One-on-One With Frank Deford

Voted Sportswriter of the Year six times by his peers, Frank Deford wrote for newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, Internet, movies, and Broadway. He was a senior contributing writer at Sports Illustrated and a long-time correspondent for HBO’s Real Sports. His commentary was heard each Wednesday for years on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. This interview took place in March 2004. Frank passed away in 2017 in Key West, Florida.  

Q. “I believe that professional wrestling is clean and everything else in the world is fixed.” You wrote that. One of the things I like about your style is your unpredictable or contrarian point of view. Mark Twain wrote, “Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.”

Deford: I think that’s probably true. I think I’m something of an iconoclast. Though sometimes people take me too seriously when I’m clearly being contrarian for the sake of saying, “Let us at least consider that point of view.” People get terribly upset. Soccer people in particular.

Q. Meaning what?

Deford: Soccer people are the most sensitive of all sports fans in the United States. They’re so defensive about their sport because it’s so beloved everywhere else in the world and barely tolerated here. And so they begin in a defensive posture. Normally they accuse the rest of us Americans who don’t like soccer of being barbarians. And, so, anytime you can say anything that’s the least bit contrary about soccer, you bring down the temple around you. Which I take great delight in.

Q. Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong?

Deford: I don’t know if I’d go quite that far, but it’s a good ideology to follow.

Q. You wrote a cover story about Howard Cosell in Sports Illustrated many years ago…

Deford: More negative mail on that particular article than any other. Because I dared to say, you know, “Cosell ain’t all bad.” There were so many people who hated Cosell, unreasonably, most of them. And it was because he was contrarian, and he wasn’t what we expected sports announcers to be.

Q. The disagreements are always more interesting than the agreements, aren’t they?

Deford: You know, I have to accept it, if I’m going to shoot my mouth off, as I do every Wednesday on NPR. In a way, I hate every letter that disagrees with me. I’m human. Notwithstanding, when I can sit back and look at it rationally instead of emotionally, I know that if I didn’t get those kind of letters, I wouldn’t be doing a good job. Because it’s important to take positions. You have to be honest in what you believe. I could not have written about Cosell in the way that I did unless I felt that way.

Q. Since we’re talking about quotes, do you have a favorite one, or words to live by?

Deford: Yes. This is from Jonathan Swift: “Instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.” Which would go contrary to what we’ve been talking about. But that, in important matters—not in making fun of soccer—is the creed I follow.

Q. You have interviewed and written of some of the great “characters” in sports: Al McGuire, Bobby Knight, Jimmy Connors, to name a few. Who are the most interesting personalities in sports business today?

Deford: Nobody pops into my mind right away. There was a time when sports was in a great state of flux, when everything was changing. When there were new teams, whole new leagues, when free agency came in. There were a tremendous number of characters then. Al Davis comes immediately to mind.

There were agents who were fascinating. I remember there was a guy named Bill Riordan, who was Jimmy Connors’ manager and ran tournaments in tennis. There were all kinds of interesting characters then in business.

I think now they’re all pretty staid and typical businessmen because sports is a very stable environment today. All the great changes have taken place. What new has happened in sports in the last 10 or 15 years? It’s hard to think of anything. And now sports is just run by bureaucrats. I’m sure they are out there, but no one pops into my head that’s particularly interesting at this point.

Q. You called Mark McCormack brilliant, saying he created the only dynasty, ever, over all sport.

Deford: Yes. Mark was a dull guy, though. You asked me who the interesting personalities were. Mark was a brilliant man, and he was kind of fun to interview because he was so bright and you could have great discussions with him. But he certainly was not any kind of fascinating character as, for example, Al Davis is. It will be interesting to see, as a matter of fact, if the McCormack empire can survive the death of the king, or I guess I should say the emperor. And we don’t know that, do we?

Q. Is it possible that our appetite for sports is overstuffed but undernourished?

Deford: Yeah, I think that’s fair. Obviously there’s such a glut, and I think this is one of the reasons that young men—who we all know are the most elusive audience of all—have turned away from sports. Because if it’s just out there all the time, there’s no mystery to it anymore. And when something loses its mystery and its enticement, it loses its charm.

They used to say that there was a Tarzan movie playing somewhere in the world every moment of the day. Well, now there’s a basketball game playing, not somewhere in the world but on your television set every moment of the day. After a while, I think it all sort of blurs together. And that’s basically true with all sports.

