john schuler
Interviewed by Kenyon Alexander
Early Life - Illegal Cars and World War II
John Schuler was born on New Years Day in 1932, and has lived in the same house in Wellesley ever since. He attended the Warren School (now the Recreation Center on Washington Street) for elementary school, and was a member of the second class to pass through that school. In that time, there were five elementary schools in town - Warren, Fiske, Hardy, Brown, and Perrin (only Fiske and Hardy remain). John remembers that at one point “[the Perrin school] was set on fire, and I think the intention was to burn it down.” Childhood in Wellesley in the 30‘s and 40‘s was full of opportunities for adventure: “A group of kids who lived in the area near Longfellow Pond found and rehabilitated an old Oakland sedan. And in the afternoons, if we could get gasoline, which we normally got from the fire department by borrowing it, we would drive the car in the woods. This would be illegal today, but then at night we would cover it with brush, pretending that the police didn’t know it was there, and we did that 2 or 3 times a week... And of course it was unlicensed, an unlicensed car, and we would seldom drive it out on the street - for the most part we drove it in the woods.” Yet these adventures changed with the United States’ entrance into World War II when John was 9 (in 1941). With the rationing during the war, it became difficult to maintain the car in the woods; “During the war driving the car was a somewhat difficult thing to do. We were having to beg to borrow tires. And all this stuff is rationed. Gasoline is rationed, tires are rationed. You’d find it very difficult to find parts.” The kids turned their attention to supporting the war effort, whether that be through collecting scrap metal or writing letters to troops overseas. “The Old Herald Traveler Corporation, which is now the Hearst News Corporation in Boston, sponsored scrap metal drives and scrap paper drives so as young kids we were on the lookout for abandoned automobile bodies and paper that we could collect; newspapers and whatnot, tinfoil linings from cigarette packages, because all cigarettes were in tinfoil-lined packages at that time. And with whatever money we saved from cutting lawns and shoveling snow, we were urged to buy saving stamps. For 10 cents and 25 cents you could buy stamps, put them into a book, and after you had enough stamps you could buy a war bond. We also wrote penpal-like letters in the V-mail program to older boys from Wellesley who were in the service. My pen pal was Norbert Benatti. So I wrote to him while he was in the war in the Pacific theater. And he would write me back and we sort of had an exchange. Bear in mind, his letters were censored, he didn’t give me day-to-day details. But he was keeping in touch with the war on Hiroshima and all the way to Okinawa.” One source of scrap metal was the site of the former Metropolitan Ice Company on Longfellow pond; “They had a 6-story ice house, and at the time when they tore that ice house down, they buried a great many trucks which had been used to deliver ice in Wellesley. So, during the war, we dug those trucks up as far as we could, loaded them onto carts - you know like the little red wagons that you pull - and we pulled ‘em up the street, into one of our front yards, and then big scrap companies would come by and take the stuff away.” The need for supplies during the war also put an end to another favorite tradition, the use of backyard fireworks to celebrate the Fourth of July. Explosives in the fireworks became vital to the war effort, and John remembers that after the war the firework displays never returned. World war led to changes in the day-to-day life of not only John and his friends but also in the lives of John’s parent’s. “My father was a curtain manufacturer - he manufactured curtains for residential halls. Well, the war was the end of that industry, so he was given the opportunity to be a contractor or a sub-contractor for the Celanese Corporation of America, making mosquito netting. Most people advised him not to do it because the Celanese Corporation would slow up his smaller firm at the end of the war. But anyway, he did that. So my father was employed, not as a soldier, but as a wartime manufacturer under government orders during the war. He made mosquito netting for the Pacific campaign, primarily. Thousands and thousands of yards.” John’s mother was part of the movement to get women involved in the workforce - she went and worked in a factory for the Hood Water Company making Arctic boots for use in the war in the mountains of Italy, and then later as a nurses aid at Newton-Wellesley Hospital. John made personal sacrifices during the war as well, as his father forced him to return a car he had bought before fighting broke out. The war would also impact John’s high school experience, in the form of a principal fresh out of the military.
