Two years before I retired, in a blitz of budget cuts, I had helped to cut my own job in order to save staff. I knew that with 29 years seniority that I would land somewhere but I didn’t want to see the 32 libraries that took such work over many years go back to having a part-time Librarian or worse … none at all. So, wanting for the previous sixteen years to go back to daily contact with students, I asked and received a wonderful position. I became the Principal of an Alternative to Expulsion for Weapons Possession School. All of my babies were sent via a Superintendent’s Hearing. It was a great deal for everyone. They were no longer excluded from school, they were not out on the streets and our teachers had the opportunity to provide a non-violence curriculum. Located in a beautifully renovated Carnegie Library, my office was floor to ceiling windows that looked out on the County Court House, St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral and a huge circular fountain with a magnificent statue of Columbus in the center. In fact, if one was not Catholic, the circle was Columbus Circle … otherwise, it was St. Mary’s Circle. It did not take long, in the midst of registration and the hubbub of schedules and teachers going to and fro to notice that everywhere I went I was no more that ten feet from a very large and handsome student. He stood over six feet tall and was muscular … a no nonsense kind of guy. As things settled, and he was still with me,
I asked his name and why he was hovering. He was a Kearse. This is one of the largest families in Syracuse. I had gone to school with them, had them in classes, read about them in the papers … I asked him why he was staying with me. He said without fanfare, “I am here to keep you safe.” I had lots of personnel for that … police officer, hall guards, etc. but let me say that of all of them this wonderful kid made me feel very safe and very welcome in this school. I got him in to his classroom but if given half a chance I would have had my own bodyguard for life in this wonderful Kearse.