Eastipedia: T. Michael Chaffee

T. Michael Chaffee is the European History Advanced Placement teacher at Shawnee Mission East. He has been teaching at SM East for 11 years and coaches cross country and track.

Chaffee was born in St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Mo. in 1945.  Growing up he was known as “king” of his siblings. He went to elementary school at Prairie, and continued his high school education at Shawnee Mission East. As a child, Chaffee wanted to play center field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Chaffee’s interest in running came from Roger Banister, who was the first man to run a four minute mile in the year of 1954.  Chaffee was 9 years old at the time and was inspired to strive for running accomplishments as well. He started by running from his school to his house, running 1 block, and walking 1 block, repeating until he reached his house and could eventually run the whole route.

Chaffee was a “shy and timid woodland creature” during high school, but he excelled in cross country, track, and football. Chaffee loved playing the position of end. “I impressed the coach for no good reason,” he said, “but I was wearing braces at the time, and my lips have a tendency to get real dry, so it would get bloody because of that, and the [coach] was impressed because he’d think that I was more macho than I appeared.”  Chaffee considered himself to be an average student and frequently crammed for exams. He enjoyed math in high school but his interest died off in college when he was taught by a student teacher that he had trouble understanding.

Chaffee graduated from SM East in 1964 and went on to KU for his freshmen year, went to UMKC sophomore and junior year and KU for his senior year. Chaffee explained that he was “young and stupid, and didn’t know what [he] was doing.”  He majored in American History but did not obtain his master’s, which prevented him from teaching AHAP. He married his first wife shortly before leaving for Vietnam.  Upon returning from the war, Chaffee realized his marriage wasn’t going to work, and divorced his wife of almost two years.

Chaffee says people always hope to hear big war stories but Chaffee had none to share.  His most dramatic experiences in Vietnam was losing his Jack Jenson signed baseball glove and once scrambling to find a fox hole.  He worked as the radio contact man while he was on the fields in Vietnam and only had opportunities to shoot trees.

After serving, Chaffee found a job at B. Dalton bookstore. While working at B. Dalton’s, he took time off to go back to school.  He unsuccessfully tried his hand at linguistics, and also attempted law school four times. He worked at B. Dalton’s for several years before meeting his second wife, Joann, at the age of 26. After a few years she told him that he needed to “either propose or get out.”  He “figured that he liked her cooking alright,” and they married in a courthouse. According to Chaffee, the noise coming from the close-by railroad made his “I do” a debatable point.  Soon after, the couple borrowed money from family and friends to buy Whistler’s Books.  While working at the bookstore, his wife paid the bills and dealt with publishers while Chaffee got the “fun job” of ordering all the new books. He misses the days of looking at sale catalogs.

Finally, Chaffee finished the graduate education necessary to become a teacher and began teaching U.S. history and Economics at SM East. Unfortunately, his Econ classes were unable to sell the products and the $700 debt incurred fell to his colleague Rebecca Murphy to fix.  He never taught Econ again, but the EHAP teacher at the time left and Chaffee took the open position.

Commonly known by the self-proclaimed title of “ the little old man”, Chaffee continues to pass on his knowledge of European History in what is reputed to be one of the hardest classes at SM East.  In his down time, he enjoys watching CSI with his wife and his cat, Pacha, while munching on a Cookies N’ Cream Hershey’s bar.