The Chairman
"The Chairman, A Fictive Recollection"ByDennis J. Carroll It was twelve noon, the day of his retirement. Bradley sat at the head of the long table-the seat of honor-in Dant
"The Chairman, A Fictive Recollection"
By
Dennis J. Carroll
It was twelve noon, the day of his retirement. Bradley sat at the head of the long table-the seat of honor-in Dante's Restaurant and Bar on Union Turnpike in Queens, New York. He looked around the table at the department heads assembled: Social Studies, Related Technology, Vocational Trades, Mathematics, Science and Physical Education. Seen through his thirty-year perspective. They were all relative new-comers to their positions, five to ten years at most. Neophytes, by Bradley's' standards, no significant history to speak of. They were the first wave of men who had become teachers when the Selective System was giving out excemptions from military service for people who worked with children. Consequently, they would always be men unfamiliar with the warrior ethic owing to a compelling avoidance, disinclination or total silence of most things military born during the Viet Nam Era when they were draft deferred college students.
On a bad day, he might refer to them as flag burners or draft dodgers, but, what the hell, it was smarter than dodging bullets; something he was well acquainted with in the Big One, and didn't miss at all. As he looked at these men, amicably talking among themselves, each calculating his next promotion and estimating the competition, he was amused that most of them didn't realize that their success had little to do with what they wanted, how they saw themselves or how they fared on an examination or a selection process. It all boiled down to political agreements and which contracts were stronger. Decisions like this were usually handled in the amount of time it took to make a telephone call.
The last three years had been particularly trying. His friend of twenty-five years, Dr. James T. Collins, the school's previous principal, had retired three years ago, naming him as his heir but the then Superintendent of Queens High Schools, Matthew Werner, had blocked it. Bradley and Werner hated each other in that special way that men of the same age have when both know that one of them is a fraud. Perhaps it was the fear that one day, Bradley might have vocalized what was actually wrong with the "professional test taker" as he referred to Werner. Then again, maybe it was the accumulated anxiety of having someone out there who could look through him like glass. In any case, the chair of the technology department got the job. It was Werner's parting shot; he retired that summer.
Bradley, like many men of his generation, suffered from what some might call being right in a world that was basically wrong and the confidence displayed by men, who had often shed their blood for the right to speak their minds. He had little tolerance for charlatans, bureaucrats and company men. The retirement of Dr. Collins, who held a Reserve Commission in the Navy as a Captain and ran the school as a ship, signaled the end of an era which left Bradley on his own, sort of a combination of unofficial professor emeritus, soothsayer and organizational conscience. In short, a thorn in the Boy Principal's side and at times a real pain in the ass.
Dalton Thames, the Boy Principal, as Bradley referred to him, was intent on making his own mark -"A new broom sweeps clean," was one of his favorite sayings, which reaffirmed for Bradley that perhaps the Principal might be better suited to being the janitor, then the head of a school of 3,000 students and 150 member faculty. Still, these were the cards dealt him, and he played them as best he could in a game that whimsically changed from solitaire to blackjack.
Bradley had always conducted himself as a gentleman and today would be no exception. He made small talk with the people sitting next to him at the table, adding his own comments when appropriate and mentally continuing the list he had begun while shaving, earlier this morning of those things he no longer would have to do: work for someone else, get up at a scheduled time, be professional . . . In a lull in the conversation, he picked up his coffee cup and reflected upon his youth:
He was raised in a home by his cabinetmaker father and homemaker mother, where only Norwegian was spoken. He grew up speaking two languages and learning a trade. It was one of the reasons that during World War Two, he served as an intelligence officer with the OSS, forerunner of the CIA. He operated as a carpenter in occupied Norway spying on the Nazis as he worked beside them daily as a village carpenter.
When the war was over, he returned to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, decorated, grown and ready to resume his life. He married Bonnie Sue Flemings-a woman he was introduced to a year before on a warm Saturday evening in North Carolina while on furlough visiting the home of a fellow soldier, Delbert Hallings when they both were stationed in Washington.
Bonnie Sue was an academic in the tradition of Flannery O'Connor, and it was she, who encouraged him to use the GI Bill and go to Columbia, He graduated in 1951 with an MA in English Literature and took a job as a high school teacher for no other reason than he wanted summers off. He spent them making furniture and building his boat, the Calliope, which he launched off the Moriches out on Long Island in mid-August of 1954.
In the successive years, he sailed his boat up and down the coast and one summer, he and his wife, sailed as far as the Florida Keys. When they weren't sailing, he and Bonnie Sue would drop anchor off Long Island, read, make love and practice making the perfect martini. The birth of their daughter, christened Andrea Jackson Olson for his love of boats, in particular the Andrea Doria and Bonnie Sue's allegiance to the South-now a successful publisher for Harper and Row and successfully married to a politician- didn't change their lifestyle appreciably. Their daughter simply became another member of the crew, never really seen as a child by her parents, more like a diminutive adult, and she rose to the occasion. When she started to speak, she used whole sentences, began to read on her own when she was about three or four and went to Columbia, like her father. What more could he have asked for? Bradley smiled to himself.
Bradley weathered the sixties, the seventies and a fair portion of the eighties before he made his decision to retire. Summers spent sailing, good friends and a sense of contributing had been replaced by the need for more personal time, the absence of friends and a system that fought change, all contributed to this.
The coffee served, the speeches began; he half-listened and simply nodded when the group applauded. Finally, he heard his introduction and walked up to the podium; his turn to receive the plaque, a gift, an edict from the Mayor of New York declaring today Bradley Olson Day in the borough of Queens. A few words were required and he looked out at the small group and began:
I know you expect something profound, would appreciate a little humor and would settle for something short. I shall try not to disappoint you:
As my career draws to a close, I want you to know-as most of you will ultimately learn for yourselves-careers-like so much else that makes up what we euphemistically call our daily lives-never really end. They simply attach themselves to that inner sense of whom we are, that unique awareness, that pre-conscious glimmer we recognize when we first open our eyes in the morning and watch it fading as we look into the mirror shaving or brushing our teeth, then disappears like a tropical sunset, one moment vivid and beautiful, then, at once, gone, as it disappears behind the horizon of our work-a-day world.
One of my retirement goals is to extend and sustain that sunset and bask in its warmth and energy. I have little interest in the rising sun and the noon sun is too bright for me to enjoy. Sunsets, twilight, and evenings, now that's where my interest lies. I think I shall explore that nighttime of my soul and take the cumulative light of so many days to illuminate my way.
I thank you for honoring me on this beautiful June afternoon. I thank you for your gifts and finally, I shall take my leave. Perhaps you may learn in my walking away that each of you must know when it is time to move on and appropriately act on that realization.
He didn't hear the applause as he walked out the door, headed toward his car and headed East. He had an appointment with a sunset and Bonnie would be waiting for him aboard the Calliope, with a pitcher of martinis so they could enjoy it together watching the sun sink into the Atlantic.
Early on in my career, my first and most influential Chair of English retired. Last later when I retired as a Chairman of English myself, he was present at my retirement dinner as well. Springtimes have a way of reminding me.
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