History Teacher

THIS department was much distressed by an Associated Press story shortly after Presidents Day that described what students and an assistant principal at James Monroe High School in Los Angeles thought (or didn't bother to think) about the president for which their school was named.Teacher Caryn Cornell reported that when she asked 15 kids in her detention class who Monroe was, nobody knew. "Their mouths dropped open, like, 'Duh,' " she said, adding it was not funny.No, it wasn't, but we were more aghast by the assertion of assistant principal Alice Parrish, who said Monroe "wasn't exactly among our most distinguished presidents," adding that all she could mention about him was the Monroe Doctrine.

John A. McCrudenStation owner, baritoneJohn A. McCruden, a retired service station owner and singer, died Sunday of respiratory failure at the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis. The Arnold resident was 74.He retired about 10 years ago after owning Jack's Texaco on U.S. 50 in the St. Margarets area for 16 years.The Baltimore native was reared in the Pimlico area and was a graduate of Loyola High School. He also studied voice at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and, as a young man, appeared as a baritone in productions of "HMS Pinafore," "Iolanthe" and other operas at the Lyric Theater.

MOSCOW -- A new school year has started, and Diana Fadeyeva, a high school history teacher, prepared by reading the newspapers. History has moved too fast for textbooks.When Ms. Fadeyeva, 32, last faced a first-day-of-school class, she and her students still lived in the Soviet Union. That ended in December.She laughed when asked whether she would use a textbook to try to explain all this. She will devise her course, she said yesterday, by reading newspapers, journals and other material in the library.

E. Mignon Lerp, retired head of the history department at Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in Brooklyn, died Sunday at St. Agnes Hospital of internal bleeding due to a lack of platelets, a clotting factor in the blood.Services for Miss Lerp, who was 93, will be conducted at 10 a.m. today at the McCully Funeral Home, 237 E. Patapsco Ave., and at 1 p.m. in the chapel of the Charlestown Retirement Community, 711 Maiden Choice Lane in Catonsville.She taught for many years at the junior high school and earlier for a short time at the Curtis Bay Elementary School.

It was a reunion of sorts, my recent dinner with two women I hadn't seen in over a decade. Once, back in our school days, the three of us were inseparable; now we seem to meet at 10-year intervals. Which means there's always plenty of catching up to do.We usually begin with family talk, proceed to career developments and, after checking out how each of us is aging, lie and tell one another: "You don't look any different than you did 10 years ago."What we don't lie about, however, is how different our lives have become since we last met. Spurred on by the wine, we talked openly about the roads not taken and where the paths we did take have led us.To surprising destinations, as it turns out."