Early Life - Illegal Cars and World War II
John Schuler was born on New Years Day in 1932, and has lived in the same house in Wellesley ever since. He attended the Warren School (now the Recreation Center on Washington Street) for elementary school, and was a member of the second class to pass through that school. In that time, there were five elementary schools in town - Warren, Fiske, Hardy, Brown, and Perrin (only Fiske and Hardy remain). John remembers that at one point “[the Perrin school] was set on fire, and I think the intention was to burn it down.” Childhood in Wellesley in the 30‘s and 40‘s was full of opportunities for adventure: “A group of kids who lived in the area near Longfellow Pond found and rehabilitated an old Oakland sedan. And in the afternoons, if we could get gasoline, which we normally got from the fire department by borrowing it, we would drive the car in the woods. This would be illegal today, but then at night we would cover it with brush, pretending that the police didn’t know it was there, and we did that 2 or 3 times a week... And of course it was unlicensed, an unlicensed car, and we would seldom drive it out on the street - for the most part we drove it in the woods.” Yet these adventures changed with the United States’ entrance into World War II when John was 9 (in 1941). With the rationing during the war, it became difficult to maintain the car in the woods; “During the war driving the car was a somewhat difficult thing to do. We were having to beg to borrow tires. And all this stuff is rationed. Gasoline is rationed, tires are rationed. You’d find it very difficult to find parts.” The kids turned their attention to supporting the war effort, whether that be through collecting scrap metal or writing letters to troops overseas. “The Old Herald Traveler Corporation, which is now the Hearst News Corporation in Boston, sponsored scrap metal drives and scrap paper drives so as young kids we were on the lookout for abandoned automobile bodies and paper that we could collect; newspapers and whatnot, tinfoil linings from cigarette packages, because all cigarettes were in tinfoil-lined packages at that time. And with whatever money we saved from cutting lawns and shoveling snow, we were urged to buy saving stamps. For 10 cents and 25 cents you could buy stamps, put them into a book, and after you had enough stamps you could buy a war bond. We also wrote penpal-like letters in the V-mail program to older boys from Wellesley who were in the service. My pen pal was Norbert Benatti. So I wrote to him while he was in the war in the Pacific theater. And he would write me back and we sort of had an exchange. Bear in mind, his letters were censored, he didn’t give me day-to-day details. But he was keeping in touch with the war on Hiroshima and all the way to Okinawa.” One source of scrap metal was the site of the former Metropolitan Ice Company on Longfellow pond; “They had a 6-story ice house, and at the time when they tore that ice house down, they buried a great many trucks which had been used to deliver ice in Wellesley. So, during the war, we dug those trucks up as far as we could, loaded them onto carts - you know like the little red wagons that you pull - and we pulled ‘em up the street, into one of our front yards, and then big scrap companies would come by and take the stuff away.” The need for supplies during the war also put an end to another favorite tradition, the use of backyard fireworks to celebrate the Fourth of July. Explosives in the fireworks became vital to the war effort, and John remembers that after the war the firework displays never returned. World war led to changes in the day-to-day life of not only John and his friends but also in the lives of John’s parent’s. “My father was a curtain manufacturer - he manufactured curtains for residential halls. Well, the war was the end of that industry, so he was given the opportunity to be a contractor or a sub-contractor for the Celanese Corporation of America, making mosquito netting. Most people advised him not to do it because the Celanese Corporation would slow up his smaller firm at the end of the war. But anyway, he did that. So my father was employed, not as a soldier, but as a wartime manufacturer under government orders during the war. He made mosquito netting for the Pacific campaign, primarily. Thousands and thousands of yards.” John’s mother was part of the movement to get women involved in the workforce - she went and worked in a factory for the Hood Water Company making Arctic boots for use in the war in the mountains of Italy, and then later as a nurses aid at Newton-Wellesley Hospital. John made personal sacrifices during the war as well, as his father forced him to return a car he had bought before fighting broke out. The war would also impact John’s high school experience, in the form of a principal fresh out of the military.
John Schuler and WHS volunteer interviewer Kenyon Alexander.
High School
During John’s time at Wellesley High School (he graduated in the late 1940’s), the principal was a “relatively young, very active and alert” man named Mr. Gage. Mr. Gage “was the former commander of a naval vessel, and he ran the school as if we were the crew and he was the person in charge of the vessel. So he had rules. There was to be no sneaker scuffing, no dirt on the walls, nothing left unattended on any corridor floor and people were to keep to the right and not talk when they were walking between classes.” At that time, the high school was a combination of a college preparatory school and a vocational school, meaning that courses in woodwork, machine work, and other vocations were much more prevalent then they are today. John remembers his teachers fondly, saying, “I had teachers in high school who were my real friends. Wilbury Crockett [for whom the WHS library is named] was my English teacher for all four years when I was in high school and Ernest Upham - for whom the Upham School is named - was my history teacher when I has in High School. I was great pals with Jasper Lolton, who was the math teacher and who I earned a lot from. And a lot of these teachers lived in Wellesley so you could know them as people outside of school. They were ideal as mentors. My Social Studies teacher was a lady named May Milliken, and she was a sassy individual who gave it as good as she took it. She was a terrific teacher - very inspiring. Joe Goodrich taught Latin; he had a house down in Scituate and he used to invite us down for parties and we’d go down and go sailing and all. The librarian was a lady named Helen Lawton, she tragically died in a smoking accident just a year or two after i graduated. She was the grammar instructor.” The dedication and skill of his teachers inspired John to become a teacher himself after graduating college (he attended MIT for a time, then Harvard College, then Harvard University, and finally returned to MIT), teaching at Dana Hall for 40 years. As he says, “I liked teachers, and therefore I thought I might like teaching. It’s a hell of a profession if you’re good at it. But if it doesn’t work for you...you know it can be torture. Kids will know right away that you’re not really liking the whole situation and they will pester you, torture you.” John’s own high school experience was filled with extracurricular activities; he worked at an MIT lab and was also was a member of the high school band and orchestra, as well as the marching band. The marching band would play at school football games; “fearful games to play at would be Natick and Walpole because the fans hated us. They hated everybody that played for Wellesley. All of the marching band was hated and all of the spectators were hated. It was a little different with Needham. We had a rivalry with Needham - large numbers of people went to Needham and large numbers of Needhamites came to Wellesley. I mean it was kind of a thing where there was a lot of yelling and rousing calls, but it was all in a fairly good hearted way. In my senior year we beat Needham in the fourth quarter in the last two minutes by four points.” Both athletes and fans enjoyed sports at the high school; “Everyone was really into the football. The big sports besides football were baseball - because of course we had a person who became an employee of the Braves when they moved to Milwaukee, so we had players in high school who went on to play major league ball. Then we had gymnastics, and in gymnastics we had all kinds of floor exercises and in addition to that we had gym shows in which everyone would be coated with a silver kind of material that would make them iridescent and then they would do acrobatic stunts in the dark. It was a big thing. Hockey and basketball were very secondary sports. Girls played field hockey and they played a form of basketball we would call position basketball, which was absolutely unlike the way women play basketball in the present time. This was before Title IX, so there was absolutely no recognition of any equity between girls and boys in sports and the girls sports to some extent were carried on sort of as if they were club sports. They played in a more informal way than the boys and without so many inter-town rivalries.”
