BUCKROE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

When I recall attending Buckroe Junior High School when I was 13-15 in 1961-63 for grades 8 and 9, many thoughts, feelings, events, and faces emerge from the clouds of my past, and scenes of my young life come into focus, get replayed, and they touch my heart and remind me of how young and innocent I was then, as were my classmates, and even my mother.

My mother attended BJHS before I was born. One day after school at Buckroe Beach, she met a young soldier named Tommy stationed nearby at Ft. Eustis. He asked her age, and she answered “eighteen.” They began a brief romance, but afterwards, she was unhappy with the discovery of finding herself pregnant. Neither she nor Tommy wanted to get married or be parents of that unborn child. However, my grandmother insisted on both, and a “shotgun wedding” quickly followed. Once her teachers at BJHS realized she was pregnant, my mother was forced to withdraw from school and was never welcome to return. At that time married students, pregnant students, and students who were mothers were all considered to be a corrupting influence on the innocence of the other students. When my mother finally had “that child,” the truth was that she was still just 15, not 18. My father Tommy was 23, he left, and I never knew him. Of course, I was “that child.” I have always felt fortunate that I was born--especially under those circumstances--and to have this opportunity to experience a life, and I’m especially thankful to my grandmother for her role in making this possible for me. My mother would later tell me as I was growing up that she was glad I was born, despite her initial fears and reservations.

My mother remarried when I was about 4, to Jack Cline, another serviceman, this one in the USAF stationed at LAFB. He got stationed to Victoria, Texas, where I attended grades 1 and 2, and then he got reassigned to the USAF base at Myrtle Beach, S.C., where I attended grades 3-7, and we finally returned to Hampton, Virginia, when he got stationed back at Langley, and that’s how I came to start attending BJHS in the 8^th after we moved to between Phoebus and Buckroe, having attended the first marking period at Thorpe.

I remember standing outside BJHS in the mornings, waiting to go in, curious why we had to wait and couldn't just enter right away. I can still see Mr. Dyke, the principal, a short, round, funny-looking man with big black eyeglasses and a big temper, especially for students he accused of scratching their initials on top of the old grand piano in the gym, especially one student in particular, who got caught because other students told on him and was threatened with not graduating unless he paid have the piano top refinished, this despite the fact that it was covered with many other initials and that none of the others engravers had ever been so charged or punished.

When I had tried to sign up to take first year algebra and French in the 8^th grade, I remember a condescending guidance counselor telling me that my grades weren't high enough. I remember how easy 8th grade consumer math was—although I would go on to take 2 years of algebra, geometry, and trig—I’m glad I took that class, for to this day I have actually gotten by just fine using the math I learned in that class taught by a pretty young lady whose name I can't remember.

I remember the foul odor of the gym floor and how it attracted flies and kept getting covered with water whenever there was a hard rain. I remember going to my first dance in that gym one night, overdressed in an old white sports coat that my stepfather had worn in his youth, looking like something from the old Marty Robbins song, and seeing most of the guys standing on one side, dressed casually, and girls on the other, not formally attired, either, but most wearing dresses or skirts, and hardly anyone dancing or appearing to be having much fun, the guys and gals just gawking at one another, checking each other out, and yet somehow sensing that all of us were there desperately wanting to connect with the opposite sex, to experience this awkward milestone of our life, and to get on with it, whatever “it” was, which was supposed to be so special, and I vividly recall how in my impatience I mustered up the bravado to walk across the floor and actually ask a girl to dance, and boldly I chose, not just any girl, but the prettiest girl there, Nan Garner. "Would you care for a dance?" I gallantly asked. However, she replied, just as formally, but with an edge, "I think not," and suddenly I felt as if we were characters from opposite gangs in a scene from "West Side Story," and I remember my long, embarrassed walk back across the floor alone, all eyes on me, although everyone was pretending not to be looking.

I remember teachers like Mr. Johnny Meadows, reading aloud to our English class works such as O. Henry's short story "The Ransom of Red Chief," with his running commentary, this before he would follow us to Kecoughtan High School, which opened in 1963, to become the drama director, and I would appear in some of his plays there. I remember Mr. Heywood, who gave each of us his business card and invited us to come to his father's Waterman's Seafood Restaurant in Phoebus. He left teaching and became the head cook and eventually the owner, I believe, before it closed many years ago.

