Mr. Richard Grejtak, Instructor in English, Cum Laude Society Secretary, Men’s Club Moderator
Mr. Grejtak described himself as “hard-working high school student” as a seventeen-year-old. He simply wanted to be a “good son, good student, good person and future teacher.” He was most influenced by a high school Latin teacher who took personal interest in his studies and aspirations. This influence didn’t change, as Mr. Grejtak carried on his style and personality into his later years as a teacher. He planned to become a teacher and attain a Ph.D, but because he thought about it and got married, he decided that high school was the environment where he could best use his “skills and personality.” He said that, quite honestly, age seventeen “was not any sort of milestone; it was merely the start of my senior year.” At seventeen, he lived in Cleveland, Ohio, near the West Side. He truly wanted to go to local college, John Carroll University, in order to continue studying Latin and Greek, which he majored in. He said that at seventeen, “I hoped to be married with a family and teaching high school students in the Cleveland area, as I am now.” He expressed that he wouldn’t want to go back and change anything, but that “sometimes, I think I should have gone on toward a Ph.D.”