Carolyn Wood - Class Notes: A Young Teachers Lessons from Classroom to Kennedy Compound

[Class Notes is] a journey into the heart of a famous family. Lively and colorfulthe narrative at times takes on the breathless, cheerful chaos of a touch football game at Hickory Hill

Edward Wolf , writer and policy advocate

Olympic champion, emerging teacher, governess to American royalty: Carolyn Wood crammed in more living before her mid-twenties than most folks manage in triple that span. Class Notes is a splendidly observed, tender-hearted story about coming into ones own in a mind-boggling environment. Its like being led backstage through a specific moment of history by a sharp-eyed and cool-headed tour guide.

Shawn Levy , author of Paul Newman: A Life and The Castle on Sunset.

In Class Notes, the Olympian, Carolyn Wood, blends literary and musical references, the dreams and sensibility of a young adult, and insights into a family the media made Americans believe we knew. In her deft prose, she offers the complicated nature of parenting, faith, politics, and most importantly, grief. Class Notes is an intimate, complicated, and kind portrayal of American royalty.

Kate Gray , author of For Every Girl and Carry the Sky.

Two weeks before his death, RFK met and saw something extraordinary in a young Carolyn Wood. You will too, in this detail-packed memoir of an exhilarating and taxing year with the Robert and Ethel Kennedy family. Sprinkled with wisdom gained over the ensuing 53 years, the universality of a young womans desire to live a meaningful life will inspire you, even as you are awed by the rarified details of life with the Kennedys.

Laura O. Foster, Portland Stair Walks.

When I picked up Carolyn Woods memoir, Class Notes: A Young Teachers Lessons from Classroom to Kennedy Compound, I couldnt put it down; it carried me through a young womans first year as an English teacher in Oregon to her time serving as a governess to Robert Kennedys children immediately after his assassination. Wood becomes a servant to this famous family and her memoir explores not only issues of class and privilege, but the way grief permeated the childrens lives in silent and sometimes devastating ways. Wood writes with insight and self-awareness about her own, and our nations, starry-eyed view of the Kennedys and her revelation of their humanity.

Perrin Kerns , creative writing instructor and filmmaker

I was one of those students who begged Ms. Wood to share her tales of the Kennedys with our class. She wouldnt. But twenty years later Im finally able to read the amazing and thoughtful story of her time in Hyannis Port. It was worth the wait.

Boaz Frankel , co-author of Lets be Weird Together.

As a longtime fan of the Kennedys, reading this detail-packed memoir feels like hiring a time-travelling spy to live these experiences and tell me about them so vividly that it feels like I was there. Im grateful this beautiful story exists.

Brooke Barker , author of Sad Animal Facts and co-author of Lets Be Weird Together.

Class Notes: A Young Teachers Lessons from Classroom to Kennedy Compound

White Pine Press, Portland, OR, 97225

2021 by Carolyn Wood

All rights reserved. Published by White Pine Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

W. H. Auden, "Funeral Blues," copyright 1940 and renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden; from COLLECTED POEMS by W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. All rights reserved.

Robert F. Kennedy, To Seek a Newer World (New York: Doubleday, 1967), p. 231.

William Faulkner, speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1950, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1949/faulkner/speech/. From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969. The Nobel Foundation 1950. Used with permission of the Nobel Foundation.

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 226. Published in the United Kingdom by Everymans Library (1993).

Line editing, proofreading, cover design, and interior book design provided by Indigo: Editing, Design, and More:

• Line editor: Ali Shaw
• Proofreaders: Kristen Hall-Geisler, Sarah Currin
• Cover designer: Olivia Hammerman
• Interior book designer: Vinnie Kinsella

www.indigoediting.com

ISBN: 978-0-9977828-2-0

eISBN: 978-0-9977828-3-7

LCCN: 2021914521

To all my teachers and students, in gratitude for a lifetime of lessons

Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Tell us about the Olympics, Miss Wood. What was it like in Rome? Students peppered me with questions in those early years of teaching. How did it feel to win gold? Or someone might say, Tell us one story about the Kennedys, Miss Wood. Did you really get to meet Jackie?

As a first-year teacher, I already knew the bird-track tricks of students, remembered how all you had to do to get some teachers off and running would be to say, Tell us about the war, Mr. X, or What was it like in Mallorca, Miss Y? or What were the Russians? Germans? Japanese? Koreans? Spaniards really like, Mrs. Z? For the first seven years teaching at my alma mater, I fended off the questions with Tell me about the reading you did last night. Even toward the end of my career, especially during Olympic years or when one or another of the Kennedys appeared in the news, someone would ask again, because they always knew my backstory. A teachers history and reputation are passed along among students and siblings; after thirty-five years in the classroom, children of former students had begun to show up in my classes.

Still aware of the get-the-teacher-off-track trick, I had a different response. Ill write it all in my memoirs when I retire. If any of you get published first, Ill follow you as fast as I can. Well buy each others books, I told them.

Years after I retired from teaching, while emptying the attic for new insulation, I pulled down the swimming scrapbooks my mother had so carefully kept throughout my racing days, and I set to work telling that story. It became the memoir Tough Girl: Lessons in Courage and Heart from Olympic Gold to the Camino de Santiago, an account of training and competing in the 1960 Rome Olympics and reflections while walking the Camino fifty years later.

I found another container up there in the attic, a long red-and-white cardboard box that had once held Christmas wrapping. In it my mother had stored all the letters Id written home from the year I spent as governess for the Robert Kennedy family. Shed typed them out in duplicate so she could share them with the neighbors and friends. The Beaverton High newspaper, yellow and brittle, carried a letter Id sent to the student body describing my duties and encouraging them to someday take a wild step into the unknown, as I did the day I began campaigning for Robert Kennedy. You never know where that first step will lead you. Im sure that you will find your own adventure. Believe me, its worth the effort.