Charlie Slick: Three men in one
This is the story of three men whose lives were different, yet identical. The first man was a high school mathematics teacher. Students feared taking his class because of his reputation as a disciplinarian who demanded all-out effort from his students. Later in life, though, these same students agreed that they had learned a great deal from him.
The second man spent many peaceful hours in the solitude of his backyard garden, carefully tending to his vegetable plants. A devoted husband and father, he was a familiar figure each Sunday morning, sitting quietly in his family’s pew at Brownsville’s First Presbyterian Church.
The third fellow was an occasionally volatile, hard-driving coach noted for his quick temper and a refusal to tolerate losing. Any momentary letdown by a player could bring the coach’s wrathful stare, a long, hard, silent look that made the player yearn to disappear into the grass beneath his feet. That look was often followed by three words that made the player cringe: “Take off, son!” That phrase meant that the young man had been sentenced to circle the playing field, running lap after lap after lap.
Three men – a conscientious math teacher, a neighborly family man, a tough coach – who were very different from each other, yet who were the same. In the business math class at Brownsville High School during the 1940s and 1950s, students respectfully addressed the teacher as “Mr. Slick.” On the grass at Brownie Stadium and on the baseball field behind the stadium, the players called their demanding taskmaster “Coach Slick.” On the side streets of Brownsville’s North Side, appreciative residents who received delicious vegetables from their neighbor’s overflowing garden just called him “Charlie.”
Charlie Slick deserves to be written about. Any person who is so well remembered by the many men and women whose lives he influenced, who still inspires enthusiastic stories 42 years after he gave up high school teaching and coaching, must have been very special.
This man’s name was synonymous with Brownsville High School for a quarter of a century, but he was not from Brownsville. He wasn’t born within a hundred miles of the town, and his final resting place is just as far away. Yet if you mention Charlie Slick’s name, thoughts fly back through the years to the halls of the old Brownsville High School on High Street. Mental images of Charlie Slick and that school cannot be separated.
How did this man from Osterburg, a rural village 10 miles north of Bedford, become one of Brownsville’s most unforgettable personalities?
“He was born on a farm on Dec. 7, 1917,” Charlie’s daughter Lee told me recently. She and her mother, Ruth, were showing me family photos in their Church Street home as they told me about a man whom they knew better than anyone.
“Charlie’s dad was in the meat business,” Lee said, “slaughtering and butchering, taking meat around the community on his meat truck, and going to market in Altoona on Wednesdays and Saturdays.”
Charlie was only 16 when he graduated from Bedford High School.
He spent a year helping his dad, then enrolled at Indiana State Teachers College, majoring in business education with a minor in physical education.
Noting that Charlie had played sports at Bedford High School, I asked, “Was Charlie a big man?”
Lee and Ruth both shook their heads. “He was about five seven, 155 pounds when he played high school sports,” Lee said, “but he didn’t let that stand in his way. He played several sports in college.”
“How did this central Pennsylvania native wind up at Brownsville High School?”
“Dad graduated from Indiana in 1939,” Lee said, “and came to Brownsville for an interview. He was hired to teach business arithmetic, accounting and, early on, bookkeeping at the high school. In his teaching career, Dad never taught in the academic curriculum, always in the commercial department.”
“And what about his coaching career?”
“When he came to Brownsville, the team had only a few coaches, so he helped out as an unpaid assistant. Then in 1942, he was hired as assistant football coach and assistant baseball coach under Coach Earl Bruce.”
“Were your parents married yet when Charlie got the teaching job?”
“Dad and Mom got married in Indiana on Dec. 20, 1939.”
“That was during your dad’s first year of teaching?”
“That’s right. Dad was still a bachelor when he started teaching. He rented a room from Harry Walker, who was high school principal at one time. Each weekend and on holidays, dad would go back to Osterburg. Mom lived in Bedford, 10 miles away from Dad’s parents’ home. Even after they were married at Christmas time, mom stayed in Bedford with her parents, and dad returned to Brownsville.
“I was born in June 1941,” Lee said, “and mom and I moved to Brownsville later that summer. My parents rented the Pearl Street house where Norma Ryan lives now, and we lived there until June 1945. Then my dad was called into the service, even though the war was over.
