Foreword

I only knew Mr. Michael Eckert for nine months. The nine months that coincided with my freshman year of high school that began in 1972 at St. Rita on Chicago's Southwest Side. He was my homeroom teacher – section 1F, Acient History – and then my Cross Country and Track Coach.

We had sophomoric nicknames like "Smokey" and "Mole" for a few teachers, but we called Mr. Eckert "Big Mike" – a nickname we always used respectfully. Okay, almost always.

He was my teacher and coach for just nine months, but in that short time he eclipsed every other coach I ever had, and he had a positive impact on me as a runner and as a man for decades. When my sophomore year started in the fall of '73, Mr. Eckert was surprisingly and inexplicably gone. Nobody seemed to know why, but there were two stories making the rounds. One was that he slapped a student for barging into his classroom and mouthing off, and that student's mother – a bigwig in the PTA – had engineered his ousting. The other rumor was that he'd been caught misusing track team funds.

I never believed either story. I'd seen plenty of St. Rita teachers smack students with paddles and open hands (some from a painfully close vantage point), but had never heard of Big Mike striking a kid. And based upon how thriftily our track team was outfitted (our uniforms were t-shirts and gym shorts, and our high-jumpers and pole-vaulters landed on a giant net filled with sponges), I don't believe there's any way Big Mike would have ever done anything to diminish our meager resources.

After he left, the cross country and track guys talked about Big Mike all the time, did impersonations of him, and offered new hypotheses about his disappearance.

It took me 35 years to find out what Big Mike did after he left St. Rita, and I shake my head every time I think about it. You can find out once I post the Afterword.

In the meantime, get ready to meet the marvelous collection of knuckleheads who inhabit the coming stories. Although I didn't meet Big Mike until 1972, this story must begin eight years earlier, in 1964. At the beginning.

Jim Klenn
October 28, 2012