Prominent Citizens Recall Teachers’ Role

Special teachers are among the memories that almost everyone accumulates during their years in school. I recently asked some prominent area residents to share some of their own memories about teachers that had strong influences on their lives.

Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky singles out Fairfax High School English teacher George Schoenman for special praise, particularly for his talent in helping students master a basic but vital skill: writing.

“He basically taught writing as a craft--how to organize an essay, what a topic sentence was, what a paragraph was, and the pecking order of your thoughts,” Yaroslavsky said.

“Everything I know about writing, I know from that 10th-grade class of George Schoenman.”

Gloria Allred, a feminist attorney and KABC-TV news commentator, valued not only a specific teacher, but also the general philosophies of the Philadelphia High School for Girls.

The school was quite unusual for its time, Allred recalled, because it encouraged girls to aim for careers, not just marriage.

“There was one vice principal who said, ‘Now you girls may get married and your husbands may tell you to send them to law school or medical school. But you tell them no, you send me .’ ”

Allred also remembered the exceptional discipline and high standards enforced by her English teacher, Sophia Gosin, whom she recently visited.

“She was so tough and demanding and really didn’t have much of a sense of humor,” Allred said.

Even so, Gosin was “very supportive of me, even though she was this very strict taskmistress.”

Earl (Rusty) Powell, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, recalled S. Lane Faison Jr., an art history professor at Williams College in Massachusetts.

Powell was strongly influenced by Faison’s “ability to communicate his own excitement, enthusiasm and wonder at works of art.” In fact, Powell specifically credits Faison for his decision to pursue a career in art and art history.

Faison used some unusual tactics in his classes, Powell recalled.

“At the first class, I remember he showed a Rubens upside down so that you’d become focused on the compositional elements of the canvas, as opposed to the subject,” Powell said.

Adi Liberman, executive director of Heal the Bay, was “deeply, deeply inspired by my 11th-grade English teacher at Fairfax High, Mrs. Schwartz,” he said.

“She blew all of our young adolescent minds when she announced to us, in the middle of an English lecture, that dancing could be erotic.” From that moment on, Liberman, said, “everyone began to take notice that maybe English literature really was an interesting topic.”

Schwartz was also able to relate literature to real life, and that affected Liberman permanently. “It got me to think about that larger world that I was in, and that I could somehow play a role in it.”

Budd Friedman, founder of the Improvisation comedy night clubs, said his life became more focused after meeting marketing professor Henry Ostberg at New York University.

“He really gave me my first vote of confidence (and) my first A in college, and encouraged me . . . to look for the entrepreneurship aspect of work, rather than working for somebody else,” Friedman explained.

Ostberg was particularly helpful because he brought practical experience to the classroom.

“He was a businessman himself,” said Friedman, “and was able to transfer to the students the ideas that were not only philosophically correct in the textbook sense, but also worked in a real-life situation.”