Event: Telling Tales Out of School #2
Oral History Project Interviews
Location: Old Lyme Town Senior Center
Date: March 6, 2010
Interviewee: Gloria Maddocks
Interviewer: Michaelle Pearson
I see you brought some notes, so why don’t you just tell me.
I was hired by the superintendent August 16, 1956 and retired after soccer season
December 1996. Roger Grover was the principal and Carl A. Kotzen, Sr. was the advisor
for the class of 1956. The total class at that time was 18. The other students attended
Center School, 1-12. I was hired to be the principal’s secretary as they would be moving
to a jr/sr high school which is the middle school. Turned out I was also the guidance
secretary, the athletic department secretary and the bookkeeper for the office. The
faculty was kind, professional and committed to the education of our students. They
made the subjects interesting and reinforced how to live life. The day before school
opened Carl Kotzen and Roger Grover had a cooked lobster dinner at Rocky Neck for the
faculty and their families. We were small and enjoyed life. We had our share of
happiness and time of sorrow. Because we were so small, we enjoyed life and took care
of each other. Our students were accepted at all the universities, colleges including
Harvard and Yale. The students had successful lives and became roll models. Their
friendships endure to this day. The parents supported the teachers and they made sure the
children were respectful with no problems.
Life changed as we became Regional District 18 in 1993. The Lyme students started
coming in 7th grade instead of the 9th grade and after 20 years of having graduating
classes from 18 to 20, the enrollment increased. Principal Charles F. Sweetman, Jr. and
the students and faculty carried all their books over to the new high school in the fall of
1993. The first shoreline soccer championship, the Booster Club, Laurie Gardner, Tomi
Bowers and Gloria Maddocks. We were the only members. We sent letters to all the
business in Lyme and Old Lyme and the parents baked cookies and cakes, while the
soccer team ran all around the shopping center getting people to buy. Steak dinner at the
Ferry Tavern and jackets is how honored our shoreline champions. Joe Vivaris made it
possible and proud parents and champions had the best time of their young lives.
Superintendent Frank Yellow played ?????????? which ended the boy’s soccer games on
his way to meetings and he had an open door policy for high school students. They
surprised him with a canoe when he left the school. Linda Marquese taught the school
and the townspeople how to enjoy our special gift.
The faculty volunteered to watch buses for the soccer games, cheerleaders made
magnificent signs, the spirit of the school was off the wall and everyone went to the game
to cheer the team. In May 1993, Linda Cantner and Joann Bocian made the first alcohol
free graduation possible. It became a tradition and I helped with the classes every year.
The destination was a surprise, kept very secret. I felt the school were my children so I
attended every band concert, choral concert, play, honor society installations, athletic
banquets, senior banquet, graduation and every soccer game, most basketball games and
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baseball games in my 40 years. I still had the pleasure of being one of the chaperones on
field trips to Boston. In June 1993 we could no longer have the local clergy participate in
the graduation ceremony because of a Supreme Court decision. Principal Brown
suspended 58 members of the graduating class of 1992 the class had 83. They were a
beautiful class who got along with their piers and adults, they were courteous and
respectful, but they couldn’t resist the tradition to celebrate the parade. The tradition had
gone on for 25 years. The unauthorized group action parade demonstration was
disrupting the school program and it will end with bottle caps. They also were not
present in their first class. The parade lasted for more than a half hour. The clean up was
paid for by the class. They did offer to do it. The parents felt the discipline was extreme
and everyone overreacted and it was blown totally out of proportion. Needless to say that
ended the parade tradition. Banners, signs, assemblies, gifts, myday banquet at 100
acres, and the baseball field dedication was life at its best. I shall never forget the
beautiful youngsters; they filled my life with joy and celebration and some tears.
Children are God’s most gracious gift. I love them all. Thank you for a life time of
special and treasured memories.
