STERLING
Dennis Russell Dunklee
Copyright © 2011 by Dennis R. Dunklee
PROLOGUE
So who is Sterling? In 1999, I wrote a book titled You Sound Taller on the Telephone for Sage Publishing/Corwin Press. The book then, and still today, serves a specific purpose—to provide pre-service school administrators with real-life, on-the-job scenarios and examples that support general theories in education leadership—designed to supplement any education leadership textbook—preferably, of course, one of mine. The book was a recap of some my personal experiences as a school principal. Since I planned to use the book in my own university classes, I wanted to avoid being accused of telling personal “war stories” as a part of my lectures. When writing You Sound Taller, I felt self conscious about using my own name. Every time I attempted to, I would immediately develop an extreme case of “writer’s block,” so I named the main actor in that book, Grant Sterling. Bottom line: Grant Sterling is my pseudonym.
What I never anticipated was that Grant Sterling would take on a life of his own. Soon after the book hit university classrooms around the country and abroad, I started receiving e-mails and telephone calls from students, professors, and even school principals presenting me with real time scenarios they were experiencing and asking me “what would Sterling do—how would he handle this?” My standard answer was, and continues to be, “I don’t know what Sterling would do, but I’ll be happy to tell you what I’d do!”
Sterling once received a personal invitation, addressed in care of me, requesting that I contact him and ask if he would conduct a state wide leadership workshop for school administrators. Sterling, through me, respectfully declined. I don’t know what Sterling’s reason was, but I had a scheduling conflict.
The curiosity expressed about Sterling by readers eventually led to this memoir. When I started, I was reaching for something beyond my conscious self. I guess I was searching for some kind of candid understanding of my place in the world. Once I began, I realized that there were forces beyond me, moving me past mere recollection and reminiscence to a place I didn’t even know about, a place of healing and resolution. I found that taking a journey through my past to get to the present was a satisfying experience. I know those days are long gone, never to be lived again, but I recall the past with fondness. To me, that’s the power of imagery, the ability to conjure emotion and memory. Did I find anything in my memory beyond my conscious self? Not yet, but I’m still contemplating.
As the reader will undoubtedly recognize, Sterling has always been enormously amused by the passing parade of life. His curiosity is as insatiable as his need to see the humorous side of a very challenging profession. Searching for new ideas in Sterling's life work might yield few. If you’re looking for common, bottom line sense, you’ll certainly find that.
This book lays claim to being historical fiction, or to put it better, fictionalized history. That is, the time and locations are real and can be authenticated, in spite of the fact that peoples’ names have been purposely changed. The significance of any biography or memoir lies in the writer’s ability to be truthful. I’ve done my best to recreate scenes that delivered the truth as I lived it and knew it.
This is my story, my life as I’ve experienced it. In life, everything is temporary, I believe—even life itself.
1
“Damn, it’s early,” I mumbled to myself as I slid into my car for the trip down Bull Run Mountain to the flatlands that gently slope eastward to Washington, D.C and the Potomac River. The fog got thicker and thicker the farther down the mountain I drove, hugging the low hills and hollows and eerily transforming the landscape. Normally I like foggy mornings. Fog has always been a relaxing phenomenon for me—but not this morning. I was on my way to the hospital for what my doctor called “a procedure.” He called it a procedure, I guess, because he knew I was apprehensive about the whole situation, and perhaps thought that the word “procedure” was less terrifying than surgery. I didn’t think so! He was going to place “one or more stents” in “one or more arteries” to “remove one or more clots” that were slowing the blood to my “one and only heart.” Is this what getting old is all about, I wondered. Is this the beginning of one medical moment after another?
By the time I hit the early morning D.C. traffic, the fog had pretty much dissipated and my thoughts drifted to a casual conversation I once had with a psychiatrist at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas. I was assisting Dr. Phillip Edwards in some research that he hoped would result in the development of a program of preventive therapy for school administrators, specifically school principals, to reduce the number of “nervous breakdowns and heart attacks suffered,” he said, “by an unusually high percentage of men and women in your profession.” I was a school principal then, and he and I spent many hours talking about what he called “the rigors of the principalship.” I often suggested that the noun should really be “weirdness” and he just as often ignored me. In our meetings I usually did most of the talking while he listened, prodded me occasionally and took seemingly endless notes. One afternoon, out of nowhere, he looked up from his note-taking just long enough to suggest that “someday, Grant, you should write a book about your experiences—perhaps a memoir.”
“Isn’t that something one does just before they die?” I asked.” He laughed, asked me another probing question and went back to his note taking. About five minutes later, looking over the rim of his glasses he quietly said, “Grant, listen to me. When you go, the stories will go too, unless you’ve passed them on.”
“I understand that, Phil, but the process of writing one’s memoirs seems rather narcissistic to me.”
His response was intriguing…it was, I guess, the kind of response that you might expect from a psychiatrist. He said that “whether we like it or not, we’re inside our own head all the time anyway.”
So there I was, dodging ever increasing traffic on my way to the hospital and I’m thinking, “Sorry, Phillip, it may be too damn late for those memoirs! What I’m experiencing inside my head at this moment is the strong potential that, in about an hour as a matter of fact, I will be in the throes of an out-of-body, out of my mind experience!”
In the end, I clearly survived the “procedure.” The result was a single stent in place, my blood flow back in sync, and Edwards’ words of suggestion now sounding much more like a challenge. It’s interesting that I thought of his words just before my arrival at the hospital. And today, many years later, I’m still too busy thinking about “what’s next” in my life to worry about “things past.”
