The other day, a big wooden door appeared in the Staples High School main office.
Not just any door. Both sides were covered with names and dates — one per year, from 1967 to 1988.
And not just a regular door. This one started life on an outhouse.
The door’s first decade…
One day, someone brought it to Westport Adult Ed class. The teacher was Milton Fisher. The course was “Applied Creativity.”
Fisher — very creatively — found a use for the door. He called it “the door to creativity.”
Each year, his class ended with the judging of students’ term projects. The winner painted his or her name on the door — in a suitably creative font and style — and kept it for a year.
But times change. The course ended. This year it looked like the door was headed for the junkyard. Who would want it, a quarter century after the final winner won it?
Fisher’s daughter — Stanford professor and Mark Twain expert Shelley Fisher Fishkin — dropped it off at Staples. It sat there, leaning against a wall. Principal John Dodig was unsure how — or even whether — to display it.
But it caught the eye of art teacher Jackie Jeselnick. Now she plans to take it home, encase it in glass, and turn it into a coffee table.
For an outhouse door, you can’t get more creative than that.
…and its 2nd.
