Where Are They Now? Jim Waugh, English Faculty, Head Basketball and Baseball Coach, 1950–61 and 1979–2003
What keeps you busy now?
Since I somehow have managed to outlive my rescued greyhounds, I now keep busy taking naps and listening to the blues, two activities that are extremely compatible. I named three of my dogs after blues performers! (Blind Lemon) Jefferson, Otis (Spann), and Koko (Taylor). There is a lot to be said for dozing off while listening to George Lewis' silky-smooth clarinet as it meanders up and down Burgundy Street in New Orleans.
What highlights would you like to share from your non-Groton years?
Please share a favorite story from your time at Groton.
Arriving fresh out of Williams in 1950 with no real teaching experience, I was assigned Sixth Form B, Fifth Form A, Fourth Form B, and Second Form C English sections. I managed to hold my own with the Upper School students, but I was no match for the students in Second Form C, an affable, friendly, and in no way malicious group who simply wanted to turn the classroom into a playground. They were hugely successful, and in the games it was tacitly understood that my role was "it."
Twenty years later, while teaching at Lawrenceville, I dreamt I was back in my Second Form C class teaching T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land. I woke up in a sweat, grabbed the bus to New York, took out seaman's papers, and signed up for a one-year hitch as a deck hand on a Great Lakes ore boat, The Sparrows Point. Our basic run was Lackawanna to Duluth, with various loading docks and refineries in between.
Alonzo Hagen, a character in Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, sums up his fishing experience as "an interesting experiment in total loss." I tend to think of English Second Form C in the same way. Well, perhaps not "total"—many of the members of this class got to experience the grandeur that is Harvard and the glory that is Yale, while I got to experience the grandeur that is Green Bay and the glory that is Gary.
Any lessons learned while teaching/coaching at Groton?
1. A main feature of teaching at Groton is the gift of academic freedom in the classroom; I can only hope I did not abuse this privilege on too many occasions. In this regard, I would like to thank Messrs. Melville, Faulkner, and Pynchon as well as Donne, Whitman, Ginsberg, and Ms. Dickinson and Ms. Plath, for their roles in any success I may have had. I feel that ideally one should present the students with challenging material, give them a few hints, and then get out of their way.
2. When Jake Congleton arrived at school, I enlisted him to assist me with the basketball program. He signed up, we improved, and after I left, he took over the program and went undefeated.
At Lawrenceville, I had four state championship teams. But then in my last three years, I enlisted Armond Hill, an alumnus, a first-round draft pick out of Princeton and an eight-year point guard in the NBA. Our very good teams got even better. After I left, Armond took over the program and later went on to be the head coach at Columbia and an assistant with the champion Celtics. Jake has since retired; Armond is with the LA Clippers.
Moral: Get good assistants.
Back
Since I somehow have managed to outlive my rescued greyhounds, I now keep busy taking naps and listening to the blues, two activities that are extremely compatible. I named three of my dogs after blues performers! (Blind Lemon) Jefferson, Otis (Spann), and Koko (Taylor). There is a lot to be said for dozing off while listening to George Lewis' silky-smooth clarinet as it meanders up and down Burgundy Street in New Orleans.
What highlights would you like to share from your non-Groton years?
- I published a handful of decent poems in reputable literary magazines.
- I wrote a textbook for Ginn & Co., which was rumored to having been burned in West Virginia. I can only hope that the rumor is true.
- I had the honor of being given a distinguished teaching award by Princeton University. (Take that Second Form C English!)
- I was honored to have Lawrenceville School name the baseball field after me.
- 1950: Fifth Form A English: During a spirited discussion of Faulkner's Light in August, a student who had been silent previously suddenly stood up in his chair in the back of the room and declared in no uncertain terms, "I demand to be heard!" SHAZAM!
- 2001: Late at night I was reading a batch of exemplary fictions turned in by my postmodernism class; when I got to the last one on the bottom of the pile, I was almost immediately jolted awake! The setting, the thematic concerns, the tone, the prose style, the emulated bogus scholarship were all so beautifully controlled it was as if Borges himself had written the piece. EUREKA!
Please share a favorite story from your time at Groton.
Arriving fresh out of Williams in 1950 with no real teaching experience, I was assigned Sixth Form B, Fifth Form A, Fourth Form B, and Second Form C English sections. I managed to hold my own with the Upper School students, but I was no match for the students in Second Form C, an affable, friendly, and in no way malicious group who simply wanted to turn the classroom into a playground. They were hugely successful, and in the games it was tacitly understood that my role was "it."
Twenty years later, while teaching at Lawrenceville, I dreamt I was back in my Second Form C class teaching T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land. I woke up in a sweat, grabbed the bus to New York, took out seaman's papers, and signed up for a one-year hitch as a deck hand on a Great Lakes ore boat, The Sparrows Point. Our basic run was Lackawanna to Duluth, with various loading docks and refineries in between.
Alonzo Hagen, a character in Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, sums up his fishing experience as "an interesting experiment in total loss." I tend to think of English Second Form C in the same way. Well, perhaps not "total"—many of the members of this class got to experience the grandeur that is Harvard and the glory that is Yale, while I got to experience the grandeur that is Green Bay and the glory that is Gary.
Any lessons learned while teaching/coaching at Groton?
1. A main feature of teaching at Groton is the gift of academic freedom in the classroom; I can only hope I did not abuse this privilege on too many occasions. In this regard, I would like to thank Messrs. Melville, Faulkner, and Pynchon as well as Donne, Whitman, Ginsberg, and Ms. Dickinson and Ms. Plath, for their roles in any success I may have had. I feel that ideally one should present the students with challenging material, give them a few hints, and then get out of their way.
2. When Jake Congleton arrived at school, I enlisted him to assist me with the basketball program. He signed up, we improved, and after I left, he took over the program and went undefeated.
At Lawrenceville, I had four state championship teams. But then in my last three years, I enlisted Armond Hill, an alumnus, a first-round draft pick out of Princeton and an eight-year point guard in the NBA. Our very good teams got even better. After I left, Armond took over the program and later went on to be the head coach at Columbia and an assistant with the champion Celtics. Jake has since retired; Armond is with the LA Clippers.
Moral: Get good assistants.
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