This morning I was treated to breakfast by some of my university colleagues who, among others, have been asking me, “what’s next?” ever since I announced my retirement months ago. The breakfast was finally, thank God, the last scheduled event in what has been a long week of mandatory retirement “must have, must do, must attend,” celebratory activities. I wondered what my colleagues would have done if I’d announced that instead of retiring, I‘d decided to go into an “assisted dying” program. “Isn’t that what Social Security is all about anyway,” I would ask? Actually, I didn’t really wonder what they would have done with the assisted dying-social security pronouncement; I know exactly what they would have done. As university professors like me, they would have debated the issue of connectivity concerning assisted dying and social security over lunch ad infinitum, sent hundreds, if not thousands of e-mails, to each other, set up seminars, conferences, and summit meetings and finally, and most important, write articles, monographs and books, all hoping to become known “authorities” on the subject so they could be considered as expert consultants and collect substantial fees. Been there—done that!
So, this past week has been a kind of “do-over—do again” in my life. Twenty-five years ago, when I “retired” from public school education, I listened to the usual farewell speeches commemorating my tenure as a teacher and administrator. There were plaques and speeches and parties and other personally embarrassing events. Words like “we’ll miss you,” “thanks for your dedication” and “good luck at the university” were substituted for a much simpler “see ya ‘round,” a hail and farewell that would have really pleased me more.
Now, again, my official send off from the university has been marked by the same kind of plaques and speeches and parties where embarrassing words like “a true leader of education,” “inspiring professor,” “highest rated professor in the university,” and “Professor Emeritus” were bestowed. Words that should have humbled me to tears? Hell no! They were right on target. But still, I wanted to yell twenty-five years ago, and now again today, “enough with the damn spectacle! I’m only retiring from this job. My life’s work has not yet been fully accomplished! Listen up, damn it! I don’t want to work one day longer than I should, but also not one day less than I could.” But I didn’t yell then…or now. I interacted politely with the requisite smile, friendly demeanor, appropriate composure and dignity of manner—all the things I thought I should do in case I ever needed to borrow money from any of my former colleagues—just in case my assisted dying efforts outlasted my social security benefits.
In a later conversation with Edwards, he brought up the memoir thing once again. His over-enthusiasm about my life story was beginning to be a bit unnerving.
“You know,” he said, “your experiences are part of your unique story, Grant— and part of the reason why you should tell it. You need to explore the real meaning life has for you. This journey we’re all on is a varied one, for sure,” he continued, “but there are some things we’re all going through. Each of us, in our search for life’s rationalizations, has a vast amount of experience to draw from. Our struggles and hardships, along with our achievements and blessings, teach us life’s lessons. The process of sharing your life story may help you identify the core values and beliefs you hold. Sharing it may pass on valuable lessons to others, and for that reason, is clearly part of why you should tell your story.”
“Bullcrap,” I thought to myself.
“And what’s the other part, Phillip?” I asked with a purposeful hint of sarcasm in my voice. He instantly gave me that over the top of his glasses look.
“Grant, I think if you start writing you’ll find the answer.”
Damn psychiatrist!
2
“Funny you should ask about that, Katherine! If you’ve been searching all this time for some deep-dark philosophical leadership theory in an off-handed statement that I made one time in passing, you ain’t never gonna find it,” I told her in my best Kansas drawl. “If you’ll recall, I was involved in a discussion with your leadership class, and we were discussing the ‘theory of aggregate impression.’ One of your fellow students asked about the role physical stature might play in one’s impression of another, and I answered, in jest, that ‘I sound much taller on the telephone’—an observation made a long time ago by a lady named Roberts that’s gotten nonsensically stuck, probably forever, in my mind.
“During my first principalship, long before you were born,” I laughed, “I had the pleasure—more often displeasure to be honest, of working with an 8th grade student named Shelly Roberts. Shelly was a perpetual pain in the ass! She was the kind of young lady who thought she was far better than anyone else at school, especially her female teachers.
“For almost a semester, I had dozens of conversations with her mother about Shelly’s continuous problem of mouthing off to teachers. Her mother and I worked very hard to resolve Shelly’s hostility toward her teachers and to keep her from being suspended, possibly even expelled, from school. One day I realized that Shelly, usually sent to my office at least every other day, had in fact, not made one of her grandiose entrances that always included waving her discipline referral slip at everyone in sight, in quite a while. I asked my secretary to check the attendance list for the past couple of weeks and, to my surprise, Shelly had been at school, in class, with no referrals. I decided to call her mother with the hopeful news! I remember the conversation vividly.
“‘Hello, Mrs. Roberts,’ I started, ‘don’t panic, this is Grant Sterling. I’m simply calling to let you know that you and I may have finally convinced Shelly to control her temper with her teachers. She hasn’t been sent to the office for at least two weeks, knock on wood, and I wanted you to have some good news from me for a change!’
“Katherine, I kid you not; I could actually hear her sigh with relief. Her response was something like, ‘You did scare me for a moment, although I’m so glad you called. Yes…knock on wood, please. Thanks for your help and understanding, and especially your call!’
“For reassurance, I told Mrs. Roberts that it was no big deal and that teenagers can get pretty testy, especially when it comes to adult authority, and then I said, ‘you know, we’ve been talking on the phone for almost five months now, and we’ve never actually met!’ At that point I extended, as I often did with parents, an open invitation for her to stop by the school for coffee sometime so we could meet personally. To make a long story short, it was just a few days later that my secretary poked her head in my office and informed me that Shelly’s mother was in the outer office…said I’d invited her in for coffee.
