Richard Flechtner

  
       The Wayback Machine is an Internet Archive. I remembered an old web site I created for our 35th Reunion. This was built the old fashioned way with html code. I do not pretend it was as good as the sites we can build using templates today, but I am glad I found the content. There was quite a bit about our teachers which I am going to reproduce.
     The RHS Althletic Director in my day and the Head Lifeguard at Graydon Pool. He took his commitments very seriously and we were all the better off and safer for his efforts.

Kurt Flechtner, class of 1978:

My Dad used to love telling this story. If he caught a kid with a pack of smokes, Mr. Barkocy used to crush the pack in his hands. One kid, trying to trick Mr. Barkocy, cut out a block of wood in the shop and put it inside a an empty cigarette pack. Well, word got back to Barkocy, so he waited to confiscate the pack until class was over, tossing the pack in his desk on the way out the door and telling the kid to come back after school. After school, the kid comes back in, but Mr. Barkocy had been down to the wood shop himself in the meantime. So he holds up the cigarette pack, tells the kid, "You know what I think of these things," and crushes it. Sawdust falls out on the floor.

Tim Daly:

I had him for gym class junior year. The class was gymnastics and he took the teaching of it very seriously. Just so happens there were a few varsity athletes in that class with me so we took it seriously too. Dave Andre, Frank O'Connor, maybe one or two others. We had to create our own gymnastics routine. It was great and I learned a lot about what it takes to be a gymnast.

I worked for him for 5-6 years at Graydon. He ran that place the way it needed to be run. We drilled and followed his rules and kept a very dangerous place as safe as possible. I rode in an ambulance with him with a body that had been pulled off the bottom of Graydon. That was I think only the second such incident he experienced in 30+ years? What a record. That turned out to be the thing that kind of ended it for him at Graydon. He retired that year and we had the party at my house. We took one of the small stands and put it in the back of a pick up to put up near the front door of my house. We had some of the old crew there at the party too. I never saw him laugh so much talking old stories with those guys.

For some, at that time, he was a little bit old school but he was fair and took the responsibility given to him as father, husband, teacher, AD and pool manager. And one more thing that just popped into my head which I haven't thought of in 25? years. He used to cut his wife's hair. She told everybody she used to get her hair cut at Chez Richard. He loved telling people that joke.

And one more...at a banquet he was up there speaking and he said something like, "I saw Jane Smith earlier tonight. She is a Graydon regular and I have never really seen her anywhere but at Graydon. So when I saw her I said, "Oh Jane, it's you. I almost didn't recognize you with your clothes on." That was classic "Fleck."

Kurt Flechtner:

As Paul noted, my Dad ran Graydon for all of my childhood. It's interesting to read Paul's perspective on Dad's management style and remember Dad's thought processes during those years.

First, some thoughts about Graydon. As Paul observed, during the time Dad was in charge, there were no fences at all. There it sat, acres of natural swimming pool, in the middle of a town of 25,000, in the middle of a county of several hundred thousand. Now think about that: you can't put a 15'x25' pool in your yard without a fence, but Graydon was surrounded by nothing but sandy beaches and grassy banks, in the midst of as dense a population as one might find west of the Bronx.

Well, Dad took his responsibility for the safety of Graydon swimmers very seriously. He was responsible for everybody on that piece of property, and he had very little control over who wandered onto the grounds. I remember one day a small child fell off the wall and under the water, while his mother chatted on the beach. Dad scooped him up, but came home haunted by the fact that he had seen it happen before the child's mother. That was the nature of the time, and Dad accepted the responsibility. But it also forged his adherence to rules and regulations. Ironclad rules were his mechanisms for accepting responsibility for a big swimming pool in the middle of town.

Later on, when I became a lifeguard, I learned to appreciate Dad's approach to rules. It removed the arbritary nature from the job. Rules are rules, and nobody can throw sand, not even your buddy from school. I learned a lot about leadership, responsibility and consistency from Dad. I learned many years later from other former guards that he taught the same lessons to just about all that passed under his leadership at Graydon. (As an aside, one summer I also learned to decline the advances of an "older," probably mid-20s, married woman - wheee!!)

