"I was touched by the children here," said Schempp, grinning upon taking the floor after the skit. "First of all, I noticed that they didn't know the Lord's Prayer. You can blame me for that."

"He was a real classic American dissenter," says New York University journalism professor Stephen D. Solomon, author of the 2007 book, Ellery's Protest, How One Young Man Defied Tradition and Sparked the Battle over School Prayer. "He felt that his rights were being violated and the rights of his classmates. He stood up in a very unpopular cause."

But Schempp, whose life from age 16 to 23 was largely defined by the case, spent much of his adulthood building an identity separate of the young man whose protest became legendary. After graduating from Tufts University and going on to earn a Ph.D. in physics from Brown, Schempp worked as a physicist and manager on superconductor projects, MRI systems, and nuclear waste. He was a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and taught as a guest professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He also climbed mountains in Greenland, Switzerland, and Pakistan.

He began renewing his interest in First Amendment causes in earnest in the 1990s when he became concerned about the religious right's increasing attempts to put religion back in the schools. Over the years, he had changed from a young Unitarian vague about his religious beliefs to an adult who firmly believed there was no such thing as a supernatural power. Today, he is a Unitarian who also refers to himself as an atheist and secular humanist.

Known as relatively quiet and scholarly as a teen, he has become a frank and often humorous advocate for the cause that made him famous and for the rights of non-believers.

Schempp never intended to be a lone dissenter in November 1956 when he brought a borrowed copy of the Koran to school. He was a part of a group of honor students who met weekly at an English teacher's house to discuss intellectual issues. At one meeting, Schempp brought up the Bible readings in school and how they violated the First Amendment. Many of his peers agreed to stage a protest, Solomon recounted in his book on the case, but later dropped out because they feared problems with college recommendations or their parents.

Schempp's parents, though, backed his idea. And a sense of fairness motivated the teen. He knew his Jewish friends were uncomfortable and believed the same must be true for other religious minorities and non-believers.

So Schempp made his protest alone. As his homeroom teacher read 10 Bible verses to the class, Schempp leafed through the Koran. He refused to stand when a student began reading the Lord's Prayer over the announcement system. Nor did he recite the prayer. He sat in nervous silence. When homeroom ended, his teacher confronted him and asked him which book he had been reading. She asked if he planned to repeat his actions again. He said yes.