In September
1976, Bill Kramer, the principal at Borel, and I were transferred to Turnbull
Middle School (formerly College Park Junior High School). The year before, they
were having race riots among the students and the former principal lost control
of the situation.
I'm telling you, that after the first three weeks, I walked into the
principal's office and said: "I'm retiring as of this date." I had no
intention of going back and facing the most poorly disciplined kids that I had
ever seen. Man, I was all over their case. They had no respect for themselves or
the faculty. At the slightest infraction, I'd give them one to three days
suspension and Kramer backed me up.
There was one big black kid who was threatening the kids if they didn't give
him their lunch money. Other times he'd deliberately foul up my drill during PE,
or cut in front of the lunch line. I'd nail him every time. His parents came to
the principal's office and wanted to transfer him to another school. Kramer told
them that if they did that, his problems would go with him, but that if he
stayed, Mr. Bingham would help him solve them. He stayed.
Who needs problems like this? I figured the kids had me beat. Kramer said
"No way, you've got them beat. Don't you dare retire." That weekend,
mom told me to go back Monday and that if things were unbearable, to come on
home and then retire. Well, I went back Monday, and never had I seen such a flip
flop in the kid's attitudes. I did have them beat and didn't know it. From
there on out, it was a piece of cake.
Four years later, your Aunt Amy was at Great America and had signed up for a
stroller for one of her grand kids. The boy in charge asked her if she knew a
Mr. Bingham who had taught PE. She answered yes and that he was at the Turnbull
School. He said that Mr. Bingham was the best PE teacher he'd ever had. It turns
out that he was the big black kid that I mentioned earlier that used to give me
all the trouble.
I was called into the office by the vice principal on a Friday. He asked me
if I had grabbed one of the girl students. I said no and couldn't ever remember
grabbing a little girl. He said that the parents would be in there Monday
morning before school and that I should be present. All that weekend, I worried
about what would happen if I had actually grabbed her. It would be curtains for
my career. When they walked into the office, I recognized her and gave a big
sigh of relief. She was one of the outstanding students at the school. She used
to deliver milk from the milk cart to the kids at lunchtime. When I saw her, I
remembered the incident. I was talking to Shari O'Connor at the time and when
the little girl stopped in front of us, I reached down, grabbed the back of her
ankle, and barked like a dog. She really thought a dog had bitten her. Well,
that evening, she and her mother were taking a self-defense course at the
College of San Mateo and she told her mother that Mr. Bingham had grabbed her.
Evidently the mother thought that I'd grabbed her boobs without asking where I
grabbed her. She told her husband, who was a 6-foot 4-inch policeman, who said
later that he was looking forward to messing me up. Fortunately, as it turned
out, everyone was satisfied that it was only an amusing incident and that
nothing serious had happened.
The student body at Turnbull as a whole really didn't amount to much. A few
years later, when I ran into some of the kids, I'd ask what some of the others
were doing. A lot of them had dropped out of high school, some were into drugs
and alcohol and a lot of them were doing time in prison. They were really
something.
I had a bunch of them on my after school teams an boy, they were big and
tough. During the three years I was there, our teams always finished first or
second.
For a while, I was having trouble with the high school kids coming over to
Turnbull and trying to sell dope on campus. I'd chase them off, but they'd come
back the next day. I got two of my biggest Tonganese boys and told them to chase
them off but not to catch them. I've seen them chase one kid for three blocks
threatening to kill if they caught him. That was the end of the high school kids
coming on to our school grounds. Word got around that it wasn't safe to peddle
their wares at Turnbull.
In early 1978, it came time to think about retirement. I would turn 60 in
1979. I had several options to consider. I could take something the school
system called early retirement. This meant that in my last year before full
retirement, I would teach for only the first half of the year, and get paid
half-salary over the full twelve months, but get retirement credit for the full
year. Several things had to be considered. One factor that weighed heavily was
that I was definitely burned out. Funding cutbacks were a continuing problem and
I had a heavy work schedule. When I finished my regular teaching at 3 pm, I went
immediately to coaching after school sports for 1.5 to 2 hours, five days a week.
I found myself sitting on my butt teaching, where normally I would be out there
instructing and encouraging the kids. I had lost my enthusiasm for teaching PE.
The most important consideration however had to do with longevity. Out of six
brothers and two sisters, only my sister Emily and I were still alive. Alcohol,
cancer and smoking have been the main culprits. I figured that if I lived five
years into retirement, I'd be content. I decided to take early retirement.
There was one final retirement option to be considered. Normally retirement
income would end with my death. However I chose the option of a reduced income
so that my spouse could continue to get half payment after my death through her
lifetime.
About the time of my retirement, we decided to sell our
property at Forest Meadows. It was a beautiful piece of property that we had
bought after we sold the Tahoe house. It was located right at the 3000 foot
level above Murphys, California on Highway 4. We had plans to build that I had
drawn up, but which mom had disagreed with. Her main concern was what would I be
doing up there to keep me busy after the house was built. She was right. So we
sold it at a nice profit. She put the profit into CDs so that the interest would
help with living expenses.
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