Schuller’s version as presented to pastors in 1983:
Speaking of mathematics, Robert Schuller, of Chrystal [sic] Cathedral fame tells a story about sitting on a plane next to a fellow with his nose in a book…. Schuller said he wrote books on Possibility Thinking but admitted that they probably had nothing in common as “in mathematics it doesn’t matter whether you are a possibility thinker or an impossibility thinker. Two plus two equals four regardless of whether you are a negative or a positive person.”
“Well, I’m not so sure about that,” his seat partner interrupted him. “Let me tell you about myself…” etc.
How Schuller’s version got back to George Dantzig (again, in his own words):
The other day, as I was taking an early morning walk, I was hailed by Don Knuth as he rode by on his bicycle. He is a colleague at Stanford. He stopped and said, “Hey George—I was visiting in Indiana recently and heard a sermon about you in church. Do you know that you are an influence on Christians of middle America?” I looked at him amazed. “After the sermon,” he went on, “the minister came over and asked me if I knew a George Dantzig at Stanford, because that was the name of the person his sermon was about.”
The origin of that minister’s sermon can be traced to another Lutheran minister, the Reverend Schuler [sic] of the Crystal Cathedral in Los Angeles. Several years ago he and I happened to have adjacent seats on an airplane. He told me his ideas about thinking positively, and I told him my story about the homework problems and my thesis. A few months later I received a letter from him asking permission to include my story in a book he was writing on the power of positive thinking. Schuler’s published version was a bit garbled and exaggerated but essentially correct.
How a Texas churchgoer reported it:
My mother related this to me as she had heard it in a sermon in Fort Worth, Texas. A young man in college was working very hard to prove himself, studying ’til all hours to learn as much as was humanly possible. He was taking a course in upper-level math that he was very much concerned about for fear that he would not be able to pass. He studied for the final so long and so hard that he overslept on the morning of the final.
He ran into the examination room several minutes late and found three equations to solve on the blackboard. The first two went by rather easily, but the third one was impossible. He worked frantically on it until, ten minutes short of the deadline, he found a method that worked and finished the problem just as time was called. He was very disappointed in himself that such a seemingly easy problem had taken him so long to figure out.
Then, that evening he received a phone call from his professor. “Do you realize what you did on the test today?” he practically shouted at the student. “Oh, no,” thought the student, “I didn’t get the problem right after all.”
“You were only supposed to do the first two problems,” the professor continued. “The last one was just one that I wrote to show an equation that mathematicians since Einstein have been trying to solve, without success. And you just solved it!”
Although I traced the path of this academic story in Curses! Broiled Again! I presented there only paraphrases of the various retellings of George Dantzig’s experience. The full verbatim accounts quoted here are well worth comparing in order to note the numerous variations of detail that have occurred. Dantzig’s accounts above of the class and of the meeting with Schuller are quoted from an interview published in the September 1986 issue of the College Mathematics Journal. Schuller’s version, undoubtedly also included in at least one of his televised programs, is quoted from Michael and Donna Nason’s 1983 book Robert Schuller: The Inside Story. In the same year, the Schuller story was presented to pastors in the September issue of the newsletter Parables, etc. The Texas minister’s version of the story was sent to me in 1982 by Marc Hairston, then a student at Rice University in Houston. For the record, here are a few corrections and clarifications: 1. George Dantzig is in the Department of Operations Research at Stanford; 2. Schuller’s “Crystal Cathedral” is in Garden Grove, California; 3. Dantzig’s solution of the first problem was published in Annals of Mathematical Statistics, vol. 22, 1951; and 4. Dantzig, at the time of the incident, was a beginning graduate student at Berkeley. When I met Professor Dantzig—“the father of linear programming”—at Stanford in 1991, he explained several points in the story that were still vague to me even after receiving his 1987 letter in reply to my queries. The second problem he had solved, for example, was published jointly with Abraham Wald in 1951; Wald had arrived at a solution independently and by a different method. This whole incident provides a fine example of how a personal experience, repeated several times in different contexts, and circulating in both printed and oral sources, may eventually achieve a new life of its own as a folk story, although, as Dantzig gently pointed out to me, I should have titled it more correctly as “The Previously Unsolvable Math Problem.” In 1989 Dean Oisboid of Los Angeles sent me this variation of the story that he heard in the early 1970s from a junior high school mathematics teacher:
This gifted Indian student rushed in late to class and hastily scribbled down the 10 homework problems that were on the board. The next day the student approached the teacher and complained that the homework was too hard.
“Homework? What homework?” asked the teacher.
“The problems on the board,” replied the student.
“Those weren’t homework problems. Those were 10 unsolvable problems of mathematics.”
“Oh!” said the student. Then giving his homework to the teacher, he continued, “I solved 9 of them.”
