A Teacher's Story: The Attempted Character Assassination of a Gifted Teacher
384
A Teacher's Story: The Attempted Character Assassination of a Gifted Teacher
384Paperback
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626971981 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Xulon Press |
| Publication date: | 05/13/2013 |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.85(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
I remember every step up into that big, silver Greyhound bus. My parents were standing behind me watching, so I firmly gripped the handrail and held my head high at a time when many still looked down to avoid eye contact or conflict. It was 1969. I was leaving behind almost everyone I knew. Dressed for success with two suitcases that contained my worldly belongings, including my college diploma, I looked for a comfortable seat to ride a day-and-a-half in the direction of my future. I was one of a few making this kind of journey during a turbulent time, but I would make it, not only for myself but to make it easier for others to follow.
Heat and the smell of gas wafted over me. Other destiny seekers took their seats. I wondered where they were going and what life calling they were on the road to fulfill. I knew mine – classrooms, generations of smiling faces – children yet unnamed to me but already near and dear to my burgeoning heart. I would do more than make a difference in the world. I would make worlds of difference in the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of students – students who would then go out and, exponentially, make a difference in the lives of others – a difference so profound, the world as I had known it would never be the same. I was naive enough to believe it could begin with me.
The driver hailed us to let us know it was time to go. At that moment, it occurred to me my whole life had been spent watching people leave me. Not today. Today, big, shiny wheels and a long stretch of road would find my loved ones waving goodbye. As they did, I closed my eyes and listened to the drone of the engine pulling away. It was the same sound as the groan in my spirit, the one aching for one more touch from my mother's hand, tilting my chin upward to face a future so certain that the strength in her eyes, alone, would be enough to make me believe it.
I remembered a time when I thought I would never see her again but, as we learn from Matthew 19:26, "... with God all things are possible." My mother and I had been given back the gift of time. We had been given back the gift of goodbye. The bus rocked forward and jolted my head and thoughts back to another goodbye – one without waves – one that creates them.
FARE WELL
I was eight years old on that sweltering August day. My father owned a restaurant in town. My mother needed milk for their first grandchild, so she went there to get some. My brothers, sisters and I were left at home for chores and play. She was gone a long time. All I remember, now is later that day, our family doctor came to our house, gave her a shot and led her to the backseat of a big, black car. I stood, with my baby sister, Hannah, behind me, peering through the car window. Mother just sat, head tilted back, eyes closed, with a horrible, bruised knot on her forehead. My father, already in the front passenger seat, never looked back. The doctor slid behind the wheel, slammed the door and drove my parents away.
All my other siblings went inside except Hannah and me. Eventually, even Hannah joined them and left me alone in the yard. A sadness, as heavy as any earthly thing I had ever encountered, nearly felled me. I intended to stand in that yard until my mother and father returned. I understood nothing about what had happened. I would not understand for a long, long time.
I have only one other memory about that afternoon. Glued to grass, too paralyzed to move, the spirit of God washed over me, wave upon wave, lifting my little spirit out of the flood of emotions that rooted my feet to the ground. He introduced Himself to me in a way I will never forget. I heard Him as clearly as I've ever heard anyone. "I have always been with you, Eardine," He said. "I am with you now and will forever be. You have been chosen."
Seated on the bus, the memory of that day was so vivid and heart wrenching, I could still feel my feet entrenched in summer grass. It had taken those feet a long time to catch this bus and even longer to find this road. I looked out the window. The Flint River was snaking its way parallel to the bus's path. There was a fork up ahead. We went right. The river stayed left. I looked back until all of the blue-gray disappeared. Pine trees parted the distance as far as I could see. There was little left to do but watch flat plains roll by. Red clay outlined county roads – deep red, Georgia clay.
Albany, Georgia was too small for a little girl who had been "chosen." Big city culture, museums, art, music, fashion, commonality and education were up ahead, somewhere in the distance. I knew when I arrived in a place like that I would be home.
I was attuned to everything around me – the smell of people's bagged lunches, small talk, the sound of snoring from a sleeping passenger, the smell of perfume, even the change of engine noise as the bus shifted onto a main highway headed to Macon. It would be hours before I saw a big city skyline.
