Students in Mr. John Kotzman’s social science classes may not know the back round behind this educator with a good sense of humor. Outside of the classroom Mr. Kotzman is a family man. He grew up in the small town atmosphere of Frontenac, KS, played on a national championship winning collegiate football team, and served our country in the Navy during the Vietnam War. Now, Mr. Kotzman teaches at Pittsburg High School, and is also a football and track coach there.*

I was born May the 9th, 1945 in Lakeland, Florida. I was a war child. My father was from Frontenac, and he was stationed in Florida with the U.S. Army Air Force and that’s where he met my mother. They got married in 1944, and I was born in 1945. We lived in Florida till my father was released from the service, which I was about a year old, and he brought my mother and I up here to Frontenac. So, this is my hometown. We used to go to Florida every year up until, uh, about my freshman year [in high school]*. We used to [go] ever summer. My father worked on the railroad and I was working. My sister who was a year younger than me, we had boyfriends and girlfriends so our vacations kinda got screwed up. I have a lot of memories of my grandmother there [Florida]. I’ve taken my kids there; I’ve taken my grandkids there. So, Florida is one of my favorite places.

[I grew] up in Frontenac, Kansas. I’m the oldest of seven children. I had three sisters and three brothers; and my family is kinda spread out. There was my sister and I, we were a year apart, and then there was kinda a four year span, and then there was two boys and then another four span. I was eighteen years old when my youngest brother was born. Betty [oldest sister] and I were raised fairly strict. Frontenac was kind of a unique place to grow up in. We were close to Pittsburg, which we thought was the big city, and yet we had a small town. This whole area was a town of immigrants and, uh, they are very close-knit people. When I grew up, ya know, like most of the kids of my generation, we grew up in a town full of mothers. You didn’t just have a mother; you had a whole neighborhood of mothers. I mean if you messed up, you got a spanking from them just like you would from your own mother. [That’s] probably inconceivable today for another mother to spank another’s child; but back then, that’s just the way it was expected.

I went to a catholic grade school from the first grade through the eighth grade. We were taught by nuns. That was an experience. [It was] a very strict environment and going through a parochial school, you know, it probably prepared us a little bit better -- not saying academically -- maybe discipline wise for high school because when we all got into high school we just couldn’t believe how much freedom we had. That you could actually get up out of one of the classrooms and walk to another, you know, and walk in the halls. I wouldn’t think I would want to do it any other way; but, you know, lots of discipline. We were still fairly ornery. The big deal was playing jokes on the nuns or the priests.

Then I went to Frontenac High School as a freshman. Frontenac is a small school. I think there was twenty-seven in my high school graduating class. That was unique because you knew everyone in school; you knew every freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. You were probably related to quite a few of them. Because of the different immigrant groups, you know -- we had Italians, Germans, Slovenians, Austrians, some Irish -- you got exposed to a lot of different cultures. We didn’t have black students, so, the only African-American people I ever came in contact with was maybe when we went to Florida. That was an experience because everything was so segregated. I don’t think we ever grew up being prejudice, but you have to understand little bit different times. But, high school was a good experience. We did all the things high school kids did. We played sports, we, uh, hang in groups. I played in the band freshman year in high school, and I was the tuba player since I was the tallest; and I played the accordion. My dad kinda put [the accordion] on me when I was about the second grade. I was about six or seven years old. Accordions were very popular instruments in the ‘50s. Popular groups of the day -- I’m talking Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, maybe some of the early rock and rollers -- always had accordions. Accordions were [also] very popular in all of southeast Kansas because polka music was still very popular music even for young people. I remember up here, just up town you know, there was about five or six bars on Main Street in Frontenac; and there was one called The Blue Goose that was run by the Bartelli family, and they always had polka bands. The Tower Ballroom was one of the first places to start offering young kids, I can remember -- Rodney and the Bellhops was maybe the first rock and roll band I can remember -- going out to the Tower [to see them]. So, as a young kid in high school, we made pilgrimages to the Tower Ballroom on Wednesday nights if our parents would let us go out; and Saturday nights was a big night for us. So, we all go out to the Tower and listen to the latest rock and roll bands; and that’s also how you socialized with people from out of town, you know. My senior year there was only maybe three or four high school kids that had cars so we weren’t as mobile as your generation, and going to the Tower Ballroom on a Saturday night was like -- gee, it was like going to Kansas City today.

