ATTENDING TWO REUNIONS

This time, Rob shares an essay he wrote for a church service on family. This piece looks back at his experiences in the ‘60s and asks that Americans act now and spare their children the pain, divisiveness, and turbulence of the past, and even of today.  

High school class reunions generate many emotions – longing for days gone by,    excitement at seeing old friends,regret about roads not taken, reflection on life and what it’s meant, realization of mortality and all it implies. I never thought, however, reunions would generate sadness and apprehension for my children’s future. That’s what happened this summer as a result of attending two class reunions. Those reunions drive my thoughts about family this fall. 

 

My 50^th

Two Thousand Nineteen marks 50 years since I graduated from high school. Due to an odd circumstance, I got to go to two reunions. The thoughts and feelings they generated offer a commentary on the past, on our times, and, unfortunately, on the times my family may see in the future. 

I’m a member of the graduating class of Dollarway High School of 1969. The Dollarway School District lies on the western edge of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I attended DHS from the beginning of my sophomore year until graduation.

I grew up in Hope, Arkansas, so until we moved to Pine Bluff,

I attended school there. I finished my  freshman year at Hope's Yerger High in the spring of 1966.

Like most school systems in the South in the 1960s, the

Hope and Dollarway districts found themselves caught up in the battle over desegregation. Both operated dual school systems. Blacks attended one set of schools and whites another -- by law. They called it de jure segregation.

The Dollarway and Hope districts resisted ending their dual systems by using so-called “freedom-of-choice” plans. Students and their parents could choose the school they preferred. This resulted in desegregation in name only. No whites attended the black schools. A few blacks attended the white schools. Only two other black students graduated from Dollarway with me in 1969.

The federal courts and the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare ultimately decided the constitution required unitary systems – one set of schools for everyone. That fall—after my graduation – in both districts, the black schools and the white schools merged. That freshman class I started with was, therefore, the last graduating class Yerger High ever had, as

Back of Yerger 50th Reunion T-shirt

the back of the 50^th reunion t-shirt proclaims. I remained friends with some members of that class and they kindly invited me to their reunion in early July. Two weeks before, I attended my Dollarway class reunion.

Initially, both reunions left me joyous about renewing old acquaintances and reliving my youth. But, as they say in the National Football League, “upon further review,” I saw things differently. 

I had a positive experience at Dollarway. For the most part,  it

was what high school should be – a time of personal growth, youthful exploration, and adolescent experimentation. I had a few racially uncomfortable moments there as I will explore in my forthcoming book The Dollarway Syndrome: Race, Individual Goodwill, and the Continuing Struggle for Equality. By and large, however, my Dollarway

experience left me with warm feelings. That’s what the reunion reminded me of – positive emotions associated with football games, bonfires, drama club meetings, and track practice.

The Yerger reunion provided pleasant moments of a different

kind. I loved spending time both  with the friends with whomI’ve stayed in touch and those I hadn’t seen in ages. I appreciated learning about their triumphs and tragedies, reminding me of the miniscule margin between success and disaster. I didn’t do high school with the Yerger graduates, but they’re good people who played a meaningful role in my past.

Some Things Never Change

Despite the good feelings, generated by different circumstances at the two reunions, being at both reminded me of something else – America’s unfinished business with race. Both school districts have re-segregated. 

Dollarway, nearly all-white when I started there in 1966, is now about five per cent white, the rest of its student population black and Hispanic. Hope is about 20% white, the rest black and Hispanic.

It happened at Dollarway because whites left for private schools and because real estate developers built subdivisions in far out suburban areas. In Hope, a few private academies opened, and some white parents transported their children to a nearby rural district that welcomed them with open arms. So, fifty years after the battles I witnessed in the ‘60s, America still fights wars about race. The reunions reminded me of the depressing fact a good chance exists my children will likely still be fighting about race at the time of their 50^th class reunions. The battles won’t be the same as those of my youth, or even the ones of today.  But so many signs I can see say their society will face racial turmoil. That makes me very sad. I so much wish we would decide we don’t want that for our children, that we really are one family, and do something about it ourselves --- NOW. 