The northbound highway was much smoother – gentler than the county roads had been. I hoped this was a foreshadowing of my future, because everything about my past, up to that point, had been anything but gentle.
SPILLED MILK IS NOT ALWAYS WASTED
My mom had been taken away from us for seven years. I was eight when she left and fifteen when she returned. The day she went to the restaurant was the day that changed everything and everyone around her. It was exactly that day that courage, conviction and a career began their births in my spirit. Now, it seems like a lifetime ago and, in many ways, it was. It was a man's world. Some women, especially women of color, were more like real estate than mates but color aside, men ruled every facet of life – home, business, children, society, government, education.
My father was a handsome, charismatic man. He was financially successful having owned a profitable neighborhood store and restaurant. He was also a much sought after, independent insurance salesman. His name was on the cornerstone of the church where he was a respected board member and Sunday School teacher, and he was an active member of the PTA.
He had climbed out of the humble beginnings of his parents' farm. He didn't want to spend his life behind a plow. It had been in the small rural town of Omega that he met my mother. Mom's father was a Methodist minister. My dad had been raised a Baptist, but he knew the Methodist church in the community was full of movers and shakers – and not necessarily the Spirit-kind. So he swapped denominations, convinced my grandparents he cared for my mother, and a church wedding sealed the deal.
He made every connection he could – in and outside the church. He was a walking Rolodex. His charm and personality allowed him to cross color lines. He was a friend of everyone – a friend to everyone. But a small town offered little to a man with large aspirations, so he moved my mom to the bigger town of Albany. In a few years, he had amassed enough cash to build and pay for a home. My parents were among the first African Americans to have a brick home there, however modest.
Mother was beautiful, and she had a way of making everything around her beautiful. She kept the inside immaculate, and my father kept the outside the same. Their house was a show place. It got Dad noticed. The house and Dad got Mom envied. My father's work ethic was unrivaled. He was a natural at everything he put his hand to, and that example led the way for other minority business owners to prosper in the small Southern town. He tried to hire anyone who needed a job. At times, he was too trusting. In fact, when a couple of recipes from his restaurant's menu were shared with a so-called customer, the customer went on to use them in a bigger market and became a millionaire. That would not be the last time he was a bad judge of character, but if the frustration of losing the rights to his recipes ever bothered him, he never let on. My father could handle anything admirably, except drama. The day my mother entered the restaurant for milk, drama ensued.
Dad was having an affair with one of his waitresses. I now know my mom suspected it. Somehow, in those days, men could have mistresses without affecting their community standing or reputation. When people in the PTA found out, they still wanted his leadership and input. When church people found out, they still shook his hand and took his tithe. He continued to worship in deacon dress, every Sunday, as if God had excluded him from the one-woman rule. Men admired him. Being the finely dressed success he was, even at church, women worshiped him.
I have tried to imagine what it must have been like at the restaurant that day. My dad wasn't there. Mom approached the waitress my father was seeing and asked for milk. The waitress refused her and added that my father had given strict instructions my mother was not to be given anything from the restaurant. My mother didn't believe her and, being one to avoid confrontation, decided to go behind the counter herself.
There were several teen boys at the café that day who were friends with the waitress. She yelled for them to stop my mother, and they did – all of them – with fists and a bottle to the face until she was on the floor and had stopped moving.
I don't know how she got home. I only know when my dad arrived, he made a muffled phone call, and a big, black car and a doctor with a big, black medical bag appeared. Once the doctor and my parents drove away, my father was gone all day. When he returned, my mother was not with him.
Out of necessity, Dad divided the cooking and other household chores between us kids. That night, in silence, we ate as a family, minus one. My father didn't say much except he had taken Mother to a hospital. I kept hoping someone, maybe my brothers, would ask questions, but no one did. It's hard to believe now, but back then, questioning your father or any adult for that matter, was something you just didn't do.
After dinner, my dad went to the living room, sat in his chair, turned on his favorite television show, Bonanza, and picked up the newspaper. The rest of us cleared the table, did the dishes, folded table linens, closed the curtains and locked the doors.