I delivered papers for the Morning Sun from the time I was, I think I started around the sixth grade, and did that till I was a junior in high school, till my two younger brothers kinda took over my route. I worked weekends at Samson’s Road Filling Station on the corner of McAstry. I worked every Saturday and Sunday, and I got fifty cents an hour. I got eight dollars a weekend. I washed cars, pumped gas; and then in the summertime, I hauled hay. I was a big hay hauler and went over to Liberal, Missouri and worked over there for six years. Every summer I worked over there, even my first couple years of college I hauled hay.

My father would never allow [me] to buy a car. I always wanted to buy a car. But now I look back on it, I think that by not letting me have a car was kind of a way of controlling me, too. Because if I wanted to go somewhere, I had to ask permission for his car. All the money I made he took it, and he would put it in a banking account. Then he’d dole out money, you know, maybe five dollars to go on a date. You gotta remember, five dollars was quite a bit back in 1961 or ‘62 when I was in high school. With seven kids he didn’t have a lot, you know. The railroad was a pretty good job, but it was a hard life. Seven kids was still quite a bit of responsibility. My mother didn’t work, she took care of the house. My mother probably raised us, dad was gone all the time. He was pretty strict as a dad goes. He was a good loving father, did everything he possibly [could] for us.

One day he wanted me to help him clean out the garage and I wanted to go up town. I wanted to take his car, and I actually wanted to go pick up some of my buddies to go messing around. I got mad and I stormed into the house and my mother said, “You get back out there and help your dad.” So I went back out there and I said,

“Ok, what do you want me to do?”

He said, “Just take the car, just go.” You know he was mad.

I said, “No, come on I’ll help you.”

“No, take the car and go play. Go with your friends.” So, I took the car and I went to St. Louis, Missouri. I was fifteen years old. I didn’t even have a damn, I had a restricted driver’s license.

My mother tells me I’m just like my dad. I was hardheaded, and so I ran away from home for a weekend to St. Louis, Missouri. [I] stayed with my dad’s aunt. I knew where she lived, I had gone up there before. I was lucky I found it, but I found it. Her son was quite a bit older than I was. He was one of those first guys I ever met, you know, that really liked the night life. [He] would never go out till ten o’clock at night. He’d take me to the clubs, you know, [when I] was fifteen years old. He never bought me alcoholic drinks, but he would always let me tag along. [When I got to St. Louis] I was too afraid to call my dad, but she [my aunt] called him. I just remember, to this day, I can still hear every word she said. She always called him Jackie and she said, “Jackie, guess who’s here?” That was the last word she got in and all I could hear her say was, “Now Jackie, now Jackie.” Anyway, when I came home that was the longest drive in the history of the world. And I got home and my parents were eating supper, must of been about four, all the family always eats at four. Well, he [dad] couldn’t go to work because he didn’t have a car. I had taken his car, and I’d also took his credit card ‘cause I didn’t have any money. I had to buy gas forging his name to St. Louis, Missouri. Well anyway, I come through that door and they all kinda looked up at me and my dad looks at me and says, “Well, did you have a good time?” And that’s all he said to me. Now, how do you think I felt about that?

I did other stupid things. I used to steal the car every once in a while. He [dad] told me I couldn’t use the car. Well, this was during the summer time and we only had a two bedroom house when I was little. When I was up to about nine years old my grandpa lived with us. Well, in fact, we lived in my grandpa’s house; and grandpa had a big garden and he had a bunch of chickens and he had a chicken house. Well, when he died, dad didn’t want chickens so he slaughters them all, butchers them, and so we had chicken it seems like for the next twenty years. But, he converted the chicken house and knocked out part of a wall and we called it the hut. This hut was where us boys slept in the summertime. We had two bedrooms, mom and dad had one and the girls had one, and then all us boys we, uh, we had like a couch that converted into a bed. In the summertime, though, we all slept out in the chicken coop. One night I saw the lights go out at about nine o’clock, and so I get up very quietly. I snuck in the house and on the table was his [dad’s] car keys. So I go out, and very quietly push this car out of the driveway. We had a very long driveway, old chat driveway, and I bet I pushed it halfway up the street before I thought it was safe enough to jump in and start it. [I] took off and had a bunch of my buddies that lived in Cherokee. So, I go to Cherokee and then about one o’clock in the morning I decide I better get back home. So, I go down our street and, uh, turn off the light. I turn the engine off and I drift, and I mean, you know, I drifted perfectly back up in the driveway just where I thought I had left it. Put the keys back -- we never locked our doors in Frontenac -- and I go out to the hut and I open the door and this arm -- my dad was about six foot four about 255 pounds -- and I mean this huge arm comes out of the hut just... I never stole the car again. What had happened, he had gone to bed early that night because he had to get up and go to work. Gets called out at like eleven. Can you imagine he comes out of the house. There’s no car there, and he goes and checks the hut, and there’s no kid there either.