“‘Mrs. Roberts, hello—I’m Grant Sterling,’ I said as I strolled out of my office. ‘How nice of you to take me up on my offer. We finally get to meet face-to-face!’
“Well…now don’t laugh, Katherine, but she eyeballed me up and down with a really strange, puzzled look. I felt awkward, foolish even, just standing there as she gave me a thorough once-over, and then she blurted out, ‘You’re the principal? You’re Sterling? I, ah, well, you know,’ she stuttered, ‘you sound…well, you sound so much taller on the telephone!’
“I gotta tell you, I suddenly felt even shorter than my 5-foot 6-inch height as I escorted her into my office, purposely ignoring the stifled giggling of my secretaries and the scramble by a couple of teachers, who just happened to be hanging around in the office, to get out to the main hall so I wouldn’t be able to hear their laughter. For years after that incident, I was reminded often and by many, of Mrs. Roberts’ supposedly keen observation about my telephonic height. But never fear, Katherine, I took it all in stride...albeit short strides. So, you see, that statement wasn’t really a theory, but rather a fact! Now, I’m sure you have better things to do than stand around here listening to me reminisce! So, get going, out of here now, and fire up your engines for your new assignment. And don’t forget…”
“I know,” she said in a whispered tone. “Stay focused, take names, and kick butt!”
We laughed. I knew, and she knew as well, that she was well prepared to be a “star” in her new job, and a credit to the profession.
“Thank you for all your help and advice,” she continued. “You are the best, Dr. Sterling! I hope I can make you proud of me. I’m extremely happy about where my doctoral work has taken me, but at the same time I’m really sorry you’ve decided to retire. Future students will certainly miss the opportunity to learn from you. I wish…”
“Enough…thank you, Katherine,” I deliberately interrupted her with a smile and a hug and sent her on her way. Her final words to me that day, kind of thrown back over her shoulder as she left, were, “You really do sound so much taller on the telephone, Dr. Sterling!” I laughed as I mumbled in a voice only she could hear, “smart ass!”
As I looked out my third floor office window in the university’s education building, I could see students laying claim to the sun and warmth. Spring was finally arriving. I could usually judge the temperature outside by the cadence of students moving to and from classes. They were in absolutely no hurry that day. I could see Katherine walking toward the west student parking lots. She, unlike her fellow students, was hurrying along like a person with a mission.
“I remember that feeling well,” I muttered to myself as I closed my office door, sat down in my favorite chair, leaned precariously back and swung my feet to my desktop for a moment, I hoped, of uninterrupted silence.
This old chair, with its perpetually squeaky swivel action, has witnessed a lot of interesting things over the past years, all pretty damn good. My life has been exciting and fun. I love that colorful mobile suspended from my office ceiling by a nearly invisible black piece of fishing line. Every time I look at that amazing piece of sentimental art, I get flash-back images of fishing for bluegill at Miller Lake or kids tying themselves to their school desks at Center Junior High School. There are, just like anyone my age can tell you, many stories in one’s life. However, that mobile has nothing to do with fishing or school desks; it’s a collection of icons that graphically depict many of the activities and coursework typical of a public school—a treble clef for music, a hammer for industrial arts, a globe for history, a book for literature, and so on. That mobile has hung proudly, been complimented on by thousands, and collected dust in my various offices since my early days as a school administrator.
June Hazel, an art teacher, made that for me just after I helped her avoid what I thought was going to be a nervous breakdown. I’d strongly recommended that she take early retirement and she did--- a smart move on my part and actually, an even smarter move on her part.
June was an art teacher at Center Junior High, my first assignment as a principal. She was an excellent artist and teacher, and had been adored by her former students. During the previous few years, however, she’d not been as effective as she used to be, and enrollment in her classes was steadily declining. The district’s art supervisor had suggested to me that she might consider early retirement if we approached her cautiously, but we decided to give her another year to see if she could rekindle her old “spark” under a new principal. I found it interesting at first, but eventually found it extremely annoying, that June would casually slip into my office very early every morning, move a chair next to my desk, and plop herself down to present a seemingly never-ending list of problems she wanted me to resolve for her immediately. At first, I thought she was just odd. After awhile, I theorized it must be her particular way of brown-nosing the new principal. I finally realized that she just needed some positive strokes from me at the beginning of each day. That was not going to work for me. I liked to be in my office at least two hours before teachers arrived, and I needed that time to tackle the paperwork that had accumulated during the previous day, and often seemed to mysteriously multiply overnight. June’s morning visits were clearly interrupting my routine. At first I‘d simply put aside my work and carefully listen to her worries and concerns. Then, after a few minutes, I would usher her from my office, gently at first, then, I’m sorry to admit, with growing abruptness.
“June, please go now, I’ve really got to get my work done,” I’d say. She would return, smiling, the next morning. So, I started arriving at my office a half hour earlier than usual, but June would be waiting. An hour earlier, she’d be waiting. Now in complete desperation and torn between being sensitive to her needs or acting like an insensitive toad, I tried a new tactic. She usually stood at the faculty mailboxes in the outer office and shuffled through her mail for about three or four minutes after I unlocked and entered my office. One morning, I rushed into my office, grabbed papers, pencils, and a notepad, and locked myself in the private bathroom that had been graciously provided in the principal’s office by architects long departed. I sat, lid down, pants up, on the john and slowly worked my way through my paperwork. When I emerged 30 or so minutes later, she was nowhere in sight. “Good,” I thought, “I’ll just do this for a few days and maybe that will break her seemingly habitual need for a fix!” I even replaced the cord on my phone with a longer one that I could snake under the bathroom door giving my temporary “throne of power” communications! I still chuckle at the image of me sitting on the john, surrounded by papers while I talked on the phone.
