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HIGH SCHOOLwebsite forJohn F. (Jack) Lamb, Jr.Class of 1956 |
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I attended Sunset High School from the fall of 1953 to May of 1956. Before that I went to W. E. Greiner Junior High, L. O. Donald Elementary School, Leila P. Cowart Elementary School in Dallas and Beaubien Elementary School in Chicago. In the Chicago school system, a student could start at mid-term, so, since my birthday is in January, I started low first grade in February of 1945. Then came high first grade in the fall of 1945, etc. In the summer of 1947, we moved to Dallas. That fall, I was put in high third grade at Cowart with two other students. We shared our teacher with the low third grade. As you may know, Dallas only starts students in the fall, so we were out of sync. |
When Cowart underwent a major re-modeling, as many students as possible were transfered to other schools near them. So my brother and I began going to L. O. Donald. I "graduated" from there in January of 1952 and started low eighth grade at Greiner in February.
In April at Easter time, my father was asked to make a trip to the home office of his company in Boston, Mass. He was also asked to make a return trip in August. He and my mother decided that this was too good an opportunity to pass up to allow my brother and I to spend four months with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in the New England area. So they took us out of school and we drove to Saco, Maine in a 1938 Ford. We moved into an apartment on the back of my grandfather's house and my brother and I enrolled in school. I went to C. K. Burns which is now an elementary school. The eighth grade is presently located in the Saco Middle School. In 1952, the Saco School System did not have high and low grades, so I was put in the eighth grade. I managed to catch up and pass, so I was awarded a diploma for finishing the eighth grade. After a great summer in New England, we returned to Dallas in August of 1952. When I went to enroll at Greiner again, I was put in the ninth grade since I had completed the eighth grade in Saco. Thus, I was able to skip a year in school and graduate from Sunset when I was only 17.
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While at Sunset, I was not the greatest of students, but I was interested in science and mathematics. I took Alg 3, Geom 1, Geom 2, Solid Geom, Trig and Alg 4 in that order. I also took physics and chemistry. I was in the Science Club (Can you find me in the picture at the left?). One of our most memorable activities was a field trip to Oklahoma City to see an exhibit on atomic energy. |
In the fall of 1956, I attended North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas) in Denton. I had planned to be a chemistry teacher, but an alergic reaction to mercury that took the first layer of skin off the palms of my hands motivated me to switch to mathematics.
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Even though I had taken algebra and trigonometry in high school, I took them again my freshman year. Then came analytical geometry and advanced algebra in my sophomore year. I finally got to Calculus I, II and III in my junior year. I also took Theory of Equations, Geometry and teaching methods. Here I am trying out some ways to teach mathematics with Miss Cook in the Math Lab. |
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In 1958, I was inducted into the honorary mathematics society, Kappa Mu Epsilon, and in 1961, I was initiated into the local chapter of Phi Delta Kappa, an educational research society. I was also a member of the Student National Education Association and the W. N. Masters Chemistry Club. My second teaching field was in chemistry, but I never taught it. |
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 Kappa Mu Epsilon |
 S. N. E. A. |
 Chemistry Club |
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In the fall of my senior year, I did my student teaching with Mr. Rutledge at Sunset High School during the first half of the semester. It was exciting to be back at my alma mater seeing things from the other side of the desk. The second half of the fall term was spent back at NTSC where I took my last required courses. I needed only ten hours to graduate, so I was planning to goof off during the spring of 1960. Thanks to a good pursuasive advisor named James Rollins, I took freshman physics since I had had no college physics (4 hours), differential equations (3 hours) and a course on how to use and operate audio-visual aids in the classroom (3 hours). That seemed like a nice load that would help me be a better teacher. |
However, he was not done. I also took admission seminar to the graduate school and abstract algebra for graduate credit which gave me 6 hours credit toward my Master's Degree. I graduated from NTSC in May of 1960 and returned in the fall to continue working on my Master's Degree. I received this degree one year later in May of 1961. I took half math and half education courses including advanced calculus, geometry, probability and statistics.
