My Speech Team Thingy

*Special thanks to John Verteramo for the photo.*

As I start this little memoir I have two confessions to make to Dan Tyree that have weighed heavily on my mind over the past 30 years, and I feel that I must come clean to purge my soul.

#1 – Yes, Dan, I did sleep in my suit on Friday nights so that I didn’t have to get up so early on Saturday morning.

I know that you conjectured on it, and even directly asked me about it several times but I was always able to skirt the issue by pointing and shouting, “Look behind you! A dinosaur!” and then running quickly the other way and shouting, “I don’t want to be late for my round.”

#2 – Yes, Dan, I did sit on top of a desk in the back corner of the classroom to deliver part of my speech in one of my state finals rounds, and, yes, there was a judge seated directly in front of me.

I was just following your instruction to converse with my audience and not talk at them. I got all ones in that round if it’s any consolation.

I think those two things kind of sum up our first team. Not that we were slovenly dressed and more than a little kooky – although we were. More that we had no idea what we were doing.

Nobody told us that you were NEVER supposed to be unorthodox. Nobody told us a first year team should NEVER be able to score the way we did. Nobody told us a team with only five entries could NEVER finish in the top three in the state championship – and might have actually won it if that idiot in Original Oratory hadn’t gotten a 6 from one of his judges in the final round. The critique was the guy’s suit looked like he’d slept in it, if I remember right.

Like most idiot savants we didn’t know what we were doing – we just did it.

I’m sure that everybody that shares here is going to write about the skills they learned from being part of the program: Enormous self confidence; To examine things critically and logically; To prepare tirelessly; To think quickly on your feet; and above all to communicate.

Every job that I have ever held I have gotten because of what I learned in Speech.

It was more than that for me. When I was a senior in high school Dan Tyree introduced me to the theatre. My English teacher, Norm Wagner, introduced me to William Shakespeare. I never would have found either on my own. With those skills I then was able to meet another man, the late Dr. Earl Reimer at Bethel College, who completed the job they had started in helping me to discover who I was.

Without the theatre and Shakespeare, my life would have been greatly diminished, and a much darker place.

I have had so many moments of joy in my life, moments of beauty, exhilaration, and sheer ecstasy in the time I spent writing and acting for the stage. So many moments with dear friends sharing those moments. So many lifelong, deep, important relationships that I never would have had without Dan Tyree walking up to me in the lunchroom in September of 1979 and saying, “We’re doing this play and I was wondering…”

Who would have thought that three of us, riding in Dan and Becky’s van to Logansport at 5 a.m. one Saturday, would turn into this?

I do have to relate my favorite speech memory of all – a true moment that will be burned forever in my memory: hitchhiking down the interstate in Georgia with Dan during spring break.

For the full story on that you will have to wait for my tell all book, “All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Speech”.