Alice Doud, the art teacher who let me paint alone during lunch period, was a lover of classical art. Her eyes glistened and her voice cracked with emotion when lecturing, always in reverential tones, speaking of the old masters, especially Fra Angelico and Michelangelo. Alice tried to expose us to as many influences as she could on a limited high school budget, leavening the classics with occasional art movies. One I remember was called, "Fiddle Dee Dee," an animated short accomplished by painting directly onto clear movie film. It consisted of jumbling swiggles and dazzling forms, a phantasmagoria of colors rippling and writhing, backed up by a wild jazz score. I loved it the same way I loved Jackson Pollock.

It was also Alice Doud who oversaw the yearly "Christmas Window" contest.

Our school was two stories high with a large arched window in the front. Including the downstairs doors, the window must have been 40 feet high, perhaps more. The top was a dome shaped section, with a large main upright rectangle below, flanked by two side sections. Every year the students were invited to submit designs for a simulated stained glass window. Impartial judges considered all the unsigned work, choosing one student for the central portion, one for the top dome and one for the two side panels. Another would be awarded the downstairs doors.

In my junior year I won the competition for the central panel with a design of Mary and the Christ child, adorned with a star shaped halo. In those days, Church and State Christmas decorations were a non-issue.

The winning designs were then painted on paper and glued to wooden forms designed to fit into the inside of the windows. The presentation was designed for night viewing, the window lit brightly from behind. Over the holiday season, thousands of people drove from throughout the county to view the piece, a local tradition for many years running.

My picture appeared on the front page of our local newspaper (above) with Alice Doud and the girl who won the downstairs doors. My father was so proud he set up his slide camera on a tripod at night and made time-exposures.

The next year was my graduation year and I wanted the window again, bad. I needed the window. The coach was trying to kill my spirit. And this time I wanted the whole thing. I didn't really care about the downstairs doors because they were separated from the main window anyway, but I had to have the entire top including the dome. I put together a design of the Herald Angel that included the Star of Bethlehem in the upper dome with beams of stained glass light that fell through all other portions of the piece. That way of course, if my design won, the judges would have to award me the entire window ... or nothing. I even cut a mat out of black card stock in the shape of the window and turned in the work with grave professional seriousness.

And I won. Alice Doud assembled the class and congratulated me. Then she dropped a big fat water bomb on my raging art parade.

"David, you had the winning central portion last year. Now, if you take it again this year it will be unprecedented, because in the whole history of the Christmas Window, the same artist has never had it twice. Therefore I am suggesting you express a winner's spirit and give it to the first runner-up".

She nodded toward the boy sitting next to me, then held up his design to the class. I don't remember his name, but I remember I rather liked him and thought he was a pretty good artist. I was cooked. The class sat staring. Alice stood holding my winning design in one hand, my school chum's in the other, now a bit higher, begging with her eyes. Everyone stared at me, all of course, expecting a modest yes.

"No," I said, from somewhere in the bottom of my soul. A pristine silence followed while everyone continued to stare at me.

"Well ...", Alice said, in a voice that could have cracked walnuts, "you've made your choice and that's the way it will be then. Class, we will glue the paper to the frames today. Drawing and painting will begin tomorrow. David will be in charge because it is his design".

There is a "yes" and there is a "no". Artist Georgia O'Keefe said,"making art takes a kind of nerve". I may well be a painter today, indeed, I may be alive today because of that particular no. Where I got the "nerve" to go against the whole class and say it is still a mystery to me.

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