Theodore M. Schad
how we got away from the pronunciation of Schad with a broad "A." You
can't say "Mac Schad," with a broad "A." (Laughter)
And my father often said, don't care what they call me as long as they call
me when it's time to eat." He was a little irreverent, I guess, on some things,
but most of the time the other branches of the family pronounced the name
Schad with a broad "A."
Well, anyway, at age six, the doctors decided that they could operate on my leg
and do a muscle transplant which would help me to walk without a brace. A
wonderful doctor, Dr. Howard Bennett, did the operation. It was done at
Children's Hospital, which was on Green Spring Avenue, near Cold Spring
Lane in north Baltimore.
So when I was six they cut off my curls and took me to the hospital andI had
the first operation, which was a muscle transplant, just before entering school
in the first grade. I didn't go to school much during the winter while we lived
on the farm, but when we did go to school, I remember walking up the
driveway to the road and riding to school in a Ford panel truck without any
windows, with benches in the back which a gentleman named Mr.
pronounced "Fights" used to drive as a school bus. He would pick up about a
dozen children who were crammed into this little Ford panel truck. After we
moved into town in March 1925, I could start to go to school regularly, and I
think out of the
school term, I think I went to school 95 or so days and
was absent the rest of the time.
But I had learned how to read-our house was full of books, and my sister read
to me, and I almost progressed along with her. She was three years ahead of
me, and so I could read, and I didn't have any trouble with school at any time
because of that.
The people that bought the farm defaulted on the second mortgage; my father
had to take the farm back, and we had that farm around our necks almost like
a millstone all through the rest of the '20s and the '30s. My father was working
in Baltimore, and we'd get
tenants on the farm. He sold the farm again
to a gentleman who was going to raise beef cattle; the farm was perfectly suited
to that. Again, he had to take a second mortgage. Nobody had money. This
probably was around 1929 or 1930.
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