Former FHS teachers touched by auditorium name change

FAIRFIELD – Three Fairfield High School educators who collaborated on numerous musicals, concerts and theatrical productions will be immortalized on the walls of the Fairfield High School Auditorium.

At its regular board meeting in January, the Fairfield Community School District Board of Directors announced that the FHS Auditorium would be renamed the Mitcheltree, Slechta, Edgeton Auditorium, after teachers Linda Mitcheltree, Scott Slechta and Jim Edgeton.

All three of those teachers led productions in the FHS Auditorium, and worked together on them during the 1990s and 2000s. Mitcheltree led the vocal music program from 1983 to 2009. Slechta taught English from 1984 to 2017 while leading the drama department, and Edgeton was director of the high school band from 1992 to 2021.

The drive to rename the auditorium in their honor was led by former FHS Principal Ralph Messerli and Chuck Drobny, who assisted Edgeton with the band. Edgeton said sharing in this recognition is “flattering and humbling,” and the best part is getting to share the honor with two teachers he worked so closely with.

“They are two outstanding people,” Edgeton said of Slechta and Mitcheltree. “I feel good having my name up next to theirs.”

Mitcheltree said she was thrilled to be included in the renaming, and never imagined such a thing would happen.

“We had so many great projects together. It’s quite an honor,” she said.

Slechta said he was honored to receive this recognition, and glad he could share the spotlight with Edgeton and Mitcheltree.

“Jim, Linda and I impacted students,” he said. “That’s the idealistic part. Drama, music and choir can be a niche for some kids. If they’re in the play, nobody sits on the bench. Everyone is a part of the whole, which is really cool. Everyone finds their place in drama and they find a new family.”

EARLY YEARS

Mitcheltree and Edgeton are both FHS alumni, and she was the first to return to the high school as a teacher after teaching vocal music in Van Buren to grades 6-12.

Mitcheltree’s parents, Vera and Philip Young, taught at Parsons College in Fairfield, but her mother encouraged her to spread her wings after high school and see more of the country.

“She thought that if I went to Parsons, it’d still feel like high school,” Mitcheltree said.

Mitcheltree had an uncle on the faculty at the College of Wooster in Ohio, and that’s where she decided to study music education with an emphasis on piano as her main instrument. She sought a job teaching elementary music, and found it in Keosauqua, where she later became Van Buren’s high school music teacher. Mitcheltree taught at Van Buren for nine years before switching to Fairfield in 1983.

“Ralph [Messerli] was the one who interviewed me and recommended my hiring, so I owe a lot to him,” Mitcheltree said.

Slechta came to Fairfield one year after Mitcheltree in 1984, after beginning his teaching career in West Point. In 2016, Slechta was named the Iowa Teacher of the Year. He took a sabbatical from teaching, and then moved to the Des Moines area where he taught at his alma mater, Simpson College, then Grandview University, and later was a facilitator for a teachers’ academy for high schoolers who want to become teachers. Slechta now lives in St. Simons Island, Georgia.

When Slechta came to Fairfield, he felt he had “hit the big time” because the high school had its own auditorium, and he wasn’t having to use a gymnasium stage like at his first job.

“There’s a curtain and lights up there,” he remembers thinking.

Slechta said not many kids were interested in drama when he started, but he was able to drum up interest in the program to the point that the club had as many as 100 members. He said he wanted kids to experience a “big show” so he took them to see productions in Des Moines, Minneapolis and Chicago.

When Slechta took on the role of drama director, the school had a grand total of two racks of costumes. By the time Slechta left, he had filled the basement with costumes.

“I never had to rent a single costume,” he said. “People would give me things after their garage sales, or I’d get things when the Catholics had their garage sales, or during Spring Clean Up Day. I was involved in community theater, and they’d help me collect things, too.”

At one point, the fire marshal inspected the building and told Slechta he’d have to remove all the costumes, so they were sent to Lincoln Elementary.

Edgeton moved to Fairfield when he was in third grade, and his parents lived here the rest of their lives until their passing. He started his teaching career in Goldfield, Iowa, and then went to grad school in Dallas. He spent two years at Southern Methodist University, and taught band in Texas for 11 years before moving back to Fairfield in 1992.

Edgeton said he enjoyed working with Slechta and Mitcheltree for nearly two decades, and that the three of them had fun collaborating. The annual tradition of Chocolate Sunday was a fundraiser for the band, vocal and drama departments, and though the drama students didn’t perform at the event like the band and choir students, Edgeton said that Slechta played a big role behind the scenes because he was in charge of the food and drink.

MUSICALS

Fairfield had a tradition of doing a musical once every three years, and later altered it to doing one every two years. This is where the three teachers got to work together the most, because each was in charge of a different part of the production. The band, under Edgeton’s direction, was responsible for incidental music underneath the dialogue, accompanying the singers, and performing during the scene changes. Mitcheltree was in charge of honing the students’ singing ability, and Slechta was in charge of directing them on stage, as well as being in charge of the set and props.

After doing the plays “The Hobbit” and “The Miracle Worker” in the 1984-85 school year, Slechta got to direct his first musical at Fairfield in the 1985-86 school year with “Guys and Dolls.” In fact, that was also the final musical Slechta directed in 2016, after reprising those two plays “The Hobbit” and “The Miracle Work” during his final two years. Slechta said he liked the opportunity to return to his favorite plays and musicals before he left.

Edgeton and Mitcheltree said their favorite musical they worked on together was “Les Misérables,” performed during the spring of 2006.

“That was like an American opera because there’s singing the entire time,” Edgeton said. “That was the biggest production we took on.”

“That was a huge undertaking,” Mitcheltree added. “Jim’s older son was a senior, and he assured me he could do some recruiting. It was a great experience for the kids to be able to do that. That was my favorite.”

The last musical that the three teachers did as a group was “Little Shop of Horrors” in the spring of 2008.

Slechta continues to teach online for DMACC, and Edgeton had been enjoying retirement for a couple of years until a position opened at the semester break to teach 5-12 grade band in Van Buren. Edgeton said he knows a lot of people in Van Buren since he directs the Van Buren Players Band, and after the school district received no applicants to fill this band position, Edgeton decided to help them out for one semester.

The school district has not officially announced when the auditorium will be renamed with new signage, but the three teachers are expecting that to happen later this year, likely during a concert, and they all plan on being here for the ceremony.

Edgeton said he and the other two teachers appreciate this honor, and they also want to call attention to all the teachers and staff who work hard without the recognition they deserve.

“There are so many teachers who have been in the trenches for longer, or who worked hard for the school district behind the scenes,” Edgeton said. “But they were not in the spotlight like me, Linda or Scott. We don’t name things after math or social studies teachers, but some have put in careers at Fairfield High School, and under those conditions, everyone deserves a room with their name on it. We’re very lucky to be given this honor.”

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com

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