The second week of October ‘93 had been a tough one. Some time between the end of an Other People’s Money rehearsal on Tuesday afternoon and the beginning of school on Wednesday, the Drama room suffered a break-in--its second, unforced--with over two hundred dollars worth of equipment stolen (some of it my own), a personalized note from the robbers to me ("Fuck You" scrawled across my Drama office wall), and nothing being done on either the site or the district level.
On Thursday, October 7, a minimum day in preparation for that semester’s "Back to School Night," I ran into Mark Todd, the school’s great band teacher in the parking lot. As we approached the gate off the east end of the administrative office (next to the Music and Drama rooms), we noticed the flag flying at half-mast.
Mark looked at me, "Do you think?"
"Naw, couldn’t be..."
But he went to check as I went into my little cubby-hole of an office. Within minutes, he was back. His face said it all. Frankie had passed away in the night.
I thanked him and he went on his way. I lost it.
When I tried to tell my classes throughout the rest of the day, I lost it again and again. I tried to convey what this woman meant to me, to the school, to education. I tried to tell them of my senior year, of her brutally intense "Independent Study" course (which I have long viewed as being the one thing that not only won me admission into and scholarships to UCLA, but created within me the fortitude to remain there--when some of my classmates who had gone on to UC schools were back in Pleasant Valley within months of going off to college). I tried to tell them of her legacy as both a teacher and a principal here, I tried to share with them her innovations. But mostly I cried.
I wasn’t the only one.
At "Back to School Night," I was greeted by so many students and parents asking if I was all right, that I damn near lost it again (I still think my day-long cry was the reason that parent event had the best turn-out in my years at C.H.S.). But I held it together. Thank god the next day was an in-service day, no kids, a chance to share with staff, a time to cry again.
We all would need it.
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