I wonder what the odds are of this as an independent invention versus being yet another version of the Dantzig story. That’s a question far beyond my own mathematical ability, if you’ll pardon my impossibility thinking. I enjoyed yet another version of the story when I saw the 1997 hit film Good Will Hunting.
“The Heel in the Grate”
A query from Seattle, 1986:
Dear Professor: My aunt told this story in the late 1950s:
She said that during a local wedding one of the bridesmaids got the spike heel of her shoe caught in a ventilation grate in the aisle. The next usher coming down the aisle tried to pick up the shoe; the entire grate came up, so he just took it with him.
Then the bride came down the aisle and fell in the hole. Was my aunt suckered by an urban legend?
Joyce D. Kehoe
A reaction to this story, from Dayton, Ohio, 1987:
Dear Professor: That story in your column today is an old tale indeed! The version I heard many years ago concerned a church choir processing down the aisle with the soprano losing her heel in a grate, the Tenor lifting the entire grate and the Minister falling into the hole.
Carol G. Alexander
Another reaction to the story, from San Diego, California, 1987:
I read that story in Reader’s Digest, probably about 1950! In that case it was the choir making its processional: someone’s heel caught in the grill, she kept on walking without her shoe, the man next in line picked up the grill, and the person behind him fell in. I recall getting an enormous kick out of the story at that time, as the incident was well written. The choir was solemn, never missing a beat until the last person fell in—you could just picture the scene.
Marlene Carey
From Reader’s Digest, January 1958:
Chain Reaction
It started at the end of a Sunday morning service in an Ontario Church. The Choir began the recessional, singing as they marched in perfect unison up the center aisle to the back of the church.
The last young lady in the women’s section was wearing a new pair of shoes with needle heels—heels that are so slender they slip through any grating. And in the aisle was a grating that covered the hot-air register.
Without a thought for her fancy heels, the young woman sang and marched. And the heel of one shoe sank right through a hole in the register grate. Instantly she realized her predicament.
She knew she couldn’t hold up the whole recessional while she back-stepped to pull out her heel. She did the next best thing in the emergency. Without missing a step she slipped her foot out of her shoe and continued up the aisle. There wasn’t a break in the recessional. Everything moved like clockwork.
The first man following that young woman noted the situation and, without losing a beat, reached down and picked up her shoe.
The entire grate came with it. Startled but still singing, the man continued up the aisle bearing in his hand one grate attached to one shoe.
Never a break in the recessional. Everybody singing. Everything moving like clockwork. And then in tune and in time to the beat, the next man stepped into the open register.
—Kitchener-Waterloo (Ontario) Record, quoted in The Lutheran
Comments by Marj Heyduck’s The Best of Marj: Favorite “Third and Main” columns (Dayton [Ohio] Journal Herald, 1962):
This story not only produced outburts of laughter in The Journal Herald’s circulation area…but was reprinted in dozens of church publications in the United States and Canada…in Reader’s Digest…it produced a sequel that has given me a sure-fire ending to any speech…and, a sure sign of humor, it’s a story that bubbles up again and again as a new audience grows up to hear it…[this passage is punctuated with ellipses exactly as in the original].
[After re-checking with her source, “Woody” Jones, and retelling the story, Marj Heyduck concluded as follows, supposedly quoting the man who fell into the open register]:
“Well, we settled down and when the director was satisfied, he turned to the minister and nodded. That was the minister’s cue to give the benediction. And the minister forgot what he was going to say. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. You could see his mind had gone blank. Then, he said the first thing that came to him.
“He said, ‘And now unto Him who will keep us from falling….’ And he couldn’t go on. He realized what he had said and he started to laugh. So did the choir. So did the congregation. And it was getting to be a happy day all around—except for the choir director. He was simply furious. His eyes blazed and smoke came out of his ears!”
A comment from Woodfin B. (“Woody”) Jones of Tipp City, Ohio, 1987: Concerning “The Heel in the Grate” story, Mr. Brunvand, the incident occurred in the Hanover Presbyterian Church in Hanover, Indiana, home of Hanover College, during the 1948–49 school year.
I have a kind of proprietary feeling about the story. I told it to Marj Heyduck, but the story lay dormant until 1957 when she used it in her “Third & Main” column in The [Dayton] Journal Herald, the first time, to my knowledge, that it had been printed. Marj died several years ago [in 1969], but she is fondly remembered throughout the Miami Valley. This was one of the most requested stories when she made speeches in Dayton and the Valley.
I enclose the addresses of two of the principals in the incident, The Rev. James A. Stuckey and Edwin C. Steiner.