And I just have to tell you about our championships. All Champion teams were honored
by the Booster Club with a banquet dinner and jacket. The booster club became a large
organization that all the parents and friends of the athletes joined. Soccer coach James
Gardner won the shoreline in 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1984. Won
state 1966, 1969, 1974, 1976. Coach Gardner was Connecticut Soccer Coach of the year
in 1969. He was the National Soccer Coach in 1984 and 1985 and we dedicated the field
to him on August 24, 1986. Other championships we had was the boys basketball coach
in town won the Shoreline in 1965, 1966. He’s the old basketball coach Tim Gavin won
the Shoreline in 1996, 1997. And baseball coach won the Shoreline in 1984. And I just
happened to think once Coach Gardner’s wife, Laurie, Tomi Bowers and I, we were on
probation because we had too much to say about the ref’s decision during a soccer game
so we had to be quiet and if we said any more, we wouldn’t be able to go to anymore
games. And we used to put on dances and things and if the kids neglected to show up,
which happened in later years, never happened in the first 20 years, but in later years they
managed to go around and earn the money we would have earned which was very
common. And I found that the children in the beginning for the first 20 years, they could
see when there was a need and they’d go and do it. Later on the children were good too,
but you had to tell them to go and do it.
What do you owe that to? Generational difference?
I think the world started changing so much, so many different things. In the beginning
kids could entertain themselves, maybe they’d sneak into school to play a basketball
game, clean up and leave. Oh, a once they did refuse to leave, but these are miner
pranks. And once, what did they do, oh, they got pin up pictures and they put them in the
sky loft which nobody knew were up there and they also put them in Mr. Hage’s map so
when he pulled down his map they were there. But it was all innocent fun. They never
did anything to destroy anything, ever. And they were always kind and they seemed to
know when there was a need and they were there to help. In later years they would still
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do it, but you had to tell them, ask them to do that. They would happily do it, but they
couldn’t see it, they had to be told. Maybe by then they started to direct their lives a
little bit too much, they didn’t have the time to make up their own games and play and
have fun. I don’t know, it was just a different world.
I’m very curious about this parade business, I’ve never heard anything, can you
explain?
It always was right before graduation, usually in late May. They would drive along the
outside of the hall, just before school started, around the school. Then they would come
into the building with bottle caps, they had a passion for bottle caps. It was to put ?????
They would staple them on a very small scale, cleaned it all up, it didn’t go into the day,
they were a little late, but they were right there. But the year they were in so much
trouble it was because ???????????????
And in the beginning when they were doing it they all had very small classes.
So this was after the district system took hold. So they had larger classes.
Yes, they did the same thing before but they were small classes. It didn’t amount to that
much, but when you think of 83 kids, you get quite a few bottle caps compared to 18.
And they had different principals; different principal’s running the school so that was the
end of that.
That’s fascinating, I had never heard that. That sounds like kind of a nice tradition.
Well it was a great tradition, until they, I didn’t think they were that bad, but it was a
judgment call. And I was kind of cautious for the kids, anyhow, they never really did
anything bad, but I understand that last year a few of them cut down some trees that were
planted in memory. Our kids would not do that, kids in the beginning didn’t do those
things. Just like we were going to get the jackets, the parents and the kids were all down
there and later on they didn’t. They didn’t need that. We got the donations, back then I
had to, we had so many championships so we targeted more money, but they didn’t even
feel the pride. The other kids wanted to do it. What should we do, what time do you
want us there. And they’d run around that parking lot, well everybody came to buy
because the kids wouldn’t leave them alone until they did. It was really nice, they were
great kids. In fact, a lot of them I still communicate with. I still go out with members of
the faculty. Great faculty we had. But you know as a school gets larger, it isn’t the same.
When you’re a tiny school then you can do a lot of things that you can’t when you get
big. I mean you know each kid, you know what’s going on in each family, and parents
would call and tell you the dog is dying, and you’d go down and tell them anything, but
not if it died. I won’t tell them that. But you know all that’s past. You can do that when
you’re small because everybody knew all the dogs, the horse, you know everybody knew
it. Now, you know, we weren’t a family anymore. We were a school.
Which is a shame because it is still small.
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It’s still quite small but it has to be really small to get that kind of relationship.
And also where people are from, it’s that much more distant.
And all these kids, don’t forget, they started school together. First grade and went right
on through, so they became very fast friends and they’re still friends.
Now did you grow up in Old Lyme?
No I lived. . . my grandfather lived on Beaver Brook Road. He came every summer and
we lived in New York. But as soon as I graduated, I came here and that wasn’t too long
after that, when my son was six, I wanted to go to work and I heard about the job and
went down and interviewed and got the job. Because they hadn’t had a secretary for the
high school, we were all in the Center School Office. They didn’t have high school. It
was just grade one through 12, but they were moving over next door which are the
middle school and then the high school.
So you moved to Old Lyme from New York?
Yes, my mother was a Sankow
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