Remembering Nancy III: Bastille Day

This posting's about how I met Nancy. How she changed my life in an instant.

Not that she was particularly choosy, hard to please, or self-important. She was common-sensical and down-to-earth -- a striking, bright and competent person. The sort of person who knew her worth. The sort of person who demanded a lot of herself.

So she wasn't easy. Once I got my foot in the door, I had to work hard to sneak in the rest of the way. Plus I had to keep right on working at our relationship the whole four decades we were together. I s'pose our wonderful friendship was like any other worthwhile friendship: I had to Live-UP to it.

Living with Nancy was nice work -- if a guy could earn it. The challenging life we led was well worth the effort. Good Luck was a part of it. First: it was good luck I met her. Second: she was a shooting star. Third, it was good luck I was paying attention when she shot across my sky. Fourth, once she got my attention she held it. I never tired of her. She was always growing and changing -- getting better all the time. So I was lucky again: she wore extremely well. Fifth, I never loved her less. I always loved her more. I just couldn't help paying attention to her. Lucky me.

But then, I should have been paying attention: she arrived in my life early one morning in mid-July. In fact, she arrived earlier than scheduled -- for an appointment she made for a job interview. I was a so-called crisis manager, and I had taken a put-up-or-shut-up job in a big and BIG-TROUBLE high school in the center of a large mid-western city.

Previously, I had been building leadership teams and working to salvage schools in the district as a whole. Now it was time to narrow my focus, to defuse tensions and fix things in the most difficult school in the district -- a disintegrating and riot-torn integrated school. When the principalship of this school unexpectedly opened up, the superintendent said to me: "Okay, Bob: put-up-or-shut-up! Take this principalship."

So I resigned my professorship and took the job.

At the time, I liked the challenge of long days and big problems. It's one thing to blow in, blow off, and blow out with your earnings. It's quite another thing to own a line and toe it! This job was the chance I needed and wanted. It was an opportunity bound to test me and make me grow.

So anyway, by early July, I had built a leadership team, and we had written new policy and new programs for the school. Some of the problems, of course, were difficult people-problems, related to changes in student population. The neighborhood was changing. So was the student body.

All these changes caused increasing conflict. So part of what we planned to do was introduce a variety of curricular and policy changes. We designed some of these changes to provide challenging approaches to disruptive problems. After all, the term education derives from the Latin: educare -- to lead forth. And if teachers and students can't be led to learn and grow in the face of troublesome changes, then what are schools for in the first place?

Worthwhile learning is always a form of positive attitude adjustment. Our mission was to generate creative energy to infuse hopefulness within the school and within the neighborhoods it served. We can certainly change schools. The real challenge is to change people. And that's why we build schools in the first place!

An especially important program we drafted involved what was at the time a new idea called service learning. The idea was simple: set up a solid service component where numbers of serious students could earn credit by undertaking grown-up responsibilities in a variety of service agencies throughout the community. Then the school would be exporting student service, instead of generating student problems that spilled out of the school and plagued the community.

For instance, we could train students to work in

daycare facilities or old-folks-homes,
hospitals and clinics,
schools and libraries,
government agency offices. . .

and places like that. This community service would provide students wholesome places to volunteer their creative energies. Then the school would be exporting SERVICE instead of TURMOIL. Once that began happening, people would begin seeing the school as a good place, a source of solutions instead of troublesome problems. Say what you will, a clear sense of useful purpose and pride in meaningful accomplishment have their positive impacts upon people. In turn, skilled and positive people have their positive impact upon any crisis.

BUT! Such a program requires LEADERSHIP. The sort of leadership that features

a clear vision of the needs and resources within the community,
high expectations and high energy, and
knowledge of the existing network of community leaders with whom to team.

We needed a special person who knew important people who could make good things happen. The person we chose had to be

tireless and engaging,
UP-beat and smart,

quick to identify and solve problems.

This leader had to arrive early, work late, and never quit believing good things were possible.

My superintendent believed the person we needed was currently on the faculty of my school. He arranged an appointment for the person he thought could do the job.

I arrived at 6:00am that morning, and began busily sketching an outline of my proposed program on the large chalkboard in my office. I patiently built a graphic on the board, so I could quickly present it to the candidate. I knew that if I could clarify my vision I would have something exciting to sell any candidate I might wish to choose.

That morning I worked hard to complete the graphic. I felt pressed for time. But as I drew the graphic, it kept enlarging as I proceeded. I had not entirely sketched in several aspects of the program when I was startled by the squawking sound of a bicycle kick-stand sliding down into place.

I turned and saw Nancy standing there, her hands on the grips of her handle-bars. (You ride a foot-powered bicycle in the inner-city, you chain it to something solid or you bring it inside. Otherwise you risk losing it.) Her sudden appearance in tight-fitting bicycle gear stunned me.

You certainly know how arresting women permit you to look at them. That's what Nancy did. She ignored me. She looked past me, focusing all her attention upon the graphic I had been painstakingly sketching on the chalkboard.

Never mind describing Nancy here. To say she was a young woman of striking appearance is an understatement. To say I was totally disarmed is an even greater understatement.

What to say?! For one of the few times in my life, I was speechless. I lifted the empty coffee pot: "Coffee?" She shook her head side-to-side and approached the chalkboard.

"Water or soft drink?" Another silent dismissal. Another step closer to the chalkboard.

Now she was directly in front of the board, studying it carefully. Without even glancing toward me, she reached her hand out palm upward. I placed the chalk into her hand, glanced at my watch, excused myself, then quickly left the room to get the empty coffee pot refilled and collect her file from the personnel office down the hall.

Or so I hoped it might appear. What I really needed to do was collect myself.

I was so staggered by Nancy's appearance that refilling the coffee pot and retrieving the file required about fifteen minutes. Pulling myself together required approximately two-thirds of that time.

When I returned, Nancy had completed the graphic. In fact, she had improved it considerably.

I thought: "OHmyGOD! She can't look like THAT and be smart, too!" But she did. She was.

That was approximately 6:45am, July 14, 1970 -- Bastille Day.


For the first time I understood how the French must've felt on July 14, 1789 -- some 180 years earlier. They were headed for real trouble. Of course they didn't know it back then.

I was far luckier. Clearly: for me, this morning of July 14th was the start of something reallyReallyREALLY good.