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Harry Roche, the Coach, who threw chalk and erasers at us when we didn't get the right answer in math or English. I was terrified of him. I didn't dare open my mouth even when I knew the answer—which wasn't very often. Somehow I survived eighth grade and graduated.
Prince Hal was a dark avenging angel. The tennis pro with a wicked eraser throw. Tall, tan and blond with white eyelashes—Harry was always disappointed in us. My next math teacher was also an athlete but he was benevolence and light. Poor Archie Williams inherited me, a frazzled, dyslexic under-achieving student, in his Foundations of Algebra class at Sir Francis Drake High School in San Anselmo, CA.
After Harry Roche, the Coach, I was a bundle of raw nerves. I was a young horse afraid of the shadow of the wind. Archie may have been an Olympic Gold medalist, but there was no victory gold in it for me. No math ever took root.
But Archie's stories were a lasting legacy. The way he ran the 440 in the Olympics—inspired us. His running mate was Jesse Owens. How they were the first Black men to receive Olympic medals—from Hitler!
I ran headlong from math. I hardly knew who Hitler was, but I knew the cool weight of the gold medal. Kathy Briones and I broke the school girl's track record running the 660 in under 2 minutes. But it was unofficial and so it didn't count, said Miss Scott. She thought we cheated. But we didn't. I couldn't walk for a week afterwards, I was so hamstrung.
Once we were helping Archie clean the chalkboard, we took the big chalk erasers and "wrote" obscenities on the side of the school wall. Archie was cool, he was all for free speech. But he said we needed to remove it because the principal didn't understand such things.
Once we were helping Archie clean the chalkboard, we took the big chalk erasers and "wrote" obscenities on the side of the school wall. Archie was cool, he was all for free speech. But he said we needed to remove it because the principal didn't understand such things.