I especially remember Colonel Glenn F. Rogers, for algebra and science, a relic from a bygone era, always putting his eyeglasses on and taking them off and then looking around for them and saying, "I need glasses"--and when he found them--"and I got'em," and I remember his formality and how he often wore the same brown and blue old suits to class day after day, and I remember his expressions such as "as you were," and his military mannerisms, and his telling us how he had taught cadets at West Point.

Once before our science class my fellow classmates dared me to put a rubber snake on his desk before he came in, and I did. He entered, made no indication that anything was amiss, ignored the creature completely for the entire period, keeping us all spellbound, and finally, just before the bell, calmly reached down and placed it in his coat pocket without ever looking at it or making any reference to it. At first I was embarrassed, then felt stupid, and then so disappointed, but finally I realized that I had just witnessed perhaps one of the coolest events that I would remember for the rest of my life. I ended up admiring this man, loving this man, although I didn't know how to show it or express it to him. I did not have many positive and present male role models in my life as I was growing up, but he was one. I fantasized what a great father or grandfather he would be. At home I began drawing panels of a little comic strip in tribute to him. I named the strip “The Colonel," and I shared each of my simply-drawn panels with my little half-brother Jeff Cline, who thought they were funny, and he laughed more about them than I, and then Jeff began drawing his own "Colonel" strips that were even funnier and with better artwork. We both used a zigzag line above the lips to represent the Colonel’s thin mustache.

Jeff would attend BJHS later himself, but he, too, never got to finish. He died at home at 15 from an asthma attack on Dec. 1, 1968. I was then 20, and I delivered a eulogy at his funeral. His girlfriend sat in the front pew and never stopped crying. Mrs. Jacobs led a delegation of mourners from BJHS. What a classy lady and role model she always was. Years later I saw Colonel Rogers' obituary in the paper, and I thought about him and cried. I wrote a letter to his wife, telling her things I had always wanted to say to him, and she replied with a warm response, saying how much he loved teaching and all of his students.

My Uncle Water Bailey, my mother’s brother, was only 7 years older than I, and he told me stories about an art teacher he had before me at BJHS named Mr. Villers, how the man liked him and was often touching him affectionately in class. I remember how Mr. Villers would look at me and smile as he walked by, and how he walked up to me one day in a crowded hall, gave me a warm smile, and hugged me around the shoulders while scratching my back and murmuring, "I like you." I decided not to take art at BJHS although I was interested in art and had wanted to. Mr. Villers followed us to KHS, and I did not take art there either, and I regret never trying to develop any artistic talent I may have had.

I remember how pretty Debbie Norsworthy was--we rode on the same bus in the morning--though, like Nan Gardner, she neither knew nor cared how I felt about her. I remember pretty Brenda Gayhart, who got added to one of my classes. She was the daughter of a life-long friend of my mother. I introduced myself to her, mentioned the connection of our mothers, and tried a few times to start a conversation with her, but Brenda made it clear that she was not in the least bit interested in our becoming friends.

I remember my English teacher Mrs. Rowe being impressed by how well I read poetry aloud in class, especially the poems of Edgar Allan Poe. I remember our reading in class the play, "The Valiant," by Holworthy Hall and Robert Middlemass, about a man on death row about to be executed and a woman visiting him who thinks he could possibly be her long-lost brother, and when she quotes from "Romeo and Juliet" and leaves, he finishes the rest of that passage as they had done many times as children, proving only then to the audience that, yes, he is her brother but is too ashamed to let her know, and as he is walking to his execution, he is repeating over and over, "Cowards die many deaths. The Valiant never tastes of death but once." I would recognize in 10th grade English that this line comes from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." I also remember reading Longfellow's long narrative poem "Evangeline" and crying at the heartbroken sadness of the heroine, a nurse, finally finding her long-separated lover in a hospital on his death bed. And I wondered, would any woman ever love me that much?

I remember the menacing hoods at BJHS in their black leather jackets such as the Wright Brothers twins, who once bullied me by stealing my expensive pens out of my shirt pocket, laughing about it, then threatening to beat me up if I dared tell the administrators, and when they dropped out of school on the day they turned 16, I tried to feel sorry for them, but I couldn't.

I remember buying and eating Nutty Buddy ice cream cones each day at lunch and being able to go outside. From a radio somebody brought to woodshop class with Mr. Pippin, I remember listening to Sue Thompson singing "Norman," wishing some girl would care that much for me.

