This Story was was submitted to the New York Times’ “Metropolitan Diary,” a section of

the great newspaper’s Metropolitan section published on Sundays. To date, it has not been accepted.

I remember Mrs. Marcus well, a handsome woman, but stern, humorless.     

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     Mr. Barbieri, the amiable principal of P.S. 177 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, stood before 6-1 and announced that our teacher, Mrs. Doyle, was absent and  we would be split up for the day. I soon found myself seated in the back of another class. My teacher was strict and somewhat intimidating, but didn’t come close to Mrs. Marcus. Her students sat erect, very erect.  They waited for instructions. Suddenly, she loudly called out, “Ink Monitor!” A boy jumped up and grabbed a huge bottle labeled, “Board of Education Ink”. He went from desk to nailed down desk. As he passed, the students opened lids and had their inkwells filled. (Even at the age of eleven, I knew something extraordinary was happening. Of course, I had noticed them, but the inkwell was of the distant past. There were ballpoint pens. It was 1956!) An assignment was succinctly given, the students began writing with something that looked like a quill. I suspect that Mrs. Marcus might have been the last teacher in New York City to fill up the inkwells.       

                                                     

     Years later, I learned that she was the widow of the legendary Mickey Marcus, an American colonel and the first Israeli general. In the film ,”Cast a Giant Shadow”, he was played by Kirk Douglas, Mrs. Marcus by Angie Dickinson. Life.