YOUTHFUL AND FATEFUL CHOICES
by Tom Guadagno
It was the summer of 1963. I, Thomas J. Guadagno, Jr. had done it. I graduated from college. This was a great, monumental achievement that no one else in my family had ever attained, and I felt a deep exhilarating sense of success and accomplishment.
I graduated New Utrecht High School in 1959, my cumulative average 87, at that time, was not good enough for day-time acceptance into one of the free city colleges in the five boroughs of New York City. Brooklyn College however, granted me free access into their evening non-matriculated program. After completing 12 credits with successful grades, one could become a matriculated full-time student. I registered for two, three credit courses– Hist of West Civ and An Intro to Political Sci - I loved history in high school and I wanted to major in it.
I began scanning the newspaper ads for a day-time job and I quickly managed to get an interview at the United Contact Lens Corp on 28th Street and Madison Ave. Contact Lenses were a new phenomenon in 1959. The owner of the company, a well-fed, rotund, mogul, sitting behind a huge desk in a swivel chair and sucking on a big cigar pompously informed me that if I applied myself in this new field and worked diligently I could become a big success in the company. He offered me $55 a week, and told me to report to work the next day.
My job was to work in a small office outside the lab where the contact lenses were grinded and polished. I had my own desk and a telephone. Throughout the day I answered phone calls from optometrists all over the country who placed orders for their patients. I wrote up the particulars and I remember that the cost to the optometrist was $10 a pair. For an additional $2.00, he could purchase insurance which guaranteed that if a patient lost or had a problem with the lenses, there would be no replacement charges.
I then delivered the order into the lab. Throughout the day I checked on its progress. About thirty men and women, many of whom were opticians, worked in the lab. Almost all of them were newly arrived, blond haired and pale skinned German immigrants, who spoke no English at all. At first, they were all somewhat hostile toward me and it was extremely difficult and frustrating for me to communicate with them. Then one day, my boss who spoke German, told the lab people that I was an Italian-American. Suddenly they were all smiling at me and lots of them began talking to me in Italian. My parents were born in America and didn't speak much Italian at home, but fortunately for me, I had studied four years of Italian in high school. So soon we were all communicating and as a result, I became more and more friendly with them.
I soon realized I had made a big mistake. The classes I chose were much too difficult for a beginner. Both required an extensive amount of reading as well as several term papers. Working full time from 9-5, I found the routine grueling. After work, three evenings each week, I descended into the overcrowded rush-hour subway mobbed with people who unintentionally pushed and shoved their way into the already fully packed trains taking them from lower Manhattan over the bridges and through the tunnels into the bowels of Brooklyn. When I arrived at the college I quickly grabbed something to eat and rushed to my first class, which was immediately followed by my second class. Then I had to get back into the subway and make my way home. It was generally around 10:30 PM when I got home, dead tired and climbed right into my bed.
Besides I hated Brooklyn College at night. It was a huge, dark, cold and impersonal institution. All the students seemed unfriendly and much older than I. The classes were very overpopulated, held in large, cold lecture halls; the professors, who lectured by reading the textbook aloud, were very boring, tired and unapproachable. A test was given each session on the difficult and extensive reading assignments. Inevitably I did poorly because I found the readings impossible to complete.
Meanwhile my job at the contact lens company was becoming very tedious, too. The phone never stopped ringing, the orders were always backed up in the lab. The doctors called repeatedly to complain about delays and mistakes. Many evenings, I missed my first class because I had to work overtime, without extra pay, searching the lab for the orders that were either lost or delayed. Whenever I located one, I had to write a note (in Italian!) pleading with the technicians to expedite it.
After about two and a half months of this routine, I was very frustrated unhappy and depressed. I was merely a 19 year old kid, fresh out of high school and my life too quickly became all work and no play.
One day, while walking to the Horn & Hardart Automat for lunch, I ran into my good friend, Frank Carucci. He was going on an errand for his father who owned a rubber stamp business on 29th Street between Madison and Park Avenue. We decided to have lunch together, and we discussed what had been going on in our lives since graduation. He told me he was a freshman at Long Island University in downtown Brooklyn. He began to enthusiastically relate all the fantastic experiences he was having: the clubs he was in, the girls he was meeting, the great classes he was taking, etc. I was green with envy and at the same time very sad because I realized how lucky he was to have a rich father who could send his son to a small private college. I desperately wanted the same for myself. Frank began to encourage me to apply, saying that the two of us could have great fun together being in the same classes, joining a fraternity, going to the college shows and dances, etc. Without thinking of the consequences, I asked him to get me an application.
