Always Living and Learning

Times We’ll Always Treasure

Recently, I had a student ask me, `Mr. Sanders, do you miss the old days?’ Admittedly, there are times I go on moderate speaking spiels about growing up in the 1970’s – the music, dress styles, great sports teams, a more unified United States. I usually cut it short and reply, `Those were good times, but your generation will have good times too.’ I can’t lie, though. We currently live in troubling times with our nation greatly divided. I miss the times when `Patriotism’ unified us, no matter what our individual politics were. My old freshmen high school boys’ basketball coach, Clint Hannah, and I recently touched base again on Facebook. He is 90, lives in Hawaii with his younger wife, and plays golf daily. More important, he is one of the best persons I have ever known – a sentiment shared by many of his former students and athletes. After reminiscing, he concluded the Facebook conversation with a simple reply, `Things were much simpler back then.’ I realize you can’t live in the past, and I don’t. I’ve been blessed with a wonderful job working with high school students and they mean the world to me. Being at Grants High School on a daily basis does, however, remind me of my days as a teenager at Madison High in Vienna, Virginia. The old brick building, constructed in the 1950s, still stands and is about half the size of our modernized GHS facility. My old school was small but still held about 2,000 students. Back then (Class of ’81), moving from class to class was like commuters trying to move on the 495 Capital Beltway where we lived.

School back then had its challenges as it does now. But we also had good times, just as our Pirates, recently back from summer break, are hopefully enjoying their high school years.

Here are a few memories I have of high school as a Madison Warhawk: There was the time my younger brother – a freshman and two years younger than myself - and his friend, Ricky, were walking down the hall towards the cafeteria at lunch time. The school bully, Mike Spring was his name, approached the two, then poured – in typically bully fashion - a small carton of milk over poor Ricky’s head. Spring was – in looks and dress – like `Happy Days’ Fonzie, only without a heart.

Word of the milkdrenching got to a friend of mine, Cary McMichael, a good looking senior and starting quarterback of the Madison football team. We learned later Cary approached Spring, condemned him for his

mischievous act, and landed, with one punch, the `wanna be gangsta’ Spring onto the school hallway floor. In all seriousness, I kind of felt sorry for the humiliated Spring.

Another memory was sitting next to a good friend in art class. I am not and never have been good at drawing, painting, or art in general. One test day in art, we had to draw a pencil sketch of a house. I was working at it the best I could, getting nowhere. Suddenly, my friend, Mark, whose dad was a teacher at the school, quickly switched my drawing with his. Before I even knew what was happening, he proceeded to draw a beautiful sketch of a house before returning the art work to me with my name on it. We turned our work in, I got an `A’ on the test, and our teacher did not have a clue I had cheated.

I felt bad in the long run, but always loved my friend Mark for bailing me out of an `F.’ That was one of the last times I would ever cheat at school. I knew it was wrong and did my own work the rest of my way through both high school and college. Still, I can’t help but laugh when remembering Mark’s gumption at `stealing’ my art paper and doing it for me!

In my high school days, our school stood right in the middle of town. On one side were the African-American neighborhoods, on the other the white neighborhoods. Every once in a while, there would be school fights between students of the different ethnic backgrounds, but not often. Sports, in which Warhawks’ athletes were of both races, was a unifier.

Our teenage music of that time included: the `Frampton Comes Alive’ album (Peter Frampton); Boz Scaggs’ hit single `Lido Shuffle’; and Stevie Wonder’s double album, `Songs in the Key of Life.’ I’ll always remember my mom helping me put together a record cover for art class – we were allowed to get help – of Steve Miller’s `Book of Dreams’ album. I was so proud of it.

Last story: I was small for a freshman but tried out for the ninth grade basketball team. My dad was a head basketball coach at Bishop O’Connell High, a Catholic School in nearby Arlington. On the day of cuts, Coach Hannah - the same man I now correspond on Facebook with - named the players who made the team. Those fellows left the locker room, happy to have made the team. My name was not called, along with 10 or so other guys. Coach Hannah gave us a pep talk on how proud he was of our effort, but that there was room for only so many players on the roster.

Later, Coach Hannah approached and asked about me. I told him my dad coached at O’Connell. His eyes widened. He knew my dad and had coached against him over the years. So, fair or not, Coach Hannah allowed me to be on the team. He would use my dad as our summer team coach.

We all have school memories that will stick with us forever. Our current GHS students are living their high school moments now. They will have both good and bad experiences, as we all do. But hopefully, they will grow to be good people for their time spent at GHS and we, as a community, will be the better for it. Please, support our young people at our awesome high school in Grants! Memories made by the youngsters here will last a lifetime.