Testimonial from James A. Stuckey, originally written in 1980 and sent to me in 1987:
I, James Albert Stuckey, was a member of the Hanover College Choir in the spring of 1949 who, during the recessional, happened to spy the shoe of a female member of the choir (so I assumed) caught in the grate of the hot air register in the center of the aisle of the Hanover Presbyterian Church. Being the kind of courteous, thoughtful freshman so highly prized in those days, I, of course, stopped to retrieve the shoe. I got it, and the grate, tucked both under my copy of The Hymnal (1933), and continued down the aisle. The minister’s wife, who had seen all this, guided the singer behind me around the pit (one Ed Bockstiegel), but Ed Steiner, the next bass in line, fell in. The minister (John Fox) did not pronounce, “Now onto Him who is able to keep us from falling…” as the benediction. Ruth Murphy was glad to get her shoe back.
Testimonial from Ed Steiner, 1987:
Yes, it certainly was I who fell into that hot air duct…. As we were recessing I happened to look over and see Mrs. Parker [wife of Hanover College president] singing in her pew. I started to smile at her when a very strange look came over her face, and she started to shake her head at me. I was trying to figure out what the problem was, and I was completely distracted from what was going on in front of me. Needless to say, before I figured things out, I had stepped in the hole! There was absolutely no physical warning; I hit the hole cleanly; I didn’t even scrape my toe on the edge of the hole. It was like stepping off a gigantic stairstep, and I went into the hole all the way up to my thigh.
…I just dragged myself, completely unhurt, out of the hole, picked up my music and proceeded to the back of the church.
A final (?) comment from a reader, 1993:
Dear Professor: While the 1949–50 story told you by Rev. Stuckey concerning the “Heel in the Grate” (Curses! Broiled Again!) may have happened then, if so, it was the second occurrence. I can vouch for the fact that it happened in the fall of 1943 or ’44 because I was the soprano in the Hanover, Indiana, Presbyterian Church choir whose shoe caught in the grate. One of the men behind me in the choir processional attempted to retrieve the shoe, but only succeeded in tipping the grate. (The grate was quite large and heavy.)
During the recessional one of the men stepped on the grate which tipped and sent him to his knees. He quickly recovered, which is more than I can say about the rest of us when the minister started the benediction, “And now to Him who is able to keep us from falling,” etc.
Helen T. Ramsey
Denver, Colorado
The above selections comprise the most complete account of the history of this incident (or incidents?) and the resulting story versions. The letter from Helen Ramsey is published here for the first time, and it throws the question of this story’s ultimate origin and history back into confusion. If nothing else, the story presented above—if, indeed, this is finally the whole story—raises the question of why the Hanover Presbyterian Church did not fix its serious problem during the 1940s with a dangerous grate in the center aisle until years later. Perhaps they never did fix the grate, and similar accidents have continued to occur. Someday I hope to visit that church and check out the physical scene in person. Meanwhile, it is important to note, both in this “true” legend and the previous one, the important role played by the media in circulating and varying the stories. Finally, I must point out that the “heel-in-grate” incident appeared in a completely different context—that of a “clean room” of a space-travel center—in the 1966 film The Glass Bottom Boat, starring Doris Day (who lost her heel), Rod Taylor, Dick Martin (who stepped into the opening), and Arthur Godfrey.
“Craig’s World-Record Collection”
A memo circulated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990:
I would be grateful if you and your organization could respond to this request to help Craig Shergold.
Craig is a seven year old boy who has a brain tumor and has very little time left to live. It is his dream to have an entry in the Guiness Book of World Records for the largest number of get well cards ever received by an individual.
If you are willing to help and also willing to share this note with your staff, you may sends [sic] cards to:
Craig Shergold
38 Shelby Road
Carshalton
Surrey SN8 1LD
United Kingdom
Please add to and send the attached pages to another ten school districts, companies, or organizations of your choice.
A letter sent to customers of a San Diego, California, company, 1991: I am sure that you receive many requests for your time and energies and I realize that you get pulled in may [sic] different directions. However, I hope that you will find the time to help fulfill this somewhat simple request.
Craig Shergold is a seven year old child from Surrey, England, who is suffering from terminal cancer. It is his wish to be included in the Guinness Book of Records with the largest number of business cards collected by one person. Please help fulfill this request by sending one of your business cards to Cr
aig at the address below and by sending this letter to ten other individuals. If only we could meet the needs of all children so simply…
Craig Shergold
36 Sherlby Road
Carshalton
Surrey SN 1 1LD, England
DO NOT MAIL THIS LETTER TO CRAIG
A leaflet faxed to a hospital in Bakersfield, California, 1996:
Children’s Wish Foundation Request
Craig Shirgold is a 7 year old boy who lives in Keene, NH. He is dying from an inoperable brain tumor. He made a wish to Children’s Wish Foundation that he wants one million get well cards sent to him by
August 15th 1996 so that he can make the World Book of Records before he dies. Cards can be made or bought. PLEASE send the cards to this following address:
Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends Page 45