Soon, without telling anyone in my family, I was corresponding with LIU. I visited the campus and I loved what I saw. It was very modern and bright. There was such a spirit of friendship and activity going on as the warm sun streamed into the building from huge floor to ceiling windows all around. There was loud laughter in the colorfully decorated student lounges. The classrooms were small and not overcrowded. The students all seemed to be around the same age as I. Professors were standing while teaching, writing on the blackboards or having discussions with the students. What a difference it was from my experience at Brooklyn College. I met with an advisor in the History Department and without a problem, I was soon accepted as a full time student for the February term. I was so excited - this was what I truly wanted. So, I decided I would quit my job and withdraw from Brooklyn College, too. The only problem, and it was a big problem, was the money. How would I get it? In 1959 tuition at LIU was $15 a credit. I had to take 15 credits, as a full time student, for a total cost of $225. I had no idea where I was going to get that kind of money and the thought of it filled me with anxiety. I would also need money for books and fees as well as subway fare and lunch money. A subway token was 15 cents and a slice of pizza with a coke was 25 cents. So I would need about $3 for carfare and lunch each week. It was now January, I had already dropped out of Brooklyn College telling no one in my family. I had about three weeks left to quit my job.
One evening I was so worried and depressed over it all that when I came home from work, my mother, sitting alone in the kitchen, saw my face and asked me why I was so sad – what was wrong? I burst into tears and confessed to her my whole dilemma. I wanted to go to LIU full time and I needed $225. I begged her to help me. I promised I would do everything I could to pay her back. I could see through my tears that she was very upset. I also knew how hard she worked to pay the never ending bills, and I felt a deep sense of despair; it was totally hopeless.
My parents both worked which was not the norm in 1959, but my father didn't earn much as a longshoreman and he had a serious gambling problem as well. So my mother was forced to take a job in a textile factory in the vicinity of Canal Street in Manhattan. They had loads of bills to pay each month and absolutely no extra money to pay a college tuition.
Later on, that evening my mother came into my room and told me she found a way to give me the money. She explained that my grandmother had left her two diamond rings which she would take to the local pawnshop for a loan and then she would ask her boss at the factory to give her an advance for the remainder.
The next day after dinner, my mother called me to come into the kitchen and said her boss was on the telephone and he wanted to speak to me.
“Hello, Thomas, this is Mr. Markowitz, I want you to know that I am not lending your mother the money.” My heart sank down to my toes.
"I am personally going to donate $250 toward your education but before I do this, you must make me a promise. I want you to promise me that you will not waste my money. I hear you want to become a teacher. I just want you to give me your word that you will work very hard and graduate with good grades. Then, when you graduate college, I want you to come to my factory and we will celebrate your success.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This had to be a dream, I thought. Well thanks to the overwhelming generosity of a very kind and gentle soul, Sol Markowitz, I was on a new road to my future
LIU was everything I expected and more. The first week there, I saw a job ad listed for a part time worker in the reference library and I soon was earning more than my carfare and lunch money. I was able to get several other part time jobs on days that I had few or no classes. That same semester, the government offered fantastic student loans for future teachers. I applied and each semester I received a check for all my tuition and supplies. The agreement was that as soon as I started working in the city schools, the loan would be cut in half. God bless America!
After graduation, I couldn’t visit Mr. Markowitz. A year after he had given me the money, he became seriously ill and died. I shall never forget him. He was a gentle and loving , very wealthy man who loved to help others less fortunate than he. I am absolutely certain that if there's a heaven in this universe, Mr.Markowitz is there in a very high and honored place...