In high school [on a] typical date we would go to Pittsburg to the old YMCA. They used to have teen hops, and we’d all go. One of us could get a car, and we’d go to Teen Town. That’s where I’d meet kids from Pittsburg High. By the time I was a freshman or sophomore in high school, I had met kids my age from Pittsburg High School. There’s six that I knew pretty well, and then in the summertime we always played baseball against them. So, I knew quite a few boys, we’d go to Teen Town. That’s where we’d meet some of the girls; [and] in fact, we really didn’t know ‘em, you know. You were afraid that they thought you were ugly or stupid. So, it took a lot of courage to call the girl up and ask them for a date, you know how kids think. So, you try to call a week in advance and strike up a conversation, and just say something like, you know, “You want to meet at The Tower?” You’d pick them up, and well, normally you’d have to find a guy you could double date with, again ‘cause cars were at a premium. Normally, we’d go right to The Tower; and then after that dance, we would go get something to eat. There was a lot of popular places of the day. [There] was Argentina’s, which was a little restaurant set right about where they’re building the new Home Depot. The other popular place was all the way down at the end toward the college. It was called The Ottoway Drive-in. It was kind of a carryout. Most of the time you just sat in the car, you know, and they’d bring the food out.

I never thought about what I was going to do after high school. I always wanted to go work on the railroad. Dad used to take me along sometimes, you know, on the train and I loved the railroad. I thought that was the greatest job in the world. Sit up there and control the train, and that’s what I really wanted to do -- up until about my senior year in high school [when] other things started happening to me. I had played four years of high school football, basketball, and track, and I was pretty decent. About my senior year I started getting letters from schools wanting [me] to play football, you know, and toward the last game of the year in football I got a letter from the University of Arkansas. At the time, I didn’t even know where the University of Arkansas was. It was in my senior year when we start, [if] you like football you start paying attention to who is in the top ten. Well, when I got the letter from Arkansas they were ranked eighth in the nation, and they were playing in the Sugar Bowl; but when I got that [letter] I, you know, I wanted to go to the University of Arkansas. I thought that that’s where I was going to play football. I got scholarships from KU and Wichita and other schools, but Arkansas was where I thought that I wanted to go. Plus, they didn’t recruit many kids from Kansas. In fact, there was only maybe three guys from the whole state of Kansas that got recruited by ‘em. The problem was when I went to Arkansas, I had no clue of what college life was like. I’ll never forget I go to enroll. I’m eighteen years old. I don’t even know the first thing about it. You know, at Frontenac High School there was no such things as electives because of the limited availability of teachers. You know, your classes were pretty well set. I knew I had to take things in high school my freshman year. I knew I had to take algebra. I knew I had to take biology. I had to take [an] English class and PE class. Those were four classes you took. Then your sophomore you took geometry and another English class. I think it was [your] junior year, you had a choice between chemistry or physics. I mean those were your choices. I took American History and back then we didn’t have government it was called civics. It was more geared toward individual responsibilities. So when I go to Arkansas to enroll, you know, you have these counselors, “Do you like to read?”

“Yeah, I like to read.”

“Do you like history?”

“Yeah, I kinda like history.”

“Ok, here is a good class, world history.”

