As a side note, it was in Mr. Kennedy's class that I first heard that President Reagan had been shot.
Interestingly, Mr. Kennedy was voted by students to be the "Easiest Teacher"; he is listed as such on one page of my yearbook. Of course, on the facing page, he is also listed as the "Hardest Teacher". How does that happen, you may wonder. I wondered the same thing.
The answer did not come to me until I became a teacher. You see, Mr. Kennedy taught - unlike most of the coaches who taught academic classes - difficult material, and his expectations were high, but at the same time, he had a way of making things easy for us. Not only that, but every day, once the class found our seats, Mr. Kennedy would enter the room, slam the door loudly, and proclaim in a booming voice, "It's great to be alive!" I am quite certain he remains the favorite teacher for many of my classmates.