I began searching The World Telegram & Sun for a teaching job. This newspaper had a daily page for teachers. I had originally majored in High School Ed. As a student teacher, I taught World History at John Jay High School in Brooklyn for six months and I loved everything about it. However that particular year, there was an excess of Social Studies high school teachers. The high school license exam was not given. There were not enough teachers in the junior high school, so I was encouraged by my advisor to take that exam. I passed and soon I received a copy of the license entitling me to work in the New York City Junior High Schools. I saw a job advertised for a Social Studies teacher at Whitelaw Reid JHS on Van Buren Street, Brooklyn. I called and the principal asked me to come in for an interview that same afternoon. He advised me to get on the DeKalb Ave bus which stopped directly in front of his school. When I got on the bus, I asked the bus driver to please let me know when we reached Van Buren Street. The bus trip seemed endless and I soon noticed that I was the only white person on it. I asked a kind looking, elderly woman sitting across from me, “Are we still in Brooklyn?” She looked at me very strangely and said, "Child, this is the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn." In my youthful naivete, I had never heard of it. Finally the driver called out to me and I got off. The building looked newly built and very modern. I rang the outside bell and the principal came down to open the door for me. We introduced ourselves and he began to show me around. The school had just been built the year before. Everything was shining and I was very impressed. There was a summer peaceful and quiet solitude in the empty building, which I should have relished because it never felt that way again. I liked the principal, Mr. Glassman, who seemed kind and good-natured.
He asked me one question. “Do you believe in using corporal punishment?” I looked at him strangely and said, “No I don't.”
He said, "Excellent, that's the answer I want. Last semester, I had to fire a teacher because he lost control and assaulted a student."
I should have run out of the building right then; however, he gave me a program of classes and the textbooks. I would be teaching classes 7-13 to 7-17. I was to report to the building for an orientation three days before the opening of school. I spent the rest of the summer digesting the textbook and preparing lessons.
The September day I arrived for orientation, there was a different principal, Mr. Stern. His name seemed to suit him well. He "sternly" told me Mr. Glassman was transferred to another school. He immediately informed me I was no longer teaching Social Studies. I would have the same classes but he needed me to teach them 7th Grade Mathematics. I strongly protested telling him that Math was my worst subject and I knew nothing about teaching it. My major in college was History. He said to me, “Listen up, just take the teacher’s edition of the textbook. All the work and answers are in it. Prepare lessons and stay one week ahead of the children and you will do fine.” At lunch I sat with the math teachers and they all assured me not to worry. Miss Cooney, a tough looking elderly lady built like a Jet's linebacker said to me, “Young man I have been teaching for 38 years. If you need any help, just come into my room and observe everything I do. Then go back and do the same lesson with your classes. When Miss Cooney said, " 38 years" I was completely astounded. It was totally incomprehensible to me, at that stage in my life (a twenty-three year old, naive fledgling), that anyone could be teaching for so many years. To me it sounded as if she may have begun her career teaching in the days of Julius Caesar.
Today I often think on this and realize how immature I was.. At the dinner table that evening, I told everyone.
"Can you imagine that this lady has been teaching for 38 years!”
My mother said, “Oh my God, she could have been one of my teachers!”
I hated teaching Math even though I copied and did everything I had observed Miss Cooney doing; however, one of the most important and vital achievements Miss Cooney easily accomplished that I could not do until many years later, was keeping her students totally attentive, quietly seated and working for the entire period. The worst students that I had noticed running wildly and undisciplined through the hallways were absolute angels when in Miss Cooney's classroom. For me, the children were complete, disruptive clowns who could not sit and pay attention for one minute. I got no help from the new principal who was completely overwhelmed and who had turned into a screaming, irrational tyrant. Well, it was a horrible and painful initiation into the teaching profession, and although it was filled with bedlam and chaos, I managed to survive my first school year.
The only clear memory I have of that time, is a very sad one. Two months into the school year one afternoon, I was trying to teach a lesson to an unruly class when the principal made the following announcement over the loudspeaker:
President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed by an assasin in Dallas, Texas....
At the end of my fledgling year by fire, a friend told me about a job offering in another school that was much closer to my home, I applied and got the position. I taught there for 19 years. Then when my wife and I bought a home on Long Island, I transferred to a school in Glendale, Queens and I taught at that school for 18 years.
In July 2001, having taught for 38years as a middle school teacher, I retired.
Labels: Memoir Writings