It’s so hard for anything to be special anymore. I really don’t pay attention to anything until it gets to the championships. I can’t keep it all together. I sort of watch it all with one eye. But the championships are the only thing that matter to me anymore. And God knows there are enough of them.

Q. Speaking of God, ever since David and his slingshot, athletes have been pointing skyward after an individual accomplishment. Who knew that God was such a sports fan?

Deford: Well, he is. And we should all know that. He takes time out from his busy schedule to root for various teams. And those teams that pray the most, I think God favors. Now, it’s always tricky when two teams that pray equally meet each other. This makes it very tough for God. And sometimes he just doesn’t know what to do, and so as a consequence, he turns his back and lets the athletes decide without him getting involved.

Q. God is indifferent?

Deford: He’s neutral, but most of the time, as any sensible person knows, God determines what happens on the field. And I think that’s the way that it should be. It’s foolish for us to think that we should play these games without spirituality mattering more than athleticism.

Q. Speaking of God complexes, Billy Martin said, “There is nothing greater in the world than when someone on the team does something good, and everybody gathers around to pat him on the back.” What do you consider the best thing about sports?

Deford: Did Billy really say that? (Laughing) I remember Billy telling me that he was responsible for something like 40 victories a year as a manager. That sort of goes contrary to that, but that’s a very sweet sentiment. And I would subscribe to that absolutely. I’m enough of a romantic to be for that. Sweetness and light.

Q. What’s the worst thing about sports?

Deford: Drugs. Simple. End of story. You can go on and on and say the violence in sports, the ugliness that we hear and see in the stands now that we didn’t use to. Athletic scholarships and the entire fraud that big-time college athletics are. You can go on and on, but indisputably the threat to sports today is drugs.

Q. Witness the histrionics that regularly occur during a game. Does sport have to manufacture excitement?

Deford: I don’t think that’s sports manufacturing excitement. When you say sports manufactures it, it’s something you think in terms of, say, Bill Veeck, a promoter. These are the players, and they’ve grown up now with a much larger component of acting up and showing off. I don’t get as upset about that as a lot of people do.

I thought that [Terrell Owens’] Sharpie and [Joe Horn’s] telephone were rather amusing. And most people thought, particularly since God was watching, that this was an insult to sports, that it was sacrilegious. I thought it was kind of clever. I know it’s over the top, but both of them were original.

Q. A lot of it is dreary, though.

Deford: I get more upset about the guys who flex their muscles and do all that stomping around and throw the ball down. I’ve had enough of that. That’s boring. I’m glad to see these guys coming up with something new. And of course the league immediately put them down, so we were forced to have the same old same old.

Q. Well, because sports is a serious business.

Deford: Sports is serious. People said this was an insult to the game and to the many many NFL players who had played the game the right way in the dim, dark past. All things considered, I think that the more fun you can put into sports, the better that it is.

Now there was another instance, I believe it was also Owens, who after he scored a touchdown went out and stomped over the Cowboys’ star [logo at midfield]. That to me is ugly and has no place. But I think there’s a difference between the humorous things and the kind of taunting, which are sort of a form of violence. They’re accepted much more than the light-hearted things.

Q. You mentioned Bill Veeck. He was ahead of his time in sports marketing, before there was even such a term. How far have we come in sports marketing?

Deford: I think we’ve reached a point where it’s played itself out. Nobody’s come up with anything new lately. There’s no new ways to make money since luxury boxes that I’m aware of. And there’s really not been a whole lot of innovative marketing, except bobblehead dolls, in the last 10 or 15 years. Now there just aren’t that many ideas in sports. Haven’t been for a generation now. Everything is so serious. Everything is so commercial. Everything is so standard now that a lot of the fun has gone out of the games, I think. That’s why when a guy brings out a telephone, I say more power to him.

Q. Have the games become subordinate to the business of sport?

Deford: Well, no. I don’t think that’s fair to say. We still haven’t reached the point they have in both Asia and Europe where guys wear advertisements on their uniforms. They’ve had that for generations. Hell, if you go to a soccer game in Europe, they change their shirts at half-time. The guy’ll come out in a shirt that says Dannon yogurt for the first half, and for the second half he’s wearing a bank on his shirt.