Today
John remains extremely involved in town life - he ran for elective office as a town meeting member when he was 21, and has remained one for the ensuing 61 years. He is also a member of various boards and committees, remaining an integral part of local government in Wellesley. He lives in the same house he was born in 82 years ago, and still owns and drives the Model T and Model A cars that he drove in high school.
During John’s time at Wellesley High School (he graduated in the late 1940’s), the principal was a “relatively young, very active and alert” man named Mr. Gage. Mr. Gage “was the former commander of a naval vessel, and he ran the school as if we were the crew and he was the person in charge of the vessel. So he had rules. There was to be no sneaker scuffing, no dirt on the walls, nothing left unattended on any corridor floor and people were to keep to the right and not talk when they were walking between classes.” At that time, the high school was a combination of a college preparatory school and a vocational school, meaning that courses in woodwork, machine work, and other vocations were much more prevalent then they are today. John remembers his teachers fondly, saying, “I had teachers in high school who were my real friends. Wilbury Crockett [for whom the WHS library is named] was my English teacher for all four years when I was in high school and Ernest Upham - for whom the Upham School is named - was my history teacher when I has in High School. I was great pals with Jasper Lolton, who was the math teacher and who I earned a lot from. And a lot of these teachers lived in Wellesley so you could know them as people outside of school. They were ideal as mentors. My Social Studies teacher was a lady named May Milliken, and she was a sassy individual who gave it as good as she took it. She was a terrific teacher - very inspiring. Joe Goodrich taught Latin; he had a house down in Scituate and he used to invite us down for parties and we’d go down and go sailing and all. The librarian was a lady named Helen Lawton, she tragically died in a smoking accident just a year or two after i graduated. She was the grammar instructor.” The dedication and skill of his teachers inspired John to become a teacher himself after graduating college (he attended MIT for a time, then Harvard College, then Harvard University, and finally returned to MIT), teaching at Dana Hall for 40 years. As he says, “I liked teachers, and therefore I thought I might like teaching. It’s a hell of a profession if you’re good at it. But if it doesn’t work for you...you know it can be torture. Kids will know right away that you’re not really liking the whole situation and they will pester you, torture you.” John’s own high school experience was filled with extracurricular activities; he worked at an MIT lab and was also was a member of the high school band and orchestra, as well as the marching band. The marching band would play at school football games; “fearful games to play at would be Natick and Walpole because the fans hated us. They hated everybody that played for Wellesley. All of the marching band was hated and all of the spectators were hated. It was a little different with Needham. We had a rivalry with Needham - large numbers of people went to Needham and large numbers of Needhamites came to Wellesley. I mean it was kind of a thing where there was a lot of yelling and rousing calls, but it was all in a fairly good hearted way. In my senior year we beat Needham in the fourth quarter in the last two minutes by four points.” Both athletes and fans enjoyed sports at the high school; “Everyone was really into the football. The big sports besides football were baseball - because of course we had a person who became an employee of the Braves when they moved to Milwaukee, so we had players in high school who went on to play major league ball. Then we had gymnastics, and in gymnastics we had all kinds of floor exercises and in addition to that we had gym shows in which everyone would be coated with a silver kind of material that would make them iridescent and then they would do acrobatic stunts in the dark. It was a big thing. Hockey and basketball were very secondary sports. Girls played field hockey and they played a form of basketball we would call position basketball, which was absolutely unlike the way women play basketball in the present time. This was before Title IX, so there was absolutely no recognition of any equity between girls and boys in sports and the girls sports to some extent were carried on sort of as if they were club sports. They played in a more informal way than the boys and without so many inter-town rivalries.”
Today
John remains extremely involved in town life - he ran for elective office as a town meeting member when he was 21, and has remained one for the ensuing 61 years. He is also a member of various boards and committees, remaining an integral part of local government in Wellesley. He lives in the same house he was born in 82 years ago, and still owns and drives the Model T and Model A cars that he drove in high school.