My office staff surely thought I’d lost my mind, and I should have simply put my foot down and barred June from my office, period! On the other hand, my head custodian, Bob Croswell thought the whole situation was the funniest thing he’d ever seen and took extreme pleasure in telling every maintenance person who visited the building about his crazy principal who hides in the john every morning!
When I arrived for work one morning about two weeks after I had initiated my infamous “bathroom escape method,” June was noticeably absent from the office.
“It worked,” I thought. So I tried my regular desk routine again. About 10 minutes later, just as I was about to pat myself on the back for being so cool and ingenious, June appeared, pulled up a chair, and casually sat down.
“I so glad you’re feeling better, Grant” she whispered. “That flu bug must have really bitten you bad!”
I vividly, and I do mean vividly, remember resting my head on my hand and arm and thinking, “Damn! What now? Another two stinking weeks on the john for Christ’s sake? No! The hell with sensitivity—it’s time to be totally assertive even though I’m probably going to feel like a complete S.O.B. when I’m finished!”
“June,” I snapped! “Why do you come in here each morning? You can clearly see I have a mountain of paperwork to do. Some of it even includes supply and equipment orders for you. I purposely come in early so I can get some of this done before teachers and kids arrive. I’m really sorry, but you can’t do this anymore! Now what…just what is it that you really want?”
That did it! Her eyes welled up in tears.
“I’m so scared,” she sobbed softly. “I just need to know that last year isn’t going to repeat itself. You seem so confident that everything is going to be all right. I wish I had some of your courage but I don’t!”
Well, didn’t I feel like a real ass? June, you see, had spent all of her adult life teaching at that school, and had been deeply affected, if not traumatized, by the dramatic changes in the community. The year was 1971 and the school’s faculty and staff had frequently been threatened by major citywide race riots the previous year.
“Maybe,” she whimpered, “maybe I just need to retire—I’m eligible, you know—but I would miss the kids so much. I don’t know what to do. I’m a nervous wreck! I’m sorry, I really am.”
“Did she say ‘retire’? Is this the time to cultivate the idea of retirement,” I thought to myself.
“June, I would hate to lose you, but you just can’t go on like this. Maybe you ought to seriously consider a retirement option before your health is adversely affected. You need to take care of yourself first, you know. The kids will survive. Why don’t you talk with your husband about this tonight, and I’ll make an appointment for you to visit with someone from the personnel office whenever you want.”
She thanked me—I thought sincerely but I wasn’t really sure—and just as quietly as she came in, she left my office. Her perpetual smile was missing; her eyes focused on the floor.
The rest is history, good or bad, but I did what I guessed was the right thing to do. June made the decision to retire immediately, but I asked her to stay on for the remainder of the school semester to help train a new teacher. I rationalized that this might help June make the transition without feeling she was abandoning “her” kids. On her last duty day, and after the faculty and I honored her at a luncheon, she surprised me with that mobile.
And custodian Bob, to commemorate my new found use for my private bathroom, painted the cover and seat of my toilet in the school’s colors—purple and gold. He’s probably still laughing about the whole situation yet today, somewhere. Thanks again, June…and of course, you too, Bob! I really did love that school!
And I know exactly, well, maybe not quite exactly, where my anecdotal notes are from that whole mess with June Hazel. They’re in that somewhat imposing bank of institutional grey file cabinets along the west wall of my office. Every drawer’s contents are vaguely marked with scribbled words. The operative words are “vaguely” and “scribbled!” I’m a lousy file sorter. Those age-yellowed labels on each drawer are supposed to give me a hint of what’s inside. They don’t! However, I can assure you that June Hazel’s story is in there somewhere. However, the real question is not about where my anecdotal notes regarding her are hidden—the question right now is simply what files, records and materials to keep, and what to dump. God knows what’s crammed in there. Twenty-five years in public education and twenty-two more in higher education equals 47 years of collected stuff to weed through. Thank you notes, award certificates never framed and long forgotten, newspaper articles, and probably a ton of other memorabilia. How does one back out of a long succession of mornings and evenings through nearly half a century? Do you just keep the recollections and dispose of the evidence? Was the French poet Baudelaire right when he wrote, “How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering?” Au contraire, Monsieur Baudelaire, remembering who I was, am now, and how I got here is…and these shoeboxes? I thought I’d gotten rid of all of these!
When I was a principal, I’d donate shoeboxes like these—full of confiscated yo-yos, squirt guns, you name it—to the Marine Corps toy drive each year. My motive was simply the recycling of instruments of educational distraction. “Let all those who follow me have the opportunity to build such a wonderful and voluminous collection,” was my thinking. But this particular one doesn’t harbor toys, I’m afraid. A 12-inch switchblade with a scrimshaw handle, a rusty starter’s pistol, brass knuckles (two pairs), an antique dental pick, a set of nun chucks, assorted pocket knives, a table knife… I don’t know how many guns, knives, and other assorted weapons I destroyed or turned over to the police during my years as a principal. I guess I just simply forgot this one. Oh, and this shoebox—nobody will believe this, but I’ve never figured out a discreet way of disposing of this particular one. I’d better now. This box contains six pornographic tapes that were confiscated as evidence in the arrest of one of my Center Junior High teachers, who was nabbed by the police for masturbating in a porn theater. What a difficult situation that was for me!
