nobody coughs that much.

I will wager, if you look in your medicine cabinet, you will find a bottle of cough syrup that expired at least a year ago. Or maybe even five years ago.

If you are coughing in the middle of the night, get up and grope in the dark for the cough syrup, do you try to read the expiration date before you take a gulp? Of course you don’t. You pour some in a spoon, or in the measuring cap that comes on the bottle, drink it, smack your lips and you go back to sleep.

My brother was over the other day, and we were watching a ball game. I asked him if he wanted a beer. He said sure. I said there was some in the refrigerator in the basement. So he got one.

Later, the lady of the house asked me how long that beer had been there. I told her Dick Stone brought it over for the class reunion. It was left over. When was that, she asked. I think it was 2006, I replied.

Maybe beer doesn’t have expiration dates. But my brother is still OK, and that was seven years ago.

Now, you can tell when potato chips are stale by the way they taste. But beer? I guess it only gets stale when you open it and let it sit.

One product that never goes bad is Altoids. Someday I will explain, because I know what I’m talking about.

JCollins@News-Herald.com

As I have said so many times in the past, baseball is the greatest game ever invented.

It is better than football, basketball, bridge, whist, parcheezi, Old Maid or two-card monte.

I never even knew Monte. The only Monte I ever knew of was Monte Pearson, who pitched for the Yankees. And, of course, Leon (Monty) Montgomery, who was police chief of Wickliffe when I was a lad, and who parlayed his skill as a policeman into being a scratch golfer at Pine Ridge. But I digress.

So imagine my elation the other day when I picked up the paper and discovered inside it a 48-page tabloid section devoted to the history of the Cleveland Indians. Sheer excitement coursed through my veins. I read the section twice before putting it down.

Those sections are still a hot over-the-counter item at The News-Herald. The picture on the cover shows Omar Visquel wearing a batting helmet with Chief Wahoo on the front. On many of the Tribe’s new baseball caps, the Chief has been replaced by a Block C. Did they forget to put the P in front of it?

I will give you a minute to think about that. OK, time’s up.

I was sitting at the team’s home opener, an inglorious loss to the Yankees, and we were talking about Indians history. Greg Sanders, who runs the Foundation for Lake Health, asked me who my all-time favorite Indians player was. I answered without hesitation, “Ken Keltner.”

But I have a lot of all-time favorite Indians. There is nowhere near enough space to list them here without resorting to the type size they use in Friday’s paper to report the foreclosures.

But here are a few of them. I remember them well, some because they were massively talented, some because of absurd things they did and a few merely because they had wonderful names.

My favorite pitchers were Bob Feller, Mel Harder and Herb Score. I have a great picture of Herb and me taken at a Willoughby Police golf outing many years ago.

But how about Bob Lemon? And Ray Narleski and Don Mossi? And then there was Willis Hudlin. And don’t forget Earl Whitehill. I used to do an impression of him warming up.

Everybody loved the shortstop/second base combination of Lou Boudreau and Ray Mack. But another shortstop I liked was Broadway Lyn Lary. And for second base, how about Odell (Sammy, Bad News) Hale?

And for a first baseman, there was nobody like Hal Trosky. He could really crush the ball. We don’t have any hitters like him any more. I liked the way he dug in his spikes at the plate when he batted.

Eddie Robinson was another guy who dug in as if he were drilling for oil. Sort of like Reggie Jackson and Richie Allen, to mention a couple of guys on other teams.

The Indians had three catchers I admired for their bravery – Rollie Hemsley, Frankie Pytlak and Henry Helf. They once stood on the sidewalk outside the Terminal Tower as the strong-armed Keltner fired baseballs down from the top.

I think Helf was the only one who caught a ball. The others missed them and they bounced several stories high off the cement. If anybody had been hit by a ball, he would probably be buried next to Ray Chapman.

I was at a game at League Park with my grandfather, and during batting practice Joe Vosmik, an incredible batter, was leaning against the screen waiting his turn. Billy Sullivan hit a ball about a mile, straight up in the air. When it eventually came down, Vosmik casually reached out and caught it with one bare hand. I never forgot it.

Joe’s widow, Sally Vosmik, lived on Gardenside Drive in Waite Hill. I used to see her at a lot of parties. She was a very good dancer.

One of my favorite outfielders, beside Rocky Colavito, Rick Manning and Jeff Heath, was Earl Averill, the power-hitting centerfielder. My dad took me to Municipal Stadium on Earl Averill Day. It must have been 1937 or ‘38. The team gave him a new Cadillac with EA-3 on the license plate.

On the Fourth of July, Earl had a firecracker go off in his hand. His picture was in the paper, sitting up in a hospital bed, holding up two bandaged fingers like a V for Victory. After he was released, my dad took me to his home, I think it was in Cleveland Heights, and he autographed that picture for me.
Guess what? I still have it.

The good stuff you just don’t throw away.

It’s too bad Hal Lebovitz is no longer around. I would tell him these stories and he would just nod and say, “Yes, I remember.”

JCollins@News-Herald.com