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I got a teaching job in the Dallas ISD and was assigned to Sunset High School in the fall of 1961. My classroom was 111 near the lunchroom. I taught algebra, geometry and business math there until May of 1964. While at Sunset, I organized a photography club. We gradually changed from taking and developing pictures to making movies. I bought a sound projector so we could have dialog and music with our films. We had a great time making several movies in and around the school and on location. We had exciting titles like "Roger Revolver" (a spoof of "Peter Gunn" which was on TV at the time). In the summer of 1962, we made "Raiders of the Sword" (move over "Raiders of the Lost Ark," we were here first), a civil war epic. There were a dozen other films that I still have that might be fun to show at class reunions. |
I left Dallas in 1964 and moved to Dripping Springs so that I could commute to Austin to pursue a doctorate in mathmatics at the University of Texas.
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I began teaching at UT in 1966. I left Dripping Springs in 1967 and moved to Austin where I continued to teach at UT and work on my doctoral dissertation. In the fall of 1968, I moved to Commerce, Texas about 60 miles north east of Dallas where I began a 28-year teaching career at East Texas State University (now Texas A & M University at Commerce). On January 6, 1969, I received my Ph. D. in mathematics but had to wait until May to be hooded at the annual graduation ceremony at UT in Austin. |
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I began my teaching career at ETSU as an assistant professor. In 1973, I was awarded tenure and promoted to an associate professor. I was promoted to full professor in 1980. In August, 1999, the title of Professor Emeritus of Mathematics was bestowed upon me by the Board of Regents of TAMU-Commerce. |
I attended 40 consecutive annual meetings of the Texas Section of the Mathematical Association of America from 1969 to 2008 and gave papers at many of them. I have also attended several of the joint annual meetings of the MAA and the American Mathematical Society when they met in San Antonio, Dallas or New Orleans. I have presented some papers at those meetings, the most recent being in January, 1999, entitled "A Mathematical Structure for the Chinese Zodiac."
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Twenty nine of those papers have now been published in professional journals and, in 1995, the first twenty six were compiled into a book entitled Twenty-Five and Counting. |
This pretty well summarizes my educational and professional activities since leaving Sunset.
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In the summer of 1976, my wife and I attended the 20th reunion for the class of 1956. Several coaches were there along with many of the 1956 football team. For some reason, we never heard about the 30th or 40th reunions, but on October 20 and 22, 2001 from 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at Austin's Ranch in Grapevine we attended the 45th reunion. On October 20, 21 and 22, 2006, we atttended the 50th reunion. Both were a lot of fun and well done. We had a chance to meet up with many classmates we had not seen for many years. |
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My hobbies include astronomy and space exploration, photography, web site design and model rocketry. I have an eight-inch reflector telescope equipped to take photographs of stars, planets, nebulae and comets. Two excellent magazines on this subject are Astronomy and Sky & Telescope. I am a charter member of the Planetary Society and the Cousteau Society. |
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My interest in model rocketry began with a Parent-Child week-end trip with my grandson to Space Camp at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama where we built a model rocket and launched it. The following year, we went to another Parent-Child week-end trip to Space Camp at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida where we each built rockets and launched them. Our team won first place in rocket launching. |
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I am a science fiction fan - especially of Star Trek. I have an extensive collection of models, books, books on tape and videos from the nine movies and the four TV series. From 1975 to 1985, I was the faculty sponsor of a Star Trek Club at TAMU at Commerce. Club members and I attended several Star Trek conventions in Dallas to meet the stars of the show and collect memorabilia. |
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In December, 1979, I had an interesting experience involving the first Star Trek movie and a new theatre in Commerce. Somehow the manager heard about me and the Star Trek Club and called me to discuss my dressing up as Spock and cutting the ribbon at the grand opening of the theatre. |
The drama department at TAMU-Commerce agreed to fix me up with some ears and makeup and my wife managed to put together a blue costume, so I did it, complete with police escort to the theatre. It was great fun and I got to see the movie free. The next morning, I rode on the theatre's float in the annual Christmas Parade. The theatre gave me a free pass for a year for my trouble.
On June 16, 2000, I had a wonderful adventure in Las Vegas, Nevada. A Hilton Hotel there has an attraction called: Star Trek: The Experience. To take a tour of it, click here.