“Here is another good class, world literature.” My freshman year I took world history, world literature. I [also] took a psychology class. My dad’s cousin was in advertising in Kansas City. He had his own advertising agency. So, when I go to college, I said I’ll be in advertising. Well, advertising is a business class, so you need to be in business law. So, I wind up taking all these classes. My freshman year I had like a 1.7 GPA or something like that, terrible GPA. Flunked a couple of classes. I was playing football and, uh, my freshman year I didn’t have a real great [year]. I did OK, like you come from a small school like this where you were everything, and I, you know, I had no competition. I started out the first day and all the sudden, you know, you find out there is like forty something other guys that are just as good or better than you. So, that was a shock to the system. Plus, I had met a girl I had fallen in love with, I thought, and she was still in high school. So, all the sudden now I had these huge expectations. I’m gonna go to Arkansas, and I’m going to be an all-American, and it’s going to be just like it was in high school, to, I’m a run-of-the-mill athlete, I’m doing terrible in school, I’m homesick. Never been away from home before, Fayetteville’s about one hundred and thirty miles straight south of us, but it was just like almost being in another country. You’re in a southern state, and I didn’t know anybody except the guys on the football team. Your social life is very limited, you know? I went from going to the Tower to meet all my buddies to knowing just a certain group of people. Things went better for me my sophomore year. I played a lot more than I thought I was [going to]. We went to the Cotton Bowl and were national champions my sophomore year. I’m not a name dropper, but Jimmie Johnson was on the team, [and] Jerry Jones was on the team. And, Rick Hatfield, coach of Rice University was on the team. During spring football I hurt my knee, and eventually had to have it replaced; and I lost my speed. When that happened, school just didn’t mean anything.

So, I come home that summer and I’ve still hauled hay. That’s what kept me in shape. I kinda got thinking that I didn’t want to go back to school. I told my dad I wasn’t going back to school, I wasn’t going to go back to Arkansas and we got in a big argument. He didn’t think I was making the right decision. So, I got mad and I walked out of the house -- by that time I had bought a car. I went to this guy before I started hauling hay -- there was a car I really wanted, it was a ‘55 or ‘56 Ford. [I] had a friend of mine in Pittsburg, [I] asked him if he would loan me the money to buy a car, and then I’d work it off. That’s what he did. He gave me the money, and I went and bought this car. So, I jumped in the car and I went back to where these two buddies of mine were living in a house trailer in Pittsburg. When I got there, they were still up. Well, one of the guys said they couldn’t go, he and [his brother] owned a grocery store; but the other guy [could]. It was about one o’clock in the morning. I got about twenty-five bucks in my pocket, and I think he’s got about thirty, and we take off for Florida. Don’t tell my parents, Arkansas, nobody, I didn’t tell the school. So, we go down to Florida; and he gets a job selling used cars. Now, for about the first week we sponged off my aunt and uncle, [and] grandmother. In fact, my uncle, he’d just bought another home, and he still had his other house; so, he let us live in this other house for free. And I mean we scrounged. Anyway, finally, I get an interview for a job, and it was for the city of Lakewood, Florida. My mother’s uncle was a big shot with the city of Lakewood so I think I’m going to get his job. You had to take this civil service test, so I took the civil service test and I get called in and I’m told that I got the highest score. But, they got to interview the top two, and this guy is interviewing me starts talking to me and he says that,

“You haven’t been in the service have you?”

And I say, “No,” ‘cause I haven’t been drafted and this is 1965 and, uh, he said,

“You know you’re going to change your classification as soon as they find out you’re not in school.” Because I’m in school they had what was called a 1S. They couldn’t draft us while we were in school. As soon as they found out I didn’t enroll, it just took them a while to reclassify me. So he [said]; “I can’t hire you. You might be working a month, and then you’re going to get called. I’m going to take the other guy.” So, I got all upset about that, but he was right because this was in November now.

A week after that, my dad calls me and says, “You’ve got your draft notice here.” I had to come home ‘cause I had to take a physical. So, I come back home and couple weeks later there are five or four from Pittsburg all boarded the Kansas City Southern train and went up to Kansas City. We all went through our physicals, and at the end of the day this big ole burly sergeant called us in and said, “Boys, you all got thirty days to get your affairs in order because you’re going to go. You’re going to get drafted.” Well, we thought, you know, he was giving us a bunch of bologna; but there was a lot of guys joining that day. I mean, they were getting on a bus and going to Ft. Leavenworth. We thought this guy’s just messing with us, they want us to join now. So, I came back home. I had gotten a job with a construction crew and I was working construction.

A week goes by, two weeks go by, on about the twenty-sixth day after I had taken my physical I started getting really nervous. What if this guy is right? So, I had a school friend of mine and he had joined the navy and my math teacher in high school, he was in the navy. I told him I’d gotten my physical. I told him I didn’t want to get drafted into the army. So he goes over with me and I join the navy. Three days after I join the navy, on like the twenty-ninth or thirtieth, day I got the letter. I’d gotten drafted in to the United States’ Marine Corps! I’ll never forget! I still got that letter. I called up the navy recruiter. [I] said, “I got my draft notice they drafted me and I was going to Paris Island. He said, “You’re in the navy now, boy, you don’t have to worry about that.”

