Veteran Educator Still Going Strong

Ed Lominsky is still educating Fairfield's high school students.

"I teach Summer school, and it's still enjoyable," he told me by telephone this evening from his home in Fairfield. "In fact, I just got my letter in the mail," said the former Andrew Warde High School athletic director. Lominsky, who started at Warde in 1967, retired as a full-time educator in June of 2000. He said he's been teaching Summer school "eight or nine years."

Lominsky returned to coach the boys' tennis team at Fairfield Warde for three years before stepping down last year. "I actually was never away from coaching," he told me. "I went to Fairfield High School (after consolidation) and coached there."

Have the students changed all that much since we went to Warde over 30 years ago?

"On the high school level, kids are going to get away with what they're going to get away with," he admitted. "They haven't changed."

Longtime Warde teacher and tennis coach John Honey was actually responsible for recruiting Lominsky to the Melville Avenue campus 40 years ago. "John asked me to do him a favor," Lominsky said. "He couldn't find anybody to take the JV (tennis) kids. I had just graduated a senior class from Stratford High. I started my teaching and coaching career at Andrew Warde in 1967."

Lominsky remained at the high school following the consolidation of Warde and Ludlowe over 20 years ago. The transition from two high schools to one magnified the rivalry between both sides of town. Through it all, he remains partial to Warde and is still very much a Crimson Eagle.

"This side of town had confidence in that we knew how to do the job, and we did the job," he acknowledged. "After consolidation, I had a parent on the phone from the other side of town every other day. This neighborhood had faith in us."

How did the consolidation affect the students? "The Warde kids were going to become Ludlowe kids. The Ludlowe kids were not going to become Warde kids," he told me. He said the Warde students would become influenced by the "button-down" society of the other side of town. However, "We weren't going to have an affect on the Ludlowe kids."

Nearly 20 years later, Fairfield High School split into Warde and Ludlowe once again. The two-high school system adversely affected Warde, according to Lominsky.

"One of my disappointments is that I felt there was a mass exodus of very good teachers to the other side of town," he told me. "They're (Ludlowe) getting very good because of the Warde influence. I don't know a single administrator at Andrew Warde." Lominski feels Ludlowe headmaster Nancy Larsen is most responsible for recruiting the top Warde educators to "the other side of town."

Lominsky told me he underwent a very difficult back operation in October of 1998. "Physically, I can't do what I want to do on the tennis court." The operation fused the third, fourth, and fifth lumbar discs in his back.

He is flying to Las Vegas Sunday, though, to play golf and visit with an old acquaintance for four days. He seemed very excited to be able to chat about his days at Andrew Warde, and his passion and partiality for "our side of town" was not lost on this typist.

"I feel well," he said to me. Mr. Lominsky, you sound well, too.

Share your memories of Mr. Lominsky in the "comments" link below.

Paul

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