RIP Milton Rowen (age 91)

Dr. Rowen was the principal of Hawthorne School (my elementary school) during my first few years there. (I am listing him only by age because I don't know whether he was born in 1917 or 1918.) The main thing I remember about him is that we were all scared shitless of him because he would come into the cafeteria where we were having lunch, and if he saw something he didn't like he would scream at all of us. I think a couple of times he even screamed right in the face of some young kid. (Unsurprisingly, he had a military background.) He's treated rather kindly in the brief obituary in Beverly Hills Weekly, but for me this was a guy to fear, not to respect. I speak as a tree rather than as a forest, but at the time, I was quite pleased when he stepped down.