On the day that particular incident hit my desk, I was shuffling through the call slips that my secretary had carefully positioned, as she always did, directly in the middle of my desk. Classes had just resumed following Christmas break. My paperwork was caught up, so I had plenty of time, for a change, to return phone calls.
The first was from John Calkins’ mother. She was noticeably nervous on the phone, but the gist of her conversation was that, even though her son John was not going to be happy about it, she and her husband wanted him removed from Mr. Stevens’ class. She suggested a study hall instead.
“Strange,” I remember thinking to myself. “Fred Stevens is one of the strongest and most popular teachers at Center.”
As the school’s instrumental music teacher, Stevens had one of the largest and best music programs in the inner city. Students and parents flocked to his concerts as well as the school musical each year. Problems in his classroom were rare. I was completely bewildered by Calkins’ request. “Mrs. Calkins, may I ask why?” I inquired.
“I’d rather not discuss our reasons. I wish I could, but I just can’t,” she said.
‘‘All right,” I told her. “I’ll refer your request to John’s counselor. She’ll work with John to find a replacement class or a study period. Does he know about this?” Calkins said that she and her husband had agonized about the class change for about a week. They had just told John that morning, before school, about their wishes.
“He was very upset,” she said, “especially when we couldn’t really discuss our reasons with him either.”
I could tell that Mrs. Calkins was upset as well, so I didn’t press the issue further. I assured her that the school would work with John to make the transition as easy as possible. I shared what little information I had gleaned from Mrs. Calkins with John’s counselor and went back to my call slips, the question of “why” still lingering.
Over the next few days, I received a number of additional requests from parents to remove their children from Stevens’ classes. In each case, parents were strangely hesitant to share any rationale for their request. I asked Stevens point-blank what he thought the problem might be. He said he had “no clue.” I remember how frustrated I was with this whole situation. I’d worked extremely hard to build a rapport with the school’s parents and this “clamming up” thing was personally disheartening.
Finally, Gil Martin, father of a seventh-grade band member, was willing, if not eager, to share the problem with me. He also wanted his kid “out of that man’s reach!” After a moment’s pause, he took off on a shouting tirade about today’s society, politicians, and a bucketful of self-professed philosophical garbage. One thing he said caught my attention immediately… “Someone who’s been arrested in a porn theater for doing what he was doing has no business being around children!”
“Are you talking about Stevens?” I calmly asked.
I can still hear his voice as he informed me in a half laughing, half sarcastic tone that he had heard that “Stevens was sitting in the front row of the Princess Theater, you know, that porn theater downtown, and the cops caught him saying a private prayer for the Church of the First Holy Monkey.”
“Church what?” I asked. “What are you saying!?”
“Oh, come on, Sterling, you know what I mean—your guy was masturbating during the movie! Can you believe that?” Martin continued his account, some true, some rumor, as I quietly flipped through my Rolodex for the phone number of police detective Bob Miller. I knew that Miller would give me accurate information. He was an officer in the juvenile division, and he and I had worked together with any number of troubled kids for quite a while.
I thanked Martin for calling and assured him we’d transfer his son out of seventh-grade band that day. Miller was in his office at the police station and answered my call immediately. He was unusually formal and short in his response to my query.
“As I understand it,” he said, “the vice guys picked Stevens up the day after Christmas. They’d had a complaint from the Princess Theater about this guy before. This time they caught him on surveillance tape. I think the charges are indecent exposure in a public place. His brother or somebody posted bail.”
When he stopped momentarily for a breath, I quickly asked, “Bob, how come nobody from vice called me and filled me in on this situation? How come I’ve not seen it in the newspaper? They usually go hog-wild with something like this!”
“I’m not sure,” he answered, “but I think his brother knows somebody in vice. I think they’re keeping it quiet until the case comes before a judge. Or maybe he’s just going to quietly plead guilty and pay a fine, rather than go to court. That’s really all I know.”
I thanked him and hung up. I couldn’t help worrying as I attempted to get a handle on any kind of resolution for this issue. The problem was that Stevens’ private life had become suddenly very public, at least in the Center neighborhood! Parents were up in arms—I knew that I was going to have to fire him. And I knew that if the exodus from his classes continued and I tried to somehow shield him, or if I didn’t act fast enough to be able to take personal credit for any resolution of the issue, somebody would certainly leak the Princess incident to the press, and I’d have to deal with one hell of a brush fire! I was going to have to get some guidance on the whole situation. Smart-guessing, which usually always worked for me, was not the way to go this time.
I closed my office door and, although I was reluctant to do it, placed a priority call to the Deputy Superintendent for Personnel, Frank Lewis. Lewis was on the phone almost immediately, and I quickly outlined the situation.
“Grant, this is going to be difficult for you,” he said. “I know this guy’s a good teacher. I’m going to call the chief of police. If the charge is real, I’ll call the county attorney to see if she is going to prosecute. If the answers are yes and yes, Stevens is gone. I’ll call you back.”
Within 10 minutes I got the word. The answers were, unfortunately, “yes” and “yes.” I immediately sent a message to Stevens to see me right after school. In the meantime, I called the district’s supervisor of music and requested the name of a long-term substitute for Stevens. He wanted to know “why, what’s up,” but I brushed him off with a quick “not now!”
Stevens appeared in my office within 20 minutes after the final bell for the day. He looked tired, but then, I recall thinking he always looked tired at the end of the day. He puts everything he has into his work.
I took a deep breath.
“Fred, bad news…the incident you were involved in at the Princess Theater during Christmas break has been brought to my attention. I’ve verified the alleged facts and, as you’re very well aware, a number of parents have called to have their kids removed from your classes. They know about the situation. You know about the situation. Damn it, Fred, I’m just finding it out! I wish you had talked to me about it when I first asked you what you thought the problem was!”
