Joan Callaway is going home. The longtime Naperville North High School teacher and coach is swapping suburban sprawl and strip malls for the tranquility of her native upstate New York.
Callaway, one of the school’s original staffers and the only girls tennis coach it has ever had, officially retired last week after 33 years of teaching–all but one spent in Naperville District 203.
“She’s going to be tough to replace. She’s done a great job,” said Neil McCauley, North’s athletic director. “She’s been an integral part of the athletic program and the whole school.”
The 55-year-old Callaway and her husband, Donald, are moving to Skaneateles, N.Y., a small resort community near Syracuse.
“My little town has two [traffic] lights and it’s peaceful,” said Callaway, who was born and raised in Skaneateles and has made frequent return trips. “It’s just a pretty little place with about 6,000 in the winter and 12,000 in the summer.”
Though she looks forward to moving, Callaway’s final week in Naperville was bittersweet.
“Talk about highs and lows on emotions,” she said. “You describe it as like being a wedding and a wake. You’re starting a new life, but you’re ending something that you liked.
“I’ve had lots of kids come back from years’ past. I’ve had the most wonderful phone conversations and notes and cards.”
Her current players honored her through the 1999-2000 tennis seasons.
“They made shirts that said, `NNHS Tennis’ and on the back they said, `Thanks, Cal,'” she said. “Every time they went out to play a match, they were wearing that shirt. It sure beats a black arm band.”
A 1967 Western Illinois graduate with degrees in physical education and speech correction, Callaway joined the staff of Naperville High School [now Central] in 1968. She moved to Naperville North as a teacher and coach when it opened in 1970.
For the last 19 years, she has been boys and girls tennis coach.
“I’ve had 55 sports seasons,” Callaway said. “I was a field hockey player back East and played at Western. Then I started the program at Central. I coached [field hockey and softball] at Central for five years, and when they started an athletic program at North, I started softball and girls tennis. In 1981, I took over boys tennis.”
Between the two tennis teams, Callaway has collected an estimated 500 victories and eight DuPage Valley Conference crowns. Her boys team won the 1994 state title, one of nine championship trophies the school has earned.
And though winning the 1994 title–with doubles champions Matt Horsley and Jeff Laski—was a career highlight, Callaway said she prefers coaching less-talented groups.
Winning the state title, she said, “was a real goal and accomplishment. It’s something you dream of as a coach. But my best seasons are when I don’t have the horses, when I really feel that I am the coach and they try to do what I say. I feel I’m a part of it rather than a person who packs the bags, drives the van and gets the lineup.”
A desire to leave home and find a good collegiate physical education program led Callaway to Western Illinois.
“I came from a snobby little resort town and said it’s time to grow up and get away,” she said. “When I first came out here, I was in a total state of shock. I saw cornfields and hogs–not pigs–they were called hogs. And I couldn’t understand these people. They had that Midwestern drawl and I thought `what have I gotten myself into?’ “
But she grew fond of the Midwest and opted to stay when she found a teaching job in Elmhurst.
The next year Callaway switched to Naperville, where she quickly ran into controversy while teaching a class in health and drug education.
“This lady came after me because she said I was encouraging drug use,” Callaway said. “She wanted to fire me and three other teachers. It was terrible.”
But Callaway, who said she was following prescribed curriculum, survived the challenge and remained on the job.
Over more than three decades, Callaway has noted changes in teens, their parents and the community at large.
“[Students] have become very familiar with you to the point of saying things you would never have thought to say to a teacher,” she said. “They respect you, but they don’t understand why we can’t be that familiar. I think part of that is a lot of these parents want them as a friend and not their child.
“They’re so more worldly, so more open. But they are still just as naive as ever, if not more so. They think they know more, but they don’t.”
Pressures to succeed also have increased.
“There’s an awful lot of pressure to be A students,” she said.
But a positive development has been increased diversity in the schools.
“If you can’t fit in there, you can’t fit in anywhere,” Callaway said. “There is a group for every kid. The diversity, there’s so much of it. That’s a plus I didn’t have as a kid.”
Callaway comes full circle when she returns to Skaneateles. She and her husband will move into the 100-year-old family home where she was raised.
“A major reason I’m going back is I have an 88-year-old mom. I just won’t put her in a nursing home,” Callaway said. “It’s a promise I made to my father when he passed away, so she’ll live with us.”
And she plans to stay busy.
“I might work at a country club as a [tennis] pro,” said. “I have no thoughts about going back and subbing or helping [at schools]. I need to see what my life is going to be like. It’s going to be totally changed.
“But it’s the best thing to do. It’s time to put the family first.”
