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Teachers putting on a play at Madison
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As impressionable elementary school kids, we were influenced by the gifted teachers and dedicated staff members at Madison. Of course, it is difficult to measure that influence, but in this section of the web site, we're going to try.
We want to profile teachers and staff members who, just as we the students evolved, followed their unique life paths. Some stayed at Madison, but many went on to other places and professions.
But more than a mere update, this section attempts to reveal something about the depth and qualities of the people who influenced us. And in a way, this may give us some insight into the views/beliefs we carried throughout our lives.
We hope you'll find these profiles fascinating.
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Mr. Fred Spencer Jr.
Many of us might remember Mr. Spencer, the soft-spoken, conscientious man who cleaned the school--the janitor. Perhaps a story will reveal why we chose to profile him.
In 1953, the first year the school opened, some of us in the 5th grade found ourselves in Mrs. Laurent's class. Mrs. Laurent was a commanding woman, very much in charge, who, while strict, had a way of making students feel noticed. She looked for ways to teach us our school lessons, but she also knew that we needed to learn life's lessons.
Toward the end of our first year, one day Mrs. Laurent told us we were going to have a guest in class the next day. We were all excited to hear that, realizing, of course, that we would have a break from our studies.
When we asked who was coming, thinking, maybe it was Micky Mantle or Superman, we were told it was Mr. Spencer.
"The janitor?" we asked. "Yes".
"He's going to bring his scrapbook with him."
'
I guess we figured that we couldn't argue with the free time it would give us, and we'd be nice to old Mr. Spencer (who was probably around 50 years old).
So, the next day, in came Mr. Spencer with a rather large, impressive scrap book. He sat down with a smile and began to tell us his 'story'. "You know, children, I was a professional bicycle racer when I was younger, the 1920's and 1930's". We were all quite shocked to learn that someone could be a professional at something that we did every day for fun.
"I even won some races", he said. "Really? Where?"
He opened up his scrapbook and showed us the first photo of a handsome, well-built athlete standing in his racing outfit, getting a medal from the King of Sweden. He had won some World Championship.
"Wow!!!" was the reaction from the class. I mean, WOW!!!. From that moment on, he regaled us with stories of how bicycle racing was a popular sport 30 years before, how he had won many races. As he paged through his scrapbook, he told us story after story.
Then he said, "You know, I made a lot of money racing." [We really didn't know how much 'a lot' was, but evidently, professional racers made up to $50,000 a year, more than Babe Ruth. Neither did we know that races were attended by movie stars and personalities, much like the LA Lakers court-side season ticket holders].
After an hour or so, finally, one of us blurted out, "Well, if you made a lot of money, why are you a janitor?" You know, the typical tact of a 5th grader.
He very calmly explained that he had invested all his money in building bicycle race tracks around the country, thinking that the sport would grow in popularity and he'd get rich. Of course it didn't. Then the depression hit, and he lost all his money.
Even though the story sounds sad now, and we felt bad for him, Mr. Spencer was very matter of fact. He didn't have any regrets, these things happen in life. He really enjoyed working in Madison School, and so on.
We thanked him for coming, still not really comprehending that old Mr. Spencer was once a cool, strong, professional athlete, world champion. From that day on, whenever we saw him in the halls, he was no longer 'just' Mr. Spencer the nice old janitor. He was someone special.
A few years ago, a couple of us from that class were chatting and we realized that we remembered that day vividly, and that we had learned something from that one-hour visit that we unknowingly carried throughout our lives.
What was this lesson? We had been taught, without being 'told' or without having to take a test, that every person has a story and unless we know that story, we cannot judge another human being.
It wasn't a lesson that we knew we had learned; in fact, we didn't even know we had learned it. It wasn't until 50 years later that we discovered the lesson. Perhaps there were other lessons as well:
-- don't put all your eggs in one basket
-- or even when we seem to have lost everything, we can continue to live and work with dignity
And perhaps it was this dignity that Mr. Spencer projected that impressed us the most.
In this profile we try to give you an idea of the scope of his accomplishments. We've included some of his racing records, some articles that show the popularity of the sport, and some photos.
We hope you'll enjoy reading this and that you'll look forward to future profiles of the interesting and talented people who shaped our lives.
Fred Spencer: Born 1903; Died 1992
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Photos
When you click on the word Photos, above, three images of Freddie Spencer will appear.
When it opens, click on the individual photos to enlarge them.
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Here's an article that gives us an idea of just how popular a sport bicycle racing was in the 1920's and 30's.
A comment (by Bill McGann) on the book, “The Six-Day Bicycle Races: America’s Jazz Age Sport” by Peter Nye
There was a time, not really long ago, when American bicycle racers were the most highly paid athletes in the country. In the 1980's we dropped our jaws when Greg Lemond signed a contract that paid him a million dollars over 3 years. Yet even today, the total price of a Pro Tour team won't get you a major-league pitcher with a good fastball.
Back in the early 1920's things were very different. Babe Ruth was paid the then princely sum of $20,000 a year but six-day bicycle racer Frank Kramer made more. Movie stars would crowd into smokey indoor tracks and offer primes as high a $1,000 to goad racers into driving themselves ever harder as sold-out bleachers screamed with excitement. The great boxer Jack Dempsey's promoter was stunned to learn that the attendance of six-day races averaged 100,000 paying customers. At least one successful six-day racer paid cash for a house.