At RHS, Dad merely demonstrated and administered his authority. At Graydon, he took the opportunity to teach it. I wish more people could have known the teaching side of Dad.

Tribute to the Flechtners at Glen School Blog

     A very nice tribute to co-blogger Kurt's parents appears over at the Glen School Class of 1967 blog. I don't know how many teachers and staff live in Ridgewood currently but it would be interesting to make a comparison between now and the 1970s. I will point out the obvious and state that a parent with a short commute will spend more quality time raising their children than one stuck on a train, bus, or in a car. Having parents close to home and in our schools also made it harder to get away with things like cutting school. I've heard more than one story about a school secretary spotting a forged excuse note and calling the home to verify. It truly made kids think twice before pulling such a stunt.

More Graydon Pool

As Paul noted, my Dad ran Graydon for all of my childhood. It's interesting to read Paul's perspective on Dad's management style and remember Dad's thought processes during those years. First, some thoughts about Graydon. As Paul observed, during the time Dad was in charge, there were no fences at all. There it sat, acres of natural swimming pool, in the middle of a town of 25,000, in the middle of a county of several hundred thousand. Now think about that: you can't put a 15'x25' pool in your yard without a fence, but Graydon was surrounded by nothing but sandy beaches and grassy banks, in the midst of as dense a population as one might find west of the Bronx. Well, Dad took his responsibility for the safety of Graydon swimmers very seriously. He was responsible for everybody on that piece of property, and he had very little control over who wandered onto the grounds. I remember one day a small child fell off the wall and under the water, while his mother chatted on the beach. Dad scooped him up, but came home haunted by the fact that he had seen it happen before the child's mother. That was the nature of the time, and Dad accepted the responsibility. But it also forged his adherence to rules and regulations. Ironclad rules were his mechanisms for accepting responsibility for a big swimming pool in the middle of town. Later on, when I became a lifeguard, I learned to appreciate Dad's approach to rules. It removed the arbritary nature from the job. Rules are rules, and nobody can throw sand, not even your buddy from school. I learned a lot about leadership, responsibility and consistency from Dad. I learned many years later from other former guards that he taught the same lessons to just about all that passed under his leadership at Graydon. (As an aside, one summer I also learned to decline the advances of an "older," probably mid-20s, married woman - wheee!!) At RHS, Dad merely demonstrated and administered his authority. At Graydon, he took the opportunity to teach it. I wish more people could have known the teaching side of Dad. All that said, I do have other Ridgewood stories, so I promise my contribution to this blog will not become a tribute to Dick Flechtner!

Graydon Pool

We used to go to Graydon Pool quite a lot up until the time I was in the 6th grade. It was an all day affair with various set routines. We arrived in the morning and always sat on the "shaded side" with the big trees and where my Mom would meet up with her friends for an all day chat. Us kids would then swim until lunchtime and after a sandwich the Moms would have us religiously wait one half hour before we went in the water again. Nobody wanted us to cramp up and drown was their stated reason. In the afternoon there was always a visit to the ice cream truck and the gum ball machines and then we went home. Going to Graydon was an activity which used up all our daily allotment of youthful energy. I'm sure the Moms appreciated it because there would then be less trouble getting us to go to bed. It's funny reflecting back on all of this and thinking how different things are today. Women then didn't have to explain to anyone why they were housewives. Today they would have to explain why they aren't working at some career. Times certainly have changed. One other memory of Graydon: the Head Lifeguard, Richard Flechtner. His word was law and there were few who would dispute it. If they did they were usually given a stern lecture and might even be escorted off the premises. This was in Graydon Pool's heyday. Before the cheesy looking fence was put up, before everyone had a pool of their own, and when Graydon was a place to meet one's friends. It was a considerably more difficult place to manage than it is today. For one thing you can tell by looking that fewer people use the pool and there are more people on hand to maintain order. Though when I used to go there was always one man who maintained order among the pool goers and the lifeguards and that was Mr. Flechtner, Kurt's Dad. I never crossed him then and I kept this up when I met him once again at Ridgewood High School where he was the Athletic Director. He was the sort of person I didn't want to argue with because I knew he was going to be right and I had seen so many try and fail in this fruitless endeavor. It was always better in my mind to cut him a wide track and marvel at the efficiency with which he managed the pool.