“While Dad was away, mom and I returned to Bedford to live with her parents. Dad was honorably discharged after six months and resumed teaching in January 1946. But housing was at a premium in Brownsville after the war, and he could not find a house to buy in Brownsville.
“My mother and I remained in Bedford while dad searched for a house, and he rented a room in the Monongahela Hotel. On Fridays after school, he would catch the Greyhound bus at the hotel and ride to Cumberland, where my grandfather would pick him up. On Sunday afternoon, my grandfather would take him back to Cumberland to catch the bus to Brownsville.”
“So your Dad lived at the Monongahela Hotel until he bought the Shaffner Avenue house in the spring of 1947?”
“Only for a while,” Lee laughed. “At that time, Andy Sepsi Sr.’s family lived on Howard Street. Andy and dad had been assistant coaches under Earl Bruce, and after Earl left, Andy was head football coach.
“One day, Mrs. Sepsi telephoned my dad’s room at the Monongahela Hotel. It seems that Andy was fixing up his attic to make bedrooms for his boys, Andy Jr. and Alan. Mrs. Sepsi, a small woman, was at her wit’s end. She told my dad over the phone, ‘Hey, Charlie, I’ll tell you what! If you will come up here and be Andy’s ‘go-fer,’ because I can’t do all this work to help him and he’s always hollering at me, I will give you room and board! You can sleep up in the attic with the boys.’ So dad lived at Sepsi’s until March 1947, when he bought a house on the corner of Shaffner Avenue and Spring Street.”
“As a young teacher and coach who was not much older than his students and players,” I said, “I imagine Charlie needed to be strict in his classroom and on the practice field. From what I am told, he was a disciplinarian from the start.”
Lee chuckled. “How many people tell me, ‘Oh, we need a few Charlie Slicks in the schools today!’ But in his later years, even dad admitted that if a teacher were to do in a modern classroom some of the things that he did back then, that teacher would probably wind up in court. As small as dad was, people will tell you, he had a ‘look.’ All he had to do was give you that look, and you straightened up.”
“I grew up with that look,” Lee continued, “but I wasn’t fearful.
“Everybody always marveled at how well I got along with my dad, because they assumed that since he was so strict in school, he was like that at home. He could play and have fun with me. But don’t kid yourself, I knew that look, too.”
“Did your dad teach at Brownsville High School for his entire career?”
“No. dad taught there from 1939 until 1960, then he became high school principal until 1964. In 1964, he joined the faculty at California State College, where he taught physical education and was assistant football coach. He retired from coaching there in 1975, and he retired from teaching at the college in 1978.”
“The old Brownsville High School on High Street was torn down quite a while ago. Where did your dad work in that building?”
“The school was built in a square,” Lee remembered. “When you entered the building, you were in a big hall. To get to my dad’s principal’s office, you turned left, went to the end of that hall, turned right, passed the secretary’s office and continued down the hall to the principal’s office.
“When my dad was a teacher, he had the same home room for many years, room 113 on the bottom floor. My dad once told me that during the war, there were so many kids at the high school that they did split shifts. One group of students started early, then the others came later in the day. They also had a fire up there in the early ’40s, and Dad’s classes met in the South Brownsville Methodist Church while they cleaned up. Perhaps some of the readers may remember more about that.”
What was it like to have Mr. Slick as your teacher? Many former students responded to my invitation to share their memories of Mr. Slick’s classes. Among their comments are such phrases as “the least he expected was 100 percent,” “aggressive in the pursuit of excellence,” “highly respected by his students,” and “I was a wreck before attending his class.”
Next week, you are invited to join us in Room 113, as Mr. Slick teaches his crowded class the basic principles of business math. And whatever you do, don’t be late.
Glenn Tunney may be contacted at 724-785-3201, glenatun@hhs.net or 6068 National Pike East, Grindstone, Pa., 15442. Comments about these weekly articles may be sent to Mark O’Keefe (Managing Editor – Day), 8-18 E. Church St., Uniontown, Pa. or e-mailed to mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com.
All past articles are on the Web at http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~glenntunneycolumn/.