"Good night, Dad," we chimed in, one after the other, and headed off for bedtime rituals that, until that night, had included our mother. Dad, eyes fixed on the TV screen, waved us on. There would be no family meeting – not that night. On the way to my room, while passing the mantle, I traced my finger along the glass frame that protected my mother's picture. It was a long night before a longer day. The next morning, my mom was not there to do our hair or tie our bows. Albany was a small city with smaller secrets. I am sure our mother's confrontation, exit and absence were the town's topic of discussion over lots of grits and gravy that morning.
My mother was the epitome of Southern grace and elegance – lovely, affectionate, artistic, articulate. She made sure our home always looked as if it had leaped from the pages of Ladies Home Journal. Not overly outspoken, she was seamlessly moral, unconditionally kind and loving to the core. She had all of the character traits I wanted to emulate in life. Many of the town women had never liked her. She shunned every opportunity to gossip – the sport of choice in that day for most Albany women. She often became the topic of theirs but, like my father, if the whispers of those women ever bothered her, she never spoke of it.
Mom's absence did not alter the fact it was deadline day for Hannah to be registered for first grade at school. She would have to start a year early because there would be no one at home to look after her. She had scored well on the entrance exam. At five, she would be the youngest in her class.
With my father at work my brother, Vernon, and I walked her to school. Enrollment was quick. There were few questions asked. At one point, I caught the school secretary looking at Hannah. Her face radiated concern.
We exited the school, holding hands, Hannah in the middle. I looked back at the building. A new term would start there in a few days. I would be in the third grade. Somewhere in that building, in the arms and heart of a third grade teacher, I would find answers, love and care.
MIND OVER MATTERS
We were hours into the bus ride now, and I could smell my sandwich seeping through the brown bag on my lap. I opened it and took my time unfolding the wax paper. I pulled out a napkin, wiped off an apple and away a tear. How many of Mama's brown bag lunches had I missed? Not that we weren't well provided for by my father. He gave us money to buy lunch every day. In fact, we often had enough to share snacks and milk with others who weren't as fortunate. That's not to say it wasn't difficult for any single parent, but colored households had extra issues. I remember a time when Dad had to measure our feet with string to buy us all shoes because coloreds were not allowed to try them on in stores.
Without Mom, we all had to learn, and quickly, to cook, sew, plant and grow things. When chores were done, we became each other's tutors, appliance replacers and best-guess repairers of all things broken. Fortunately, God gave us all an innate understanding of mechanics. I remember staring at a broken iron one day and just instinctively knowing how to fix it. We were not children playing house; we were kids running a household. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, dusting, windows, floors, scrubbing, chopping, weeding, daily hygiene and all the other things a mother would normally do and teach, we learned by trial, error and divine intervention. Thank God for divine intervention.
Of course, there were late night whispers between brothers and sisters about where Mother was and when she might be back. I don't remember how long it was before the question turned from when to if.
My oldest sister, Matilda, had heard Mom was in a mental institution hours away from us in the town of Milledgeville. In those days, women could be sent to mental institutions for any reason a husband could relate but that, in itself, did not mean my mother did not need a doctor.
Every Sunday, parishioners continued pumping my dad's hand in welcome. Men seemed electrified he had set a precedent. Women who once adored him, adored him still, but with less forwardness. I believe husbands took note, and wives took notice. As kids, we didn't want to attend what we considered a false, uppity church, so we found ways to get out of going. As for us girls, our stockings ran every Saturday night. We did love Bible study, though, and the semantics of sermons, so we listened to religious broadcasts on the radio. We did attend regularly enough to go on Sunday School conventions, get baptized and participate in the choir.
Wherever Dad went after work, he was always home in time for dinner with us. He never mentioned Mother's name. Was she really in a sanitarium? Why had we not heard from her? If anything, she had always been a dutiful writer. Why had there been no letters?
None of us told our father how we felt. I am not sure we knew ourselves. One of my brothers had seen Dad kiss a lady, however, before Mother left, so he did not have a good feeling about why Mom had been sent away.
In his defense, though, our father took great care of us. Some nights, the television stayed off, and we lingered at the table and listened to Dad read to us. "Education opens doors," he would say before reading a story grand enough to divert or distract us. By story's end, we were filled with anticipation and awe of places near and far. It was impossible not to get lost in characters and plot lines and the lilt of his voice explaining, "Happily Ever After ..." I believe it was nights like these that inspired us all to become early readers.
That night, my father had family prayer with us. It was a not a nightly ritual but a nearly nightly one with a theme like a drumbeat. After platitudes and gratitudes he would say, "Lord, please bless us with a strong mind. Amen." Was he afraid that, like my mother, one of us might make a mental detour? After that night, whether we gathered for family prayer or not, I pursued a prayer life of my own.
My three brothers shared a room, and my two sisters shared a room with me. Shared rooms meant little privacy. That night, I went to God with an agenda. "Dear God, I'm sure by now, you know my mother, Annie Reeves, is not with us. I know you know where she is. She's the best mother in the world, Lord, besides yours, I mean. Would you do whatever it is you do, so she can come home?" I looked up. All I saw was six feet and ceiling. He had said I had been chosen, so surely I had prayed through. "Oh, in Jesus' name," I had almost forgotten the most important part, "Amen." It was my first intercession. I stood up, smoothed my pajamas and crawled under familiar covers.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Teacher's Story"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Eardine R. Lee.
Excerpted by permission of Xulon Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface,
Dedication,
Foreword,
PART I: CHOSEN,
CHAPTER ONE – THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED,
Fare Well,
Spilled Milk Is Not Always Wasted,
Mind Over Matters,
Postcards From the Ledge,
All Alone in a Dark Place,
Home Work,
Before Our 911,
Big City Lights,
CHAPTER TWO – BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER,
An Unanswered Letter,
Dinner by Candlelight,
Altered States,
Welcome Home,
High School Graduation,
PART II: CALLED TO TEACH,
CHAPTER THREE – EXPERIENCES OF COLLEGE AND LIFE,
A Passionate Professor,
Swim, Drop or Die,
Cleveland,
Not Quite Home Away From Home,
CHAPTER FOUR – ALL THE WAY FROM GEORGIA,
Another Tragic Episode,
Engulfed in Love,
PART III: CHARACTERIZED,
CHAPTER FIVE – LET THE TRUTH BE KNOWN,
Year One's Teacher Evaluation,
Georgia Summer,
Year Two,
The Parent is Always Right?,
Letters,
From Head Start to Project Follow Through,
If at First You Succeed – Test, Test Again,
Who, What, Where and, Sometimes, Why,
Recruitment Reasons,
CHAPTER SIX – ABOUT LOVE,
A Chance Meeting at the Mad Hatter,
Check Mate,
The Proposal,
Speaking of Similar,
Moving On – Enough is Enough,
PART IV: CONFLICTED,
CHAPTER SEVEN – MOVING BACK HOME,
A Step Backward in Educational Time,
Degraded On a Curve,
Balancing Family and Business,
Politics Has Not Left the Building,
CHAPTER EIGHT – IT'S NOT ABOUT ME,
A Desperate Call From Home,
Substitute Teaching – A Different Perspective,
Everything Changes,
PART V: COURAGEOUS,
CHAPTER NINE – RETURNING TO TEACHING, A TRUE LOVE AFFAIR,
A Proverbs Thirty-One Woman,
On Death and Dying,
My Father's Death,
Stay-at-Home Mom,
Before the Dust Settles,
Drop in, Not Out,
Telling My Mother Goodbye,
CHAPTER TEN – LIFE GOES ON,
No Teacher Left Behind,
The Future,
PART VI: COMMUNICATION,
Thankful for Family,
Remembering My Teachers,
What to Look for in a Good School,
Educational Reforms,
1872 Rules for Teachers,
Parent Teacher Associations,
Homeschooling,
Accountability,
School-To-Prison Pipeline,
Homework,
Special Education/Gifted Education,
Medication,
Character Education,
Retirement,
Tenure,
Suggestions to Parents,
Suggestions to Students,
Suggestions to Teachers,
Suggestions to Administration,
Banbury & Nickleby's,
A Love Letter to My Students,