Memorable Mentor

What,
would you say, is the quality that makes students remember one teacher
and not another? Severity? Encouragement? Guidance? Ability to inspire?
Whatever it is, Frances M. Hov, Belmont High School journalism teacher has it.

The
word went out that she will retire in June after 47 years of teaching,
and her former students and friends have rallied and will honor her at
a dinner May 23 at City College. There's also a Holiday-for-Hov movement afoot to send her to her parents' home town in Norway.

MISS HOV'S FIRST teaching assignment was in a one-room schoolhouse near Hatton,
N.D., in 1912, when she was 18. She also did the janitor work, which
included stoking a pot-bellied stove with coal. She received $45 a
month.

She came to Los Angeles in 1914 and graduated from State Normal in 1916. She taught at Cucamonga, Van Nuys, Hoover Street, West Jefferson, Cienega and Micheltorena Elementary Schools and in 1926 began teaching journalism at Metropolitan High.

From
1931 to 1944 she taught journalism at Poly High, moved to L.A. High for
a term and then went to Belmont, where she has been 15 years.

Her students have included humorist Mort Sahl, TV commentator Cleve Hermann, publicist John Astengo and, among others, downtown newsmen Dave Gershon and Eddie Louie.

Her secret is really not a secret. In a busy life, she has always found time to help others.

::

ONLY IN L.A.
— A man convicted of a felony in Superior Court came over to the
deputy D.A., who has a hearing deficiency, after the verdict and
snarled, "What do you do at night — take off your hearing aid so you
can't hear you conscience?"

::

SNEAKY STUFF

Freedom of the Press day has lust been celebrated in Moscow — News item.

They do have freedom of the press.
You needn't look askance.
Else how would Russian diplomats
Gets creases in their pants?

–RICHARD ARMOUR

::

ONE MOONLIGHT night North Young's good friend Tess Pilate, Malibu aviatrix, was flying her helicopter with her husband Coe and his psychiatrist, Dr. Ed Schrinker, as passengers.

Skimming low over Thousand Oaks, the plane's engine suddenly sputtered and died and Tess had no alternative but to crashland in the lion enclosure of the jungle compound.

The
three were in no real danger, for the plane's cabin was undamaged by
the impact, but the roaring of the disturbed beasts was terrific and Coe Pilate, who'd been badly frightened during his formative years by Bert Lahr in "The Wizard of Oz," slumped over in a faint.

Tess, noting his complexion had became strangely mottled, cried, "Oh, Dr. Schrinker! What are those terrible black blotches?"

"Nothing to worry about," the psychiatrist consoled. "They're just part of the roar shock, Tess."

::

EVERY NOW and then this corner reactivates the file titled Most Provocative Opening Sentences of Short Stories.

This
time a reader, Robert Nathan, thinks he has the champion of them all.
The original author is unknown but Fredric Brown, the science fiction
writer, used it in a short story titled "Knock."

The opening sentence: "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door."

::

MISCELLANY
— Grace Morris is in revolt against the policy of some supermarkets
which ask customers not only to unload their own carts but to separate
the taxable from the non-taxable items. However, the market people say
this is done to save customers from paying twice on the same item,
thereby saving them a penny here and there … Two working men were
moaning about inflation and taxes and one said, "Here's how things are
with me — I couldn't make a down payment on a hamburger!" … On a
note of despair: So now it's foreverness.