I was trying to make myself angry to bolster the courage to do what was necessary. I was getting there, but it was difficult. He started to say something but I didn’t give him a chance. I was on a roll.
“Fred. I need your keys and your grade book before you leave today. Take any personal belongings with you. You’re fired, effective today. I understand that you’ll be paid until the Board of Education accepts your termination papers at its next meeting. Any questions?”
He had no response. He was pale as he left my office. He returned within the hour and gently laid his keys and grade book on the edge of my desk.
“I’m sorry, Grant” he said, and left.
I felt nauseous. The worst part about the Stevens incident was that I, and the profession, had lost a really terrific teacher forever. But there’s another “worst part” to this story. It’s these “shoebox tapes” stashed in this drawer. The police department, after they arrested Stevens, confiscated the theater’s films that were being shown at the time of the arrest. The school district’s security department thought they should have copies too, so tapes were made of the films. Then, for some reason, school security thought I should have copies for my file as well, so, late one night, right after I’d fired Stevens, one of our night patrol officers placed these six VHS tapes on my desk. I found them, without any note attached, neatly stacked on my desk the next morning before school. None of them had any identification as to what they were, either on the cardboard covers or on the tapes themselves. I thought they had been delivered by our school system’s’ night mail carrier, and that he had placed them in my locked office for safekeeping. So now comes the other worst part—no, let me reword that—here’s the scary part! I guessed that they were new tapes being delivered for our school’s media center, so I simply placed them in my librarian’s mailbox in the main office. I suppose that she thought the same thing when she picked them up, because she placed them in a storage cabinet with a bunch of other “new” tapes. Later that same day I got a call from our district’s head security officer asking me—jokingly, he thought—whether I had “enjoyed the tapes!” While he was laughing and trying to tell me about them, my mind was envisioning tomorrow’s headlines: “SCHOOL PRINCIPAL FIRED FOR SHOWING PORNOGRAPHIC TAPES TO CHILDEN AT CENTER!” Horrified, I headed for the school’s media center faster than any “speeding bullet” that ever challenged Superman. I found the librarian, located the tapes, and after a big sigh of relief, spirited them back to my office and put them in a lockable file cabinet. Today, they remain alleged evidence, still untouched, and still waiting for a long forgotten potential due process lawsuit. I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened to me and my career if any of those tapes—even any little part of one of those tapes—was, for any reason, accidentally shown to students.
Needless to say, there are a lot of memories in this office. I’ll take each one of them with me. The rest of this stuff …well, we’ll see. I just know that I’ve got to move out of here soon so a newly-minted, aspiring professor can start to enjoy this fabulous picture window view of the campus….but not today. I’ll come back in a few days to plow through all this stuff. Right now I’m going to take a “top-down, punch the pedal” drive in the country and suck in some sunshine and fresh air. And perhaps along the way, I’ll find a secluded dumpster to finally dispose of these infamous “Princess Theater tapes.”
What a life I’ve led! What experiences I had! I hope my graduates will have as much fun as I’ve had. I especially hope they can see the humor in their lives and in their work. If I could do it again, I would…probably the same way. But come June 1, I’ll be out of here. That date will mark my official retirement from public and higher education. Where has the time gone? And wasn’t it an interesting journey? Neither of my parents nor a single one of my elementary or high school teachers, principals or counselors would ever have predicted that I would have such a long, successful and satisfying career as an educator. I was anything but a star pupil or serious student and often not even a good kid during my years in school—anything but!
I was born with a modicum of artistic genes, a creative mind, a vivid imagination, and a glib tongue. I know from experience that all the ingredients were there for a real “pain in the ass” kid. To make things even worse, I was also born with a head full of questions. Questions designed in my own mind to make things commonsensical and orderly. Early on the predominant question was “why?” But as I grew older and more experienced, I added the question “why not?” I seemed to be always searching for justification of, or alternatives to, what was and what is. The “why” and “why not” syndrome continues to dominate my perspective on life even today. And, I’m sure, a bit of the “pain in the ass” factor is very evident at times.
I was also born into a seriously dysfunctional family. The phase, “dysfunctional family,” is often used offhandedly to describe all kinds of family related problems, so let me define what I mean in relation to my specific circumstances. Simply stated: my parents’ relationship, both when sober and especially when fortified by “Jim Beam,” with each other and toward me, were not conducive to either their or my emotional health. While it certainly was, at times, a chaotic home environment and very often not a whole lot of fun, it taught me some important lessons that clearly affected and informed the rest of my life.
Very early on, I was forced by circumstances to become highly independent and self-reliant. The down side, as you might expect, is that it has always been difficult for me to trust anyone very far. Unfortunately, this created barriers to developing close relationships as well. I did, however, learn to take care of myself on all of the levels that are important, and I developed an open mindedness about alternatives and opportunities. Once I entered the field of education, I recognized that I possessed invaluable insight into the “dark side” of family life and could understand the stresses and pressures that pervade too many families. I could also easily relate to the many and varied effects these pressures have on children and young adults in their school behavior, performance and general outlook on life.
On a happier note, music was always a part of my family life, and, beginning in elementary school, it became the central focus of my personal life. In addition to the intrinsic rewards that mastering a musical instrument and performing well have for the musician, music taught me a work ethic that has served me well my entire life. Work hard, study the text, understand the meaning, practice, practice, practice and you will succeed. When all else fails, improvise. It also taught me about the importance of the underlying structure of the larger things in life and the value each individual’s contribution brings to a harmonious and successful performance. In addition, it was through music that I internalized the understanding that effective leaders inspire and enable their followers, while poor leaders demoralize and disenable them.