Went to boot camp in Chicago. Came back home, and while I’m at home I meet my future wife. We got married on December 9th, 1966. I left in March of ‘67. It was probably the best thing, when I look back on it. It wasn’t the greatest of times, but it was probably, for me, a wake up call. I met a woman, we’ve been married thirty-eight years. I got three kids and grandkids, things could have been different. The situation at the time -- I get married for basically the wrong reason, ‘cause I thought that if I was married it would kinda maybe help my chances of not going overseas or anything like that. I mean, you’re always thinking, but it was probably the best thing. I matured a lot in the navy. I’ve seen things that I don’t talk about. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of the navy, just of something about what you did or what you saw, you know. I never talked about it for a long time. My wife never really wanted to know. We never dwell on the past. We always wanted to go ahead; but boy, it’s hard not to think about these things. I was as close to certain guys as you could ever want to be. They’d have died for me, and I’d have died for them. You don’t develop friendships like that normally. I mean friendships are friends, you know; but boy, in the military you just cannot describe the closeness that you -- the love you have for one another.

The ironic part of it is that there was four of us that were very close. We have not seen one another, never have seen one another since we got out of the service. We talked about. “We’ll meet every Christmas,” you know. For a while we would call one another up on the phone and send each other Christmas cards. It’ll be late at night, and you’ll get this phone call and it’ll be one of those at Canton, Ohio who has tried for years to take me to the football [Hall of Fame]. I got another one in Anderson, Indiana who works for the Delco division of General Motors who gets tickets every year to the Indianapolis 500. I got another one in Detroit who has a hell of a job. And I never go, and they never come here. It’s just, uh, it’s hard to describe how you could be so close. But it’s ironic in that, you know, we still think of ourselves as twenty year olds. My wife and I have always talked about just taking a trip, you know, just go up there. But then invariably it happens. Something else comes up. Well, I really don’t know if I want to go up there. I’d rather take grandkids and just go to the beach. Let’s just do something different. I don’t know if it brings back those things, if that’s what I’m afraid of. It’s just one of those things, you know. The last thing I want to do is sit around and tell war stories with my [war friends] ’cause we all went through it and so why relive it?

How does A Tale of Two Cities go? “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” And that’s how I look at it. There’s things that I could tell you and they wouldn’t have much meaning to you, only the person that talks about it or says it. I spent over thirteen months in Vietnam. I think the deal was, too, it was such an unpopular situation. I’m coming back from overseas, I’m in my uniform, I’m having to go through an airport, and I was called all kinds of stuff. You were called names, you were called baby-killer.

I’ll never forget the first time I enrolled back in school [at Pittsburg State University] because I had decided when I got out of the navy I was gonna come back, and I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be a coach. The first semester I go back to school and I’m on the GI Bill. What you had to do is that when you enrolled and you went to your first class, in order to get your money you had to show proof that you were actually going to class. So, the first class the teacher would give out the roll and he’d say you need to tell me if you’re getting government assistance. So, he got to my name and I raised my hand. He said, “You’ve got your form?” We all had to carry a form and I said,

“Yes sir, I do.” Had to show it to him and he put a checkmark. I’ll never forget a couple of seventeen, eighteen year old kids -- I’m twenty-one years old now, and I remember [one of the kids] turning around and saying, “How many babies did you kill?” I [became] a pretty hardcore guy. I changed from pretty easy going, normal teenage kid to a guy now that is very cynical, uh, hardcore, get out of my [face] or I’ll goddamned cut your throat type of mental attitude. I was very bitter towards the government, you know. I mean very cynical in a lot of ways. There’s still kind of a mean streak, I guess. I guess that’s just embedded in my personality now.

You change, you change over time. I mellowed out because I had three great children. I’ve mellowed out a lot more because I have nine grandchildren now. So, I want to portray myself as the kindly old grandpa. I’ve been pretty lucky in my life.

This information was attained in an interview conducted by Jesse Niebaum in January of 2005.

*Words in italics and brackets indicate words not spoken by John Kotzman.