                         

                    

WHO WE ARE (PART I): Mastering a Craft

To give our readers a better sense of us as people, we begin a series of posts on our cherished values.  We want you to know what matters most to each of us.  ROB starts with his ideas about CRAFT.

A few months ago, we looked back at our legal careers, asking what we would do differently, knowing what we know now.  I wrote of my regrets about not having done more to develop my trial lawyer abilities. I’ve come to see development of a craft – learning to do something really well -- as essential to human fulfillment.  It means doing something with real skill.  In my sunset years, I happen to have found something – writing -- for which I have great passion for learning to do well.   I’ve thought a lot about how to accomplish that.  So, what does it take to develop a craft?

Read. Study.

Before I started my legal studies, I asked a lot of lawyers for

advice about succeeding in law school.  Some of what I got was useful, some wasn’t worth the dinners and drinks I bought for those telling me to do this or that.  One helpful piece of advice I received came from a friend named Booker Morris, then a Texas Assistant Attorney General.  He said simply, “Read. Study.”  There was more to law school than that, of course, but following his admonition laid a great foundation.  I see no reason that rule doesn’t apply in most endeavors. 

So, as I work at being a writer, I inhale novels, memoirs, and non-fiction works that provide background for what I’m writing about.  Want to write a novel about a female Navy pilot?  Read the memoirs of the first women fighter pilots.  Want to write about a political career in a state where you’ve never lived?  Go on Amazon and buy books about the political history of that state. 

The reading and studying also must include the “how to” of the craft.  Browse Barnes & Noble or other bookstores and find works that teach writing, accounting, being a computer geek, etc.  In my present effort, each quarter I try to read at least one book on how to write.   

Seek and Accept Mentoring

Some people learn by doing, some learn from mentoring by others. Woodson, for example, recently related to Henry and me his experience as a teenager of learning welding from a

master welder through watching the man work and talking endlessly with him about how to improve.  In my life, I’ve had great mentors in each of the two things I put the most effort into learning.  Two wise and talented lawyers, Ed Clover and John Hill, both now deceased, taught me the practice of law.  What I didn’t learn is my fault, not theirs.

As I transition into a writing career, I’m being nurtured by a talented writing group in my church and by my novelist daughter.  She writes under the name Bianca Sloane and I know her now as “Coach Sloane” (check her out at www. Bianca Sloane.com).  Her sculpting of me as a writer brings home the importance of apprenticeship in learning a craft.  We all need someone to teach the rules of the road, help us avoid potholes, and understand when to slow to a crawl and when to rev it up and let ‘er rip.  Everyone needs a Coach Sloane and I’m incredibly fortunate to have mine.

 

The 10,000 Hour Rule

Regardless of reading and studying and regardless of mentoring, in the final analysis, success depends most on doing the craft.  I’m a great believer in Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule -- the suggestion advanced in his bestselling book Outliers: The Story of Success – that doing anything really well requires doing that thing for at least 10,000 hours.  I realize the number might be 8,000 and it might be 22,000.  The point Gladwell makes so well is that learning a craft requires repetition – doing something over and over again until you get it right.  Since I keep up with the time I put into writing, I know I don’t have my 10,000 hours in yet.  But, I’m working on it on a daily basis and I’ll get there.

I also have my own corollary to the 10,000 hour rule.  Developing a craft resembles playing a sport at a high level.  Great coaches – football’s Nick Saban, basketball’s late, great Pat Summitt, golf’s Butch Harmon – I think would all say that if you don’t enjoy the grind of practice, the odds are you’ll never be very good, let alone great, at your game.  In the writing context, if you don’t enjoy the grind of reading, drafting, and editing, then reading, re-drafting, and editing some more, you really ought to find something else to do.   

 

As I work daily at my new craft, I say to young people, old

people, and people in between, “Figure out what you want to do really well and work at doing that, remembering the old adage that success is a journey, not a destination.” One day, you might get to say to yourself, “Well done.”  Then, start again on getting better.  This is who I am.  This is my formula for a fulfilling life.