Now largely forgotten, there was a circuit of velodromes that went across America, stretching from Los Angeles and Salt Lake City to Newark and New York City. The racers who competed on the wooden boards of the era were an elite, highly paid group of athletes who could take on the best in the world and beat them. Among the Europeans who traveled to the U.S. to race on our tracks were Tour de France winners Petit-Breton and Octave Lapize and Italian greats Giuseppe Olmo, Alfredo Binda and Costante Girardengo. As with road racing today, Australians seemed to be natural six-day racers and the list of Aussies who did well is long, including one of the greatest of all, Alf Goullet.
A modern Tour de France rider covers about 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) over 3 weeks. In 1914 the six-day team of Alf Goullet and Alfred Grenda raced the Madison Square Garden Six-Day and set a record that still stands, 2,759.2 miles in 142 hours. These men were magnificent sportsmen and their accomplishments were prodigious.
Great writers, including Ernest Hemingway, James Thurber and Damon Runyon, were drawn to the 1920s track scene and wrote about it. In 1925 President Calvin Coolidge invited the team of Jimmy Walthour, Jr and Freddie Spencer to the White House because he wanted to meet the two cyclists whom he said competed with him for newspaper headlines.
I ask the reader to stop for a minute. Have you ever heard of these men, the Armstrongs and Lemonds of our grandfather's time? Like so much of early and mid-twentieth century Americana, this spectacular part of our past is slowly getting wiped out of our collective memory. It shouldn't be so.
Nye's visually stunning book, The Six Day Races: America's Jazz-Age Sport is an irresistible scrapbook of those exciting years when bicycle racing had a firm grip on the American imagination. Pictures of dapper men in bowler hats and starched collars watching speeding racers steam around banked velodromes instantly conjure up another time. There's Petit-Breton, winner of the Tour de France, who competed at Madison Square Garden in 1903 and 1904. Another turn of the century picture shows a young man proudly standing with a bike that rather resembles one of Graeme Obree's record machines. Is there anything new in the world? Eddie Cantor, May Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, George Burns, Gracie Allen and Jimmy Durante went to the races and Nye has pictures of them that capture the mixture of sport and glamour that the Sixes represented.
Perhaps the image that most powerfully conveys bicycle racing's place in the 1920s is one photograph from 1925 showing eight athletes, called the "Kings of Sport", who were invited to a banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York. Most of the names will be familiar: Babe Ruth, boxer Gene Tunney, swimmer and future movie star Johnny Weissmuller, hockey star Bill Cook, Wimbledon champion Bill Tilden and golfing great Bobby Jones. Sitting with the other sporting giants, as equals, are cyclists Freddie Spencer and Charlie Winter.
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1990 Hall of Fame Inductees
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Freddie Spencer
Freddie won the US Professional Track Sprint Championships in 1925, 1928 and 1929. He competed in 102 six-day races, winning six major international meets. He set six world records during his career: 1/10 mile, 1/2 mile, 10 mile, 15 mile, 20 mile and 25 mile. In 1925, he won the National Track Sprint Championships and two six-day races, a true tribute to his versatility and talent.
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Some New York Times Articles of Freddie Spencer's races.
FRED SPENCER WINS AT N.Y. VELODROME; Beats Martinetti in Straight Heats in Mile Match Race Before Crowd of 15,000. GEORGETTI FIRST ACROSS Captures Forty-Mile Motor-Pace Event--Jimmie Walthour Takes Five-Mile Open.
June 11, 1928, Monday
Section: Sports, Page 17, 701 words
SPENCER CLINCHES U.S. CYCLING TITLE; Freddie's Victory in Two-Mile Race Assures Him of Professional Crown. 16,000 CHEER THE WINNER See Him Ride Down Eaton and Beckman at Newark -- Hill Scores in Handicap Event.
Special to The New York Times.
September 14, 1925, Monday
Section: SPORTS, Page 24, 625 words
NEWARK, N.J., Sept. 13. -- Freddie Spencer, the sensational young rider of Plainfield, who is only twenty-three years old, clinched the professional cycling championship of America by winning the two-mile event at the Newark Velodrome this afternoon. He defeated Ray Eaton, national champion in 1912, and Tony Beckman, crack distance star.
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When Anthony Palisi read the profile of Fred Spencer, he responded with this short, but interesting email:
"That's a great story about Fred. It's more than a feature about someone associated with the early years of Madison School; it speaks to the philosophy of the school and the people who made it up....teachers and students. I am certain that Ruth Laurent checked with Roy Potts before inviting Fred into her classroom...so it speaks of the administration, too.
I recall as a young teacher visiting my distinguished uncle in Yonkers, NY, he an entrepreneur in New York City. Somehow, I mentioned Freddie Spencer. My uncle recognized the name immediately; he explained in his broken-English that he had attended a number of Fred's races in the Velodrome (probably cheering vainly for a rider with a name that sounded as though it belonged in Italy.) This Italian immigrant, MY UNCLE, knew of the janitor of MY school, but knew him, of course, as a world renowned bicycle racer.
Anthony"
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