Q. Are we getting there?
Deford: We’ve got a long way to go. I don’t know why that’s taken so long. Tennis players already wear that. It doesn’t bother anybody that all the NASCAR drivers and the cars themselves are billboards. I don’t understand why they don’t do product placement in golf tournaments, where they have, you know, a Hummer sitting up there instead of a sand trap. So there’s a lot more that can happen. If anything, we’ve been kind of conventional and traditional in our treatment of the games as far as commerce is concerned.

Q. The New York Times in a story [on Jan 18, 2004] referred to “NASCAR Dads.”

Deford: I did a piece on that for Sports Illustrated some time ago. I suggested there would be a new sitcom in which a NASCAR dad marries a soccer mom. Television loves these things. They call it “cute meet,” where two terribly different people encounter each other. You know, the odd couple. The NASCAR dad is more of the right winger; the soccer mom is more of the sensitive liberal.

I think, though, in both cases it’s a catch phrase which probably embraces a lot more than the stereotype. But more than anything else, it reflects on the increased popularity of NASCAR. We don’t say pro football dad or NBA dad, and whoever coined the phrase was really celebrating the new popularity of NASCAR, which I think is very real.

Q. In the story, NASCAR estimates that it has 75 million fans, or one-quarter of the U.S. population, and claims 6.7 million ticketed spectators last year. The point was that if there is a NASCAR dad, how does a political party get this large electoral bloc to vote for its candidate.

Deford: Again, I think the stereotype of the NASCAR fan is somewhat different from the reality. I’m not a NASCAR fan myself. It absolutely boggles my mind that anybody can sit there and watch cars going around in a circle. I love to watch people race; I love to watch horses race. I have no interest whatsoever in watching cars race.

But it’s loud and it’s fast, and more than anything else, though, I think the reason that NASCAR works—well, obviously, people like to see cars race—is because it has this wonderful formula in which, effectively, it’s an all-star game every week. The same handful of drivers. They race week after week after week against each other.

I don’t think it’s any accident that they follow the NFL pattern, which is one game a week, and that’s ideal. That’s what soccer is basically around the world. It’s a weekend game and you have the same teams. And so, NASCAR, to me, is very much like the NFL, and that’s why it works best.

Q. Incentive clauses: Bob Horner used to have a weight clause. A-Rod makes $25 million a year, but he gets another hundred grand if he makes the all-star team. Years ago, Joe Namath was on Larry King…

Deford: Did he want to kiss Larry?

Q. He didn’t try to kiss him, but Namath said he refused to have incentive clauses in his contract because he said he couldn’t play any harder than he was already playing. What’s your take on incentive clauses?

Deford: I think that’s a wonderful statement by Namath. I salute him for that. But those are not necessarily incentive clauses. In other words, if you make the all-star team, that doesn’t mean you tried any harder; it just means you’ve done better. I do think there’s a difference there. You’re being rewarded for success.

But it’s nonsense to give that to somebody like A-Rod, who’s already getting $25 million. I think those success clauses have a very applicable place in the contracts of rookies or journeymen. It’s just greedy for A-Rod or his agent to put that into a contract of that size.

Q. How do you assess the state of sportswriting today?

Deford: I think that there are more good sportswriters than there ever have been before. It’s a much more respectable profession to go into. When I started it was sort of like being a freelance model. It wasn’t something a gentleman was supposed to enter. There was, I hate to say this, a lot of corruption in sportswriting. If you were a sports editor and the boxing match came to town, the promoter would come over and grease your palm if he wanted to get some publicity.

So, sportswriting itself, in being more respected, has more good sportswriting. Unfortunately, we are more and more handmaidens of television. We’re really not allowed to write a whole lot about things that don’t appear on television. And there are just so damn many games that it takes up all the space. And so I think there are a lot of good sportswriters who unfortunately are not given a chance to write their best.

Q. Any favorites?

Deford: Sportswriting is so local. I love Scott Ostler in San Francisco. But how often do I see his column? Twice a year, maybe? I always say, though, that sports is the easiest thing to write. We try to keep that a secret. It’s wins and losses and there are characters. Guys who write politics basically write sports now. They’ve caught on. They don’t write about issues and important stuff. They write the game of politics. We have the best subject in the world to write about, if the agents don’t screw it up and start sequestering the athletes and keeping them away from us, which is happening more and more. It’s becoming like Hollywood.