I thought maybe God was listening to my prayers when in the 9^th grade Cathy Maston, who was in the 8^th, unexpectedly invited me to go with her to Linda Parker's Christmas Eve Party at the Buckroe Community Center. We had a great time, even winning a silly dance contest by being last couple who didn’t get left holding a large plastic candy cane whenever the music suddenly stopped. Our prize turned out to be the large plastic candy cane itself. I tried to give it to her, but she gave it back. And then suddenly, magically, it started snowing and everyone began making and throwing snowballs, and when I finally got home I was tired, elated, wet, and idiotically holding onto a large plastic candy cane, which I hung up in my room. Cathy later sent me a homemade valentine that I treasured, and our dating continued as I entered KHS in 10^th and she was in still at BJHS in 9^th. I took her to a KHS dance where she met and connected with the guy of her dreams and told me I wouldn’t need to take her home after the dance. When I got home and went up to my room, I realized the time had finally come to throw away that large plastic candy cane. I tried to forget Cathy and stop caring for her, and after a while I thought about her less and less, but I never able to put her completely out of my mind.

I remember students telling me how dramatically Mr. Tarkenton taught the Civil War and would get so overcome with emotion that he would break down in tears when he got to the defeat of the South. I knew then that if I ever became a teacher, some day I, too, wanted to feel so passionate about something that I wouldn’t be able to keep myself from breaking down and crying in class about it. I did become a teacher and this did happen more times than I had ever dreamed possible, more times than I ever wanted, often involving the death of one of my students, in one case a suicide that occurred on school grounds when he shot himself in the head. And I did break down and cry in a class, too, when I shared with my students how in my 10th grade class at KHS we heard on the P.A. that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas. When my students and I many years later watched the events of 9-11 as they were unfolding live on TV, we were all in shock and disbelief. Years later to other classes I could not talk about this without breaking down.

One of my most special memories at BJHS--one that still fills me with a warm glow that has never grown cold--is how I would linger after school on some days just to have an excuse to visit and talk to the young woman who was my teacher for Virginia History. She was gentle, kind, and loving. She would sit behind her desk and grade papers, and it'd be just the two of us in the classroom. I wish I could remember her name. I wasn't even sure what my purpose was in being there. She was a light and a feminine presence I was inexplicably drawn to. She would share her feelings as if talking casually with her best friend and would look up from time to time and give me a smile. I have no idea what I ever said to her. Mainly I just wanted to look at her and be in her presence. She never hurried me to leave and I never wanted to leave. Perhaps we were good company for each other. I have met countless women since those days, most of whom I have long forgotten, but  the memory of this special lady is still green, and I still feel her in my heart, and that's a special joy of being alive.

I was generally a shy, introverted loner, and I didn’t connect well with my male peers. I remember Coach Heinz in gym on day class saying something that embarrassed Kippy Waterton but made me laugh although I suddenly realized I was the only one laughing besides Coach. At the end of class in the locker room Kippy got even with me, slapping me around, daring me to fight. He was taller, muscular, and filled out. He looked like a giant next to me. I was too scared to do anything except apologize and beg his forgiveness Finally, he called me some names and walked off. Immediately this short kid in the class came up to me and said, "Why didn't you hit him and fight back? You know we all would have backed you up."

On another day I remember getting into an argument outside during lunch one day with Joe Leftwich and how he easily knocked me down, sat on me, and it seemed that he never stopped hitting me with his fists. I remember this vividly yet have no recollection whatsoever what I said that had provoked him so. Truth be told, Joe was actually was a guy I admired, smart, popular, respected, and I was even jealous of him when we were later at KHS. I recently saw on the KHS Class of '66 web site that Joe had died. I felt sorry and stupid for carrying any anger against him. I kept trying not to cry.

I remember beautiful girls everywhere at Buckroe, exotic creatures moving about in a large run-down zoo, but none perhaps prettier than Ann McNeill, and I cannot visualize her without also remembering how my hormones were raging--yet I was too shy to talk to her or any other of other young goddesses. Another was Mary Ann Sydnor, who was intellectual as well as beautiful and friendly to everyone, including me, and, wow, how she could play the piano. Mary Ann would go on to graduate as salutatorian in our class at KHS, but while attending ODU would die from a gunshot. Years later one day I opened the newspaper and saw Ann’s photo and obituary, death from cancer in her early 30s, leaving behind a husband, two young daughters and a son. I even visited her grave but had mixed feelings about it since she never knew me. Finally I decided it was okay, that perhaps somewhere in heaven she was looking down, smiling, amazed she had made such an impression on me, whoever I was. Then, again, she could just as well have been laughing.