Like my so-called creative mind, I was blessed with a well developed sense of humor. Some might even say over-developed. My sense of the ridiculous has saved my skin many times in deflecting threats and easing tense situations. It has also helped me get past difficult moments, permitting me time for calm logical thinking to find the best, albeit not always the greatest solution, to problems. And, it’s made my life amusing and for the most part, a whole lot of fun.
3
Many developmentalists believe that we’re born without a sense of self—we develop our self-image, they stress, as we continuously grow. I agree, but hasten to add that genetic makeup, at least in my mind, has a great deal to do with one’s overall “self” as well; However, this is not the place to debate child development issues. In my case I was simply a child who continually sought an answer to the question, “I know who you are but who am I?” I found the answer, over time and in many different places, by paying attention to people, remembering what I observed, selecting behaviors like performance, actions, deeds, activities, manners, conduct, etc., to replicate. I was also a child who, for some unknown reason, often chose not to accept things on blind faith, without comprehension or understanding. “Help me understand” was, and continues to be, my watchword. Looking back, I always tried to avoid the inevitable conflict between adult realism and youthful idealism. I often failed.
I was born Grant Allen Sterling on May 23, 1939 in Muncie, Indiana. My parents and I soon moved to Flint, Michigan where my father had taken a sales position with a major soap manufacturer. Even though his work put him on the road five days a week, he was home every weekend and for two weeks vacation each summer. After renting a couple of houses, they bought a tiny bungalow in a blue collar section of the city. My mother started a private nursery school that met every day, except on weekends and in the summer, in what was designed to be our dining room. She was an excellent well-respected pre-school teacher and was very popular with the “moneyed folks” in Flint. Consequently, from age two to four, every weekday morning, I was, like it or not, a student in her school.
In public, my mother was an angel, in private a tormented, angry and often emotionally unstable woman. I learned when I was old enough to really observe and understand the rapport between her, her three brothers and my maternal grandmother, that she was clearly the victim of emotional abuse both as a child and as a young adult. Both my father and mother were born and raised in Brattleboro, Vermont, and although my maternal and paternal grandmothers lived less than a half-mile apart, they never visited each other. Both of my grandfathers died before I was born, and I didn’t know my grandmothers very well. Neither ever seemed to be very interested in me when my mother and I visited them in Brattleboro for a week each summer. I remember enjoying the train ride from Flint to Brattleboro; however, I didn’t enjoy the long walk with luggage from the Brattleboro train station up a very steep hill to my maternal grandmother’s house where we stayed. Overall, it was always an exceptionally boring and often tedious visit for me, with the exception of a lady named Lottie Thomas, a neighbor who lived directly behind my grandmother’s house,
Thomas, a widow who was probably in her late 50s, when she and I first met, had the most fantastic flower and vegetable garden I’d ever seen. It was alive with dazzling butterflies of all kinds, small and large sad-eyed toads, and mysterious, but very often delicious, plants that Mrs. Thomas would let me sample. Without her gentle urging I would have probably never discovered that I actually liked rhubarb and a guy named Albert Einstein.
“Einstein,” she told me, “thinks that everyone should look deep into nature, and then they will understand everything better…that the joy in looking and understanding is nature’s most beautiful gift. And that, Grant, is what I’d like you to do all your life.”
Mrs. Thomas, in addition to her artistry as a gardener and Vermont-variety philosopher, had another very special talent. She was probably the first adult I ever met who demonstrated, at least to me, what a true teacher is. In fact, I never wanted to leave her (our) garden classroom, and I often return to visit it even today when I have time to just daydream. I spent many hours sitting on her back porch steps as she taught me about all the living things, plant, animal and insect, in her garden. I remember Lottie Thomas as one of the few people who taught me new and exciting things by asking me questions, and then, when I didn’t know the answer, taught me how to “discover” the answer on my own.. She was, in fact, the person I would later emulate in my own teaching and leadership. She was, in action and methodology, the first model of a “Socratic” teacher I’d ever seen and one of the few I’ve experienced or observed since then. She made my trips to Brattleboro worthwhile.
My mother had three older brothers from whom she was estranged, and as a result, they were, for the most part, not part of my life. I have many cousins from my mother’s side of the family; unfortunately, because of the family estrangement, I don’t know any of them personally. I found it interesting that, when my mother died, her brothers all traveled great distances to attend her funeral where they exhibited deep emotion and true sorrow over the loss of their only sister, even though they had long been at odds with her. I think she probably was the root cause of whatever the problem was, not them. I wondered why? On the other side of my family, my father had an older sister, and she and her husband and their two children were good friends with my parents, and I enjoy the friendship of my paternal cousins to this day.
As I mentioned, my mother was a tormented, angry and often emotionally unstable woman. The emotional abuse she experienced both as a child and as a young adult naturally became a way of life for her and, as a result, was, unfortunately an integral part of my own childhood. However, in spite of emotional, and at times physical abuse at home, I was a very polite kid but prone to being quite mischievous at times. My teachers saw me as a “difficult child.” One of them noted that “he seems to question or want to explore the why of just about everything.” I didn’t think that was a bad thing at all…and, I still don’t. It was never a “challenging” why, but rather a “seeking more information” why.
