My 94-year-old mom is emptying her closets, giving away stuff from our family home, as if tossing out extra weight from her hot-air balloon to make the journey home easier. Recently she gave me my 1968 high school yearbook. There I am, front and center, a thin, pimply, knobby-kneed kid, a full head shorter than the rest of the freshman basketball team — and wearing a completely different uniform from the other players. Theirs are 1960s modern: royal blue, satin shorts and brushed cotton jerseys; my shorts are baggy cotton, my jersey a white, wool, sleeveless tank-top. Bayport is written in script across my scrawny chest. My number is zero. The thing is, I wasn’t supposed to be there.
In 1968 everybody was not a winner. Yes, peace and love was in full bloom in the cities, but in small town America, we were Machiavellian at heart. You tried out for a team, and you either made it or were cut. The cut-list reverberated with Cold War finality, a stark, typewritten list hanging on a bulletin board outside the gym for all to see. There were no “good job!” categories. Guy Thorvaldsen was on top of the cut list. “Deal with it,” the list seemed to say. “And, for Pete’s sake, don’t cry about it!”
Worse was witnessing the giddiness of my buddies who had made the team, compassion being in short supply with 13-year-old boys. Later that day, after the last period bell, without a plan, I grabbed my books out of my locker and went to the gym. I suited up in my gym shorts and off-brand sneakers and went to practice, joining the lay-up lines along with the 10 guys who had survived the cut. Neither the other boys, nor coach Coverdale, a former MP in the Marines who had a scary reputation of dressing down cheeky boys, said anything.
The next day was the same. And the day after that: running baseline wind-sprints, practicing two-handed set shots, scrimmaging with the team. One might applaud my grit and determination, but they’d be wrong. I did not feel righteous or brave. My best guess is that I simply didn’t know what else to do after school besides being on the team.
Two weeks later, we were given uniforms for the first game. Another hurdle — there were not enough to go around. Coach just grimaced and shook his head at me.
Coach Coverdale was not just our coach, he was one of two Black teachers in our 99.9 percent Ivory soap-white school. Before he was my coach, Coverdale had been my eighth grade American history teacher. We not only learned about Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe and the wretched history of slavery, but also were granted a peek into Black culture. One day he brought in homemade cornbread. Another day he played us a Nina Simone record. She was no Petula Clark; she was in-your-face, fierce and steamy. Another day he simply showed us candid pictures of his family.
He talked about racial inequality in education. During one class, I raised my hand and asked if it was true that Blacks were less intelligent than whites, a “fact” I had heard on the news. I had seen Mr. Coverdale angry before, but not hurt. He rubbed his head and looked out the window for a few beats, no doubt dreaming of being somewhere else. And it was all my doing. I couldn’t have been more ashamed. And scared. Then Coverdale did what good teachers and exceptional people do — he kept teaching. That day, we learned about insulting stories and cockeyed theories built upon the throne of white privilege and bigotry.
So that day in the gym, Coach dealt with my not having a uniform, no doubt feeling cursed by this Thorvaldsen kid, especially given the daily insults his own kids had faced in school. When he moved his family into our town, he and his family had been shunned by the local real estate agents. He had every right in that moment to give this privileged white kid a hard-knocks lesson. I prepared for the worst.
“All right,” he finally said, shaking his head. “Here’s the key to the storeroom. If you can find an old uniform in that mess, you can be on the team.”
An hour later, I emerged with my itchy, wool, 1940s uniform. Number zero. By the end of the season I was still in the picture — and starting at guard. Over time, Coach and I developed a mutual regard for each other, him nodding to me in the hallway, as if checking that I was keeping on the path, and me nodding back.
Fred Coverdale went much, much further. He had a long, illustrious career and became the high school’s principal. Along the way he bought a house in the town’s most expensive and historic neighborhood. His funeral was one of the largest in Bayport history, several hundred people gathering to pay their respects to this man who tackled ignorance and bigotry, doing his work with a forceful grace that few of us can ever approach, much less imagine.
It was only then that I learned Fred Coverdale had been hired not because Bayport High had suddenly seen the light of their racist ways. No, he had been hired via telephone, sight unseen until he strolled into the school on his first day.
A few years before his death, at my 25th class reunion, into the restaurant walks coach Coverdale, now an elderly and elegant gentleman with a cane and hearing aids. Without any introduction or need to account for the 25 years since I’d last seen him, Coach says to me, “Gus. Can you still dribble that ball like you used to? You were a scrappy little player.”
Scrappy. I liked that. Guess we both had worked around the cut list in our own way.
Guy Thorvaldsen is a journeyman carpenter and taught English at Madison College for 15 years.
If you are interested in writing a personal essay for Isthmus, please query lindaf@isthmus.com.
