That was what they said about me in my school yearbook in 1960 when I finished high school at Saint Xavier'sAcademy in Providence.
But the teaching had begun early.
My mother came home from her work at Darlington Fabrics talking about a workmate who was a German War bride. She had a son and he could not read. My mother told her that I was an excellent reader and had started to read when I was four. So the German mother asked if I could come and try to help her son.
I went to her house as directed and there I met her son. I was nine years old.
I don't recall much about our meetings except that the house was immaculate and her kitchen floor was shining. She had a lot of large deep arm chairs and I would sit in one with her son and teach him the sounds that the letters make and then combine them to make words.
After several lessons, the boy was reading. When his mother heard him read, she rushed over with a large Bible and pointed to a Psalm and very slowly the boy sounded the words.
She was so happy she wept and she gave me 10 dollars for all my work.
I had expected nothing.
I don't know why, but instead of taking that ten home and giving it to my mother, I went downtown to the Roger Williams Savings and opened my first bank account.
I was impressed with the bank book and when I went home I showed it to my mother with great pride.
She reacted in a way that I could never anticipate -- she took the bank book and threw it across the room!
"Here I am" she said, "a middle aged mother of three and I have never had the courage to walk into a bank and open a savings account. How could she do this? That is her Black Protestant Yankee Jenckes soul coming through. OMIGOD. What will she do next?"
Good question and one that I never had an answer for - I still don't.
My teaching career did not stop with that setback. As summer loomed, I decided to open a school from Nine to Noon in a garage across the street from our tenement. I think, if memory serves--and miraculously it still does-- it belonged to the Mc Cormack's on Englewood Avenue. I asked if I could use it and offered to sweep it out and clean it. Used some of the old broken chairs and boxes as student seats. There was a small table and I used that as a desk. I opened the little school and I charged a nickel for reading and a dime for math. Students came with their money and I put the coins in a little piggy bank.
There were about ten or fewer students but they did seem to be learning and their parents sent them each day with their nickels and dimes.
I was exhausted by noon each day--but I knew that I had found my calling. I had gotten the connection between teaching and money. It would support my life!
ALL MY LIFE GLADLY WOULD I TEACH AND GLADLY LEARN.