I remember how some of the BJHS guys from the upper grades would smear lipstick all over the faces of arriving male 7th graders on the first day of school, apparently some sort of sick hazing ritual that seemed mean and idiotic to me even then. Fortunately I had arrived in 8^th grade and wasn’t so initiated. What amazed me even more was how some of the marked-up guys laughed and seemed to accept it as their rite of entry into BJHS. Ever since seeing those lipstick-smeared faces, I have never found painted-up circus clowns funny. “Why were the new 7th grade girls arriving at BJHS spared this lipstick-smearing humiliation?” I wondered. Was it was because the older guys were more interested in smearing the lipstick already on their lips by kissing them?

One of the people I remember most of all is the lady who was the epitome of sophistication and class at BJHS, the person most respected and whose spirit radiated throughout the school perhaps even more than that of the principal. I am of course referring to the English teacher, Mrs. Bessie P. Jacobs, who sponsored just about everything there that was important and did so with class and dignity. I never ceased to be amazed at how she demanded respect and received it, how this small, elegant, lady with her soft voice could patiently control a class without ever raising her voice. I remember how much I loved reading Dickens' "Great Expectations" and identifying with Pip and fantasizing how I'd like to have an Estella in my life, and how I drew and colorized sketches of all the main characters from the novel as a project and how excited Mrs. Jacobs was as she hanged them on the wall all around her classroom and showed them to all her classes. And I remember the hopeless crush I developed on her daughter Jennie, who was a grade below me, and the brief, innocent friendship we shared.

I remember the day at the end of the school year when I was told I was the 11th top student academically in my 9th grade class but just missing out on getting into the top 10, which would have earned me an honored seat on the stage at our graduation. It reminded me being at the Buckroe Amusement Park and trying to win a prize in one of the booths, of course failing, and someone saying, "Close, but no cigar." However, my mother was proud, and she attended. I graduated from 9^th grade at BJHS and got to go on to high school, something she had been denied.

I left BJHS for KHS and college and a marriage, and the work force, and back to college and then a divorce, not being very successful at anything. I finally finished college, later earning a master’s degree from William and Mary, began another marriage, this time getting it right, but never had any children, and I returned to a daily life back in the classroom, this time sitting on the other side of the desk, teaching grades 9-12, English, low-level, average, and advanced, and English electives such as drama, stagecraft, journalism, public speaking, debate, creative writing, and SAT Verbal Prep, and do extra duties and services such as directing plays, sponsoring the yearbook, newspaper, literary magazine, sophomore and junior classes, and the chess club and team, all this in Newport News at Warwick High School and Denbigh High School. This sounds like a lot, and it was, but I never of course did all of these things in any one year; it was spread out over a career that spanned 37 years until I retired in 2011.

My mother, who was never allowed to return to school to finish her education, finally earned a GED in her 30s, and that gave her a pride and closure she had never had before. Before she died in her mid-50s, she told me many times that she was proud of my becoming a teacher, that it had in such a special way validated her decision--made with her mother’s insistence--to get married and have that baby.

I do not feel my mother had a happy life, and I feel sorry for her and feel guilty about her early parenthood robbed her of her youth, innocence, and optimism, By age 26 she was the mother of five sons, her military husband was often away, and she was on her own with just me to assist her.

In addition to Mom and many of my family members, likewise many of my classmates from BJHS and KHS are now gone including several who gave their last full measure, returning home from Vietnam with an American flag draped across their coffins. Mrs. Jacobs amazingly lived to be over 100, but I still mourn her death from a few years ago, and I will be eternally grateful to her for serving as a role model and inspiring me to become an English teacher. From her I learned that it is possible to bloom wherever you are planted. I never achieved her class, grace, charm, or dignity, but thanks to her, I was imbued with her spirit of life, passion about teaching, and love for all students. Of course, Colonel Rodgers, too, was a special role model, and I was also fortunate along the way to have also had some other special teachers for whom I will always be in debt and for whom I am eternally grateful.

I will never forget these special two years at BJHS. Although these memories are mine, not yours, perhaps they will trigger for you some of your special memories of that period of your life. I apologize if you feel I have been unkind or inaccurate in any of my recollections. I realize some of these people mentioned could be you, your family members, or friends. Please don’t sue me! I was so young, so shy, so callow then. I am an old man now as I reminisce, and I harbor no ill will against anyone I have mentioned. BJHS was a special time of my life with some very special people who were a part of my world and mindscape as I struggled down that path leading to adulthood. I am grateful for all the lives that touched mine while I was at BJHS.