Q. It’s the great American topic.

Deford: Sports? I believe that. Ever since it went on television. More and more people are familiar with it. And it’s real. That’s really the difference between sports and movies and music. You don’t know what the outcome is going to be. More than anything else, that’s what makes sports so charming.

Q. You have written that radio and TV sports talk (babble, you called it) mostly rewards the loudmouths and the meanies.

Deford: I can’t improve on that. And that’s not to say that there aren’t guys in the business who are honorable and fine journalists. Unfortunately, it’s the guy who makes the most noise, who gets the most attention and says the most outlandish things who rules that market.

Q. That's true not just in sports talk.
Deford: It tends to be true in political talk as well. If you are responsible and don’t say really crazy, outlandish things in a loud voice, nobody listens to you. That’s a shame. But what’s really bad about sports radio—and I should say some of sports radio, because I don’t want to indict everybody—is that remarks are made that have no basis in truth whatsoever and then they are picked up and passed on. It’s scurrilous.

Q. Who’s the greatest competitor you’ve seen?

Deford: Bill Russell.

Q. Sports Illustrated, NPR, HBO…What’s a typical day off like, assuming you do get a day off?

Deford: I write movies and books. This morning, I went and did my commentary for NPR. I’ve been working on a speech. I’m finishing up a movie. I’m very good at being able to compartmentalize myself. Having said that, I’m not any kind of workaholic at all. I know when to stop and sit down with my wife and drink a bourbon or two. I go to the theater. And the main thing is, I don’t play golf. It’s amazing what you can do if you don’t play golf.

Q. That’s a lot of hours a day.

Deford: That’s it. People say, “How do you write novels?” It’s because I don’t play golf. That’s the most important thing that I don’t do. That allows me to do all the other things. I don’t care about golf, or talk about golf, or go to the pro shop and buy golf clubs or shoes or gadgets that help me play golf better. That provides me with an entire other life that other sportswriters don’t have. Because all sportswriters play golf, except for me, as near as I can tell.

Q. As it happens, I don’t play either.

Deford: I can’t believe that! Really? People think you’re crazy, don’t they? They’re always inviting me to tournaments.

Q. People always tell me how much I’ll love it.

Deford: Yeah, that’s right. And then you ask them, and they hate it, most of them. It’s a masochistic game. Actually I enjoy watching golf—if it’s a championship. I watched Michelle Wie this weekend. Once she left, I didn’t want to watch. The Masters will be the next golf tournament I’ll watch. It’s a wonderful game. It’s so pretty. But I don’t want to play it. I want to do other things with my life. But I’m amazed to have met somebody in the business who doesn’t play golf. You’re the first person.

Q. I just tell people I don’t have any plaid pants.

Deford: (Laughing) And don’t want a pair.

Q. In one of your columns you cite Socrates’ belief that the two main keys to a young person’s development are the fine arts and athletics?

Deford: Absolutely, and those are the first two things cut in school funding. Talk about short-sighted. And more and more, they’re cut because it’s important for kids to take standardized tests. And they have to study for those standardized tests. I think that’s one of the worst things about American education.

I’m the first one to scream about the overemphasis of big-time athletics. But to cut athletics at the elementary and the high school and junior high levels, which are basically exercise and good health, and athletics teaches people to work together on a team. I think those things are so very vital.

Q. And the arts.
Deford: The same thing with fine arts, because the appreciation of music…I can’t hold a note and really don’t understand music, and I’m not much better with art. But at least having had that background was one of the richest things that I learned. We just don’t understand how short-sighted we are with these damn standardized tests, which teach everybody how to take multiple-choice questions and not to understand Michelangelo or Renoir or Beethoven. It’s just insane.

Q. It’s an impatience to stick a label on the kids.

Deford: Yeah. We have this epidemic of obesity in this country where the current generation is going to be the first since Colonial times in which it lives a shorter life than its parents. And so much of that is because nobody gets any exercise any more. But standardized tests are much more important for us to take. Get everybody exactly down pat.

Q. Why does the NCAA care about where or how a college athlete (Jeremy Bloom, for example) makes money outside of college?

Deford: Because they want to control it. Simple as that. That’s all the NCAA is about. It’s about controlling athletics and athletes so that the colleges spend as little money as is necessary and make as much money as they possibly can. And once they allow a Jeremy Bloom to cross over that line, they’ve lost control. The NCAA, as far as I know, is the most successful, potent cartel in this country. And why it survives without any court challenges is beyond me.

