Chapter 19: My Time With John

I was only 19. It was summer break before my junior year at Ohio State University, and I had just started working at the National Middle School Association (NMSA) after getting a tip from a friend about a job opening. Bev Cook, Hal Gaddis, Bob Malinka, and I worked out of a little house off High Street in the Clintonville neighborhood of North Columbus. I trekked to the local post office daily to pick up the mail, swung past G. D. Ritzy’s for Coney dogs and shoestring fries, plunked out membership cards on an IBM Selectric, packed book orders, and got purple stained hands from fumbling with the NCR paper of the shipping log. It was a glorious start to what became the lifelong career I had never imagined.