Nobody ever knew, or if they did they remained silent, about the number of nights I slept at the Flint Home for Wayward Children. My mother dumped me there numerous times when my father was on the road and she deemed me, for any number of reasons, to be “incorrigible.” At about age seven, I found that I could physically pull away from her when she “lost it,” and I could just run and hide in the bushes in a neighboring park instead of letting her drag me by the arm to the home. I hid some old blankets in the unused rabbit pen in back of the garage but even with those, Michigan winters were bitterly cold at night, and I quickly learned that while shivering may produce some body heat, it clearly inhibits one’s ability to sleep. Later on, as a teenager, I would find an unlocked car or truck in the neighborhood or at a car dealer’s lot to hide and sleep in. I undoubtedly loved my mother, but I never developed feelings of closeness, trust or respect for her.
My father was a super salesman and advanced rapidly from sales to management at work. My mother, a graduate of the Ithaca Conservatory of Music, was an accomplished pianist and was blessed with a magnificent soprano voice. She performed often in various churches in and around the city. My dad was a natural tenor, and life was never better for them, I think, or for me when they sang together at home. As soon as they could afford it, they bought a baby grand piano that took up at least a third of our tiny living room. A side benefit for me was that I could quickly escape my mother’s very unpredictable angry spells by positioning myself under the piano just out of her reach. It was the safest place for me to be most of the time when I was confined to the house. To this day, I can still see every intricate part of the highly crafted underside of that particular baby grand.
That piano was also the safest place, I thought, to take cover during our city’s air raid drills. Flint’s and Detroit’s retooled automobile assembly lines were churning out tanks and other armored vehicles as fast as they could during my early childhood years. World War II was simply a fact of life—air raid drills included. What I knew about WWII were things that directly affected my family; food and gas stamps, tending our “victory garden,” black-out window shades, the three scrunched-up rubber-smelling gas masks stored in the kitchen cabinet, the steam powered factory whistles that signaled air raid drills all across the city, and my father’s white metal Air Raid Warden’s hat and big brown flashlight and whistle.
O
DON’T GET IN A
HUFF
OUR AIM TODAY IS TO CALL THEIR BLUFF
FOLLOW THESE RULES AND THAT IS ENOUGH
OBEY YOUR AIR-RAID WARDEN
“Wow, this must really be serious stuff,” I thought. I’d never seen letters that big before. I guess we neighborhood kids thought we could help get the message out by…well, picture a bunch of pint-sized, four, five and six year old kids marching up and down neighborhood sidewalks wielding sticks found somewhere, half giggling, half chanting sing-song phrases at the top of our squeaky high pitched voices, “DON’T GET IN A HUFF, CALL THEIR BLUFF, FOLLOW THE RULES, OBEY THE WARDEN, OR WE’LL HUFF AND PUFF AND BLOW YOUR HOUSE DOWN!”
Mixed metaphor, you say? Perhaps a release of pent-up psychological fears, you think? Nah! Just us kids having fun being kids!
At age five, like most kids, I entered kindergarten—not for half day sessions like schools typically schedule today, but for full days with a forced nap in the morning and a “bonus” forced nap in the afternoon. What a blessing it must have been for my mother not to have me hanging around the house or wandering the neighborhood. She soon found out, however, that I was not going to be the perfect student she probably expected. Almost immediately my kindergarten teacher, Miss Franklin, had a difficult time getting me to “color within the lines.” I wanted to know “why” about a lot of things and my teacher’s demand, “just do it,” wasn’t always the correct answer in my mind.
“He wants to know ‘why’,” she complained to my mother, “about almost everything we do!”
I guess Miss Franklin’s breaking point came when I absolutely balked at sewing a pocket on my rose-patterned water color painting apron. “I’ve already sewn up the neck piece and waist ties on the thing,” I remember saying,
“Why does it need a pocket? What’s it for? My mother’s aprons don’t have pockets on them.” She was unable to answer me in any way that I could accept, so my mother was hastily summoned to the school, and I got to meet my school principal up close and personal. It wouldn’t be the last time. In fact, I got to refresh my knowledge about what school principals are all about many times during my years as a public school student.
This principal, a funny looking stubby little man with a soft but squeaky little baby voice, carefully explained to me in a kind of “cooing” tone that “the pocket is part of the overall design and plan that the inventor of the rose-patterned water color painting apron kit created, and the inventor would be personally hurt and sad if you don’t finish his planned design.”
“Okay,” I thought to myself. “This principal is a very smart man and I surely don’t want to upset the inventor of my apron.” So, when I was allowed to return to the kindergarten room, I told Miss Franklin that I would happily sew the pocket on my apron. My teacher seemed relieved, but my mother was not happy with me when I got home that afternoon, so I just spent the rest of the day until bedtime studying the bottom of the piano. I’d learned something important that day—a fact that proved itself to be true the rest of my elementary school career…that is simply, elementary school principals and most elementary teachers talk in baby talk voices. I wondered why?
Oh, yes…that was also the year that I kissed my first girlfriend. Her name was Judy Liversedge. It only happened once, I’m sorry to say. Both of our mothers immediately interceded with a vengeance and gave us both a quick lesson on social etiquette and life threatening germs. I wondered why? And I still wonder why today. After all, looking back, we ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright-colored lead-based paints, we had no childproof catches on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our trikes or bikes, we had no helmets! We rode in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags, and…oh, my God, we actually drank water from the garden hose not from a plastic bottle! But I digress. I think the “Judy kiss hoopla” was my first experience with someone, besides my mother, being involved in “overkill!” I also think that both mothers were guilty of over dramatizing as well as extreme overacting. Judy’s kiss was nice I’ll admit, but the “vocal duet” reaction of our mothers was much more exciting to me at the time.