Q. Anything to be done?
Deford: I’ve heard this, I promise you, the day I got into sportswriting, “The college presidents are going to take over. Don’t you worry, once the college presidents take over, this is all gonna be straightened out.” And they don’t want anything to do with it, except to stand up every now and then and say they’re going to take over and they’re going to straighten this out.

There’s not a college president who won’t tell you that “College athletics is terrible—except, of course, at my school, where everything’s fine.” They want nothing to do with it. They’ve got enough on their hands, and they can’t fight the athletic departments because they’ve become too powerful. And they can’t fight the alumni, who love sports. It’s just a hornets’ nest. If anybody thinks college presidents are going to save college sports, they believe in the tooth fairy.

Q. Mark Twain said, “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” What are you reading now, and what books have meant the most to you?

Deford: I think that’s wonderful. I’m very eclectic in my reading. I go from novels to history. I’ve never had a writer whom I’ve patterned myself after, who’s changed my life. There are certain books along the way—The Catcher in the Rye probably is as prominent as any other—which have blown me away. I’m totally in awe of Shakespeare. Among modern writers I think William Styron had the greatest effect upon me. 

Q. Favorite sporting event? 

Deford: A good, important baseball game. A bad back-and-forth game (football, basketball, hockey, and so forth) can entertain you more than a bad baseball game. But a good baseball game, because it’s the most intellectual of all sports and the most thoughtful, engages me more than any other.

Q. Favorite piece of music

Deford: I’m thinking of all the country-and-western songs I like. I love that Traviata (hums “Libiamo”).

Q. Favorite actress?

Deford: I wish somebody would jump to mind. I just saw Diane Keaton… and Renee Zellweger. Catherine Zeta-Jones, because she’s so beautiful. You get seduced by the beauty of actresses. But I like the actresses who can play different parts. You know the one I love...O.K....Juliette Binoche.

Q. Favorite movie?
Deford: Viva Zapata!

Excerpts of this interview ran in 2004 in SportsBusiness Journal. 

Zadig and Trump

In his short satirical tale “Zadig,” Voltaire describes the fictitious great lord Irax as “not bad at bottom but … corrupted by vanity and voluptuousness [who] breathed in nothing but false glory and false pleasures.” Zadig, the prime minister of the kingdom, undertakes to rectify the bad behavior. He does this with the cooperation of a vast entourage of the court's sycophants and via such an uninterrupted litany of fulsome praise for Irax, “expressly for all the good qualities he lacked,” that after five days, Irax, exhausted and chastened, begged for it to stop.

Would this strategy work with Trump?

Office Christmas Parties

One of the pleasures of working at New York magazine in the 1970s (and there were many) was the annual Christmas party, held in the editorial offices on the third floor at 755 Second Avenue. That was a comfortable setup for the edit and art departments. New York published weekly, except for a double issue the last two weeks in December. That week without a press deadline was liberating, and the staff reveled in the temporary stress-free period. We could work ahead to prepare for the new year, and then willingly stay late to enjoy the party in New York's city room layout. 

In the festive spirit of the season, we even tolerated the presence in our midst of the Mad Men and Mad Women of the advertising sales offices from the second floor. You see, a few of them would have sold out the editorial in a New York minute for a sales commission. I remember one rep who brashly and unashamedly offered to write capsule restaurant reviews (for publication!) for potential clients she was soliciting. She saw no conflict of interest there, only a fatter paycheck for herself.

It was not uncommon for Mayor Ed Koch and Representative Bella Abzug to join us. One year, Paul Newman showed up. To this day I cannot hear a Johnny Mathis Christmas song without thinking of my former colleague Merry Clark, who at the party one year ruefully told me about the moment she realized that Johnny was not singing to her. When I reminded her of that not too long ago, she said, “He’s still not singing to me!”

In 1976, New York published “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” by Nik Cohn. In December 1977, the film Saturday Night Fever, based on Cohn’s story, opened. That same month, at our office Christmas party, the art department was turned into a disco, complete with strobe light and dry-ice-making fog. Taking a turn on the dance floor with the lively artists of editorial was an even livelier pair of roller-skating monkeys. I never learned who invited them.

In the course of one of those late-night Christmas parties in the office, one booze-fueled contributing writer had a memorable close-up encounter with the magazine’s copy machine. I wasn’t an eyewitness but I did see the evidence in the form of a stack of black-and-white reproductions that Around Town listings editor Ruth Gilbert kept in the bottom drawer of her desk. As it turned out, it wasn't all that memorable for the contributing writer, who had a hazy recollection of the party. Days later, his anxiety was not assuaged by reassurances from Ruth and Merry that nothing had happened. The incident would later be rewritten by New York contributing editor Tom Wolfe in his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities.

Christmas at Condé Nast

After I left New York in 1979 for Condé Nast Publications, the venue and the atmosphere for the party changed. Every year, about two weeks before Christmas, the chairman, S.I. Newhouse, invited the company’s officers and the editors in chief and publishers of each of the Condé Nast magazines to a private lunch at the Four Seasons restaurant. A highlight was the heartfelt and gracious speech by S.I. in which he expressed his gratitude for the efforts of all those assembled. One year, CNP president Steve Florio passed along some inspirational words spoken by his grandmother, he told us, before she passed. “Tropo duro,” he said she whispered to him on her deathbed. “Stay tough.”

I loved working at Condé Nast. I was given a raise every single year for over 20 years. Not once had I ever asked for one. How it happened was, my boss, executive vice president John Brunelle, would call or drop me a note during Christmas week. “Are you in the office tomorrow?” he would ask. “Stop by and see me. I need to talk to you.” The talk would be to inform me that I was being given a raise.

John passed away earlier this year. What a patient and understanding boss he was, and what a forgiving and unforgettable mentor and gentleman he was to a young editor.

In 1983, when I was in the process of selling my first house and closing on another, I was informed that Condé Nast historically, if not publicly, made available loans to its editors and publishers. I went to see John. After I sat down in his office, he pressed a button under his desk to release the door held open by a magnet. I felt like I had entered Ali Baba’s cave. I asked him about the possibility of securing a bridge loan.

Without hesitating, he said, “Sure. How much do you need?” When I told him $19,500, he asked if it would be convenient for me to pick up the check the next morning. All that was required of me was my signature acknowledging receipt of the check. There would be no interest on the loan and no payment-due date. “Pay it back when you can,” John said. That was typical of my relationship with him. The few times I met with John in his office over what I perceived to be a press emergency, he listened carefully, quickly assessed the situation, and leaned back in his chair. “It’s all going to happen,” he said cheerfully, taking a puff on his cigar.

It’s all going to happen? I repeated to myself. Yes, and it’s all going to be bad, I thought. But it never was. Much later I realized what he meant by that. He had complete confidence that I would take whatever steps necessary and spend however much time and effort it took to avert the crisis. He was right. Years later, at a retirement party thrown for John at Michael’s restaurant in New York City, I mentioned the meeting and John’s calm response to my agitation to his wife and daughter. “Oh, he was always telling us that, too,” they said.

Surprise Package

One year at Christmas, in 1992, I received a most unexpected package: a gift-wrapped bucket of caramel popcorn along with a genial note and a standing personal invitation to meet from the Cleveland Browns’ coach at the time, one Bill Belichick. “Thanks for thinking of me [with a copy of Street & Smith’s Pro Football edition],” he wrote. “Please give me a call if you are in or around the Cleveland area; the Browns facility is but a mile from the airport.” He enclosed his business card and closed with “If there is ever anything I can do for you, I hope you won’t hesitate to call.” I wonder if that invitation still stands.

Oh, What Fun It Is...

Teaching the first grade this week, I was reunited with the kindergartners I had tried to instruct a year ago during a time when their regular teacher was serving grand jury duty. It was a mostly exhilarating albeit somewhat exhausting experience to drop in again and be surrounded by so much youthful innocence and unbridled exuberance. I can report here, non-judgmentally, that a few of the students remain frightfully antic and blithely indifferent to rules about classroom decorum, diligence, and the collaborative requirements of education. 

Declan informed me, "I only want six things for Christmas."
"Underwear, socks, and what else?" I teased him.
"No, toys," he said. "But I'm getting my dad one thing: beer."
"A can of beer?" I asked.
"No, a six-pack. I mean a 12-pack."

Anthony told me, apropos of nothing, "In France, Santa gets wine and cheese as a snack, not milk and cookies."

Devin explained that he was leaving for Florida on Friday but that Santa had been advised to leave gifts for him at his grandma's house in New Jersey.

Last year I was introduced to Olivia, who made her presence felt immediately in a big way. On one unforgettable day in November, Olivia made a quick bathroom visit before we headed down the hall to the Veterans Day assembly. Soon after taking her seat on the gym floor she rose to inform me, "I didn't wipe myself good." As an editor for 34 years (and a parent), I had a lot of experience with juvenile behavior and cleaning up messes. This, however, was unprecedented. Thankfully, an aide overheard Olivia's confession and stepped up and redeemed me.

Fast forward to today. During the course of the morning, the diminutive but hungry and hypochondriacal Olivia was at my desk continually--not continuously (it only seemed like an unbroken run of appearances). Shortly after 9 A.M. she inquired how much longer it would be until lunchtime. That was followed by complaints about her health (she was fine) and her classmates, her plans for Christmas, and a brief unsolicited history of her parents' employment, including a parenthetic note that her father was usually less busy than her mother. As often as she materialized in front of me, I patiently reminded her to go back to her desk. 

By the end of the day, Olivia had heard enough from me. After my final admonishment to her to focus on the assigned task, I overheard her say to her table mates, "Mr. K used to be fun, but now he's pushing us to work to the limit."

I almost felt like a real teacher.

Randee

In this the holiest week on the calendar for many faiths that believe in the resurrection, I thought of a friend who passed away this year. I knew the late Special Ed teacher extraordinaire Randee Gerson only through the West Ridge Elementary School, yet I considered her a good friend. That might seem ironic, considering we never did any of the traditional things that friends do. I never shared a meal or even a cup of coffee with Randee, never bought her a drink, never gave her a ride, never ran an errand, never did a favor for her. How I wish I could go back now and do all of those things for her. How I wish I could see her smiling face welcoming another day at school and inviting me to share in the excitement of education.

Randee did plenty for me, though. She trusted me with her students, and I took that responsibility very seriously. I was able to see firsthand the work (and the miraculous results) and the preparation that went into that work, and I was determined never to let her down for the faith she showed in me. Randee was an inspiration.

I came to West Ridge late in life as a substitute teacher (with no experience in the front of a classroom) after a 35-year career in journalism, and joked with Randee that as an editor I was not unfamiliar with childish behavior, incoherence, difficult personalities, and temper tantrums. What Randee was able to accomplish was no joke. She went about the task of teaching her students with grace, class, humor, infinite patience, and enthusiasm.

You could not help but be infected by her passion for the children. I often told her that I marveled at the cheerfulness of her students. That was no accident. Randee made school fun for them. Those were children with special needs who spent a large part of each day under Randee’s care, and it was one of her special gifts that she was able to reach out and connect with them and to make each day for them so positive.

Randee imposed structure for the students with an indispensable classroom routine that accounted for every minute of the school day. She had a large display—I called it the “Big Board”—in the front of the room with the daily schedules for the students. Looking at it, you could tell at a glance what subject was being taught in each period and when the students were to leave her class for basic skills or to rejoin their homerooms for library, music, art, world language, or gym. After the day's announcements and the pledge of allegiance, there was a brief morning meeting, which included the calendar and social conversations at a round table with the students about their lives.

I came to appreciate how beneficial that routine was to the children. It gave them a clear, stress-free outline for their day as well as encouragement and self-confidence for their efforts and the incentive to work hard and to try to do their best. Randee’s students, though, like students everywhere, knew all the tricks in the playbook on procrastination when it came to completing their assignments. When the morning meeting was over and it was time to start the lessons, I typically would sit one-on-one with one of the young boys while the teacher’s aides worked with the other children. I’d check the previous night’s homework (usually a worksheet for spelling and another for math) and then apply a sticker and/or a star from a scented marker. No one ever turned down a sticker, although there was the occasional internal debate about which sticker the student wanted and which “flavor” of marker he favored on that day. 

“Mr. K, can I get a drink?”
“You just got here.”
“I’m really thirsty.”
“Go ahead.” 
But as he made to leave the classroom and head for the hallway, I’d point to the fountain in the sink.
“That water’s no good,” he told me. (This was said by every student in every school about every classroom’s water.)
I relented.
Having apparently quenched his thirst in the hall, he returned.
“O.K.,” I said. “Let’s get started on our spelling.”
“And then we’re done?”
“No.”
“Why (said so plaintively)?”
“Because it’s only 8:50.”

