Contributor: Donal Mahoney - - Tim Ryan was the smartest kid in the room--in his classroom, that is--in 8th grade back in 1952. And that was no small feat because that classroom was full of girls who studied hard all the time. The boys were less diligent and didn't normally score as high as the girls on tests. But Tim Ryan usually scored 100% on tests. He had already won an academic scholarship to one of the finest private high schools in Chicago. His only flaw was poor handwriting. The nuns who taught at St. Nicholas were hard on students with poor penmanship. It was invariably the boys who had this problem. And the remedy, which seldom worked, was to have those with poor handwriting sit for an hour after school and practice an approach called the Palmer Method. But there was a much bigger problem in 1952 than poor penmanship....

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Author: Donal Mahoney