Dave Degraffenbach was everything the school’s Superintendent, the Board of
Education, the school’s supervisors and Mrs. Haliburton looked forward to seeing
more of in the teaching community – a bright, intelligent, enthusiastic young
man of color. They weren’t enough of them coming into the profession, everyone
agreed.
Of course, Mrs. Haliburton had said it all along. At a time when young black
males were viewed as increasingly uneducable, there was a serious need for
young men of color to enter the teaching profession. They’d serve as important
role models; they’d know how to win the confidence of troublesome students;
they’d be living testimony of professional accomplishment outside the fields of
sports and entertainment.
The system could not survive as it had all these years with young black males –
so many raised by single mothers! – being taught in classrooms by mostly middle-
aged white women.
When she first met Dave Degraffenbach she’d sounded him out for those
personal traits that would endear him to her. He was raised, she learned, outside
the community, on Long Island; he didn’t wear a Malcolm X goatee. What fires
she sensed in his stomach seem to fuel his own personal ambitions, but he was
affable, well-groomed, energetic in his roly-poly way, and everyone seemed to
like him. It would have been churlish of her to raise what she perceived as
shortcomings in his character.
“I’m a very adaptable person,” he told her. “I get along with everybody.”
This was much in evidence in the teachers’ cafeteria. He’d fill his food tray
with whatever was on the menu that day, joking with the kitchen staff about
portions and choices; and confessing that in any case his waist belt and stomach
could cope with anything they prepared. Then he’d look around and head off to
the first table that struck his fancy.
For awhile he joined the Phys. Ed teachers table; they talked and laughed with
locker room exuberance, in Polo shirts and sneakers never mind the weather;
they organized wagers on major league sports like the super bowl game, and
debated fiercely the teams’ chances. Then he sat with teachers from the Foreign
Language department, a merry group of women, young and old, with hairstyles
always sparkling; they ate and laughed and shared jokes from late-night TV shows
they’d watched. They talked about the guests on the shows, and what movies were
currently playing. Degraffenbach would slap his thighs, his clothes as loose and
breezy as his manner, and repeat his favorite one-liners.
One afternoon he stopped by Bilicki’s table, declaring, “Why don’t I sit with the
intellectuals today… if that’s alright…how you guys doing?” Even if they wanted to
they couldn’t resist his rolling good cheer.
“Intellectuals? Is that who you think we are?” Bilicki said, making room with his
chair, smiling.
“Just kidding,” Degraffenbach said.
(from “Ah Mikhail, O Fidel”, a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 