After a page of work, he’d ask to use the bathroom (Randee set a limit of two morning bathroom breaks) and then take a circuitous route to the boys’ bathroom. I watched him from the classroom door as he walked down the hall. He’d turn around and wave to me.

Finally, back at his desk, he was almost ready for another worksheet. 
“Mr. K, can I get a tissue?”

Blessedly, the box of tissues was nearby.

“I’m ready now, Mr. K.”

“You have to wash your hands.”

So, he went to the sink in the rear of the classroom, where he washed and dried his hands. Rather than deposit the paper towel in the wastebasket, he’d back up and attempt to shoot the wadded-up ball into the basket. It flew a few inches and came up feet short. Retrieving the towel but not getting any closer to his target, he’d shoot again.

“Just dunk it in the garbage,” I finally told him.

To be clear, it was impossible to be mad at him because he never had a bad day and was never not cheerful or respectful. That was the atmosphere Randee created for her students. The other boy in the class, a year younger, was equally innocent and winning. When I would sit with him for his lessons, I’d model the worksheet, starting with my name at the top.

“Now, don’t write ‘Mr. K.’ on your paper. Write your own name.”

He’d smile slyly, waiting for me to notice that he had written “Mr. K” on his worksheet, and then erase it and write his own name. His routine then closely resembled his classmate’s.

Randee never failed to thank me for filling in for her weekly while she underwent chemotherapy or radiation treatments. Believe me, for as hard as I tried, I could only be a pale imitation of Randee. I always told her that her gratitude was misplaced, that it was like thanking me for liking ice cream or playing basketball. It was a privilege to stand in for her. James M. Barrie wrote, “Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.” I could not imagine Randee doing anything else. Such commitment! Such selfless dedication! Up until her last day in school she was ever solicitous of her three special students and of trying to ensure that their needs would be met during her absence.

At the funeral service for her there was a reference to Randee’s cooking. All I knew about that was that Randee, in the course of preparing her students in real life skills (which included lessons on healthy and balanced eating choices), frequently prepared food for the students in her classroom. One day it was pancakes; another time it was banana bread. Once, when I was subbing for another teacher, she asked me if I wanted a grilled cheese. “Sure,” I said. At lunch, she delivered the sandwich.

At the service there was also mention of Randee’s leadership. My family and I were the beneficiaries of that leadership. My daughter delivered twins on April 25. So excited was I that from the hospital that morning I sent text messages to four people: my three sisters--and Randee! She responded immediately with warm wishes, and followed up on April 29 with her own text, which typically revealed both her kindness and attention to detail. The text read as follows (with her emphases): “Quick question. If your daughter was having something made for her new little angels, would she write CHARLIE or CHARLES on the item and, of course, PAIGE?” 

What Randee did was to mobilize her closest friends at school and purchase very personalized gifts for my new grandchildren. Upon presenting the gifts, Randee told me, “A lot more people wanted to chip in, but I told them they needed to buy their own gift. What was I going to do…collect 10 cents from each one?”

Randee was the first person who read the book I wrote last year about my transition (and continuing education) from journalism to elementary school, and rendered a generous review. She told me that she used to read chapters in bed at night, occasionally giggling at passages. “What's so funny?” she said her husband, beside her, asked. “Never mind,” she told him. “You wouldn't understand. Go back to sleep.”

Randee understood what her students needed. She and I shared an affection for the predictable behavior of one of them, a charming and ever-ebullient fifth grader. Numerous times throughout the course of every day, he would interrupt his lessons and sing out, “Mrs. Gerson (or Mr. K), how are you?” If you did not respond promptly, he would repeat the question. I always responded, “I'm fine” or “I'm good.” That was immediately followed by his second question: “What about me?” I sent Randee a message in June when she was in Sloan to see how she was feeling. “What about you?” I asked. One of the very last messages I sent her was to say jokingly that I had the title of my autobiography: What About Me? Randee wrote back, “Haha love!!” 

I knew Randee’s condition was terminal, but I was hoping and believing that she would rally and that I would have a chance to buy her that cup of coffee, to do a favor, to tell her how much she meant, and to say goodbye. I’m so sorry I never got that chance.

There is less joy this school year for Randee’s colleagues and students. The educator Henry Adams wrote that a teacher affects eternity because you cannot measure how far her reach extends. I know that Randee’s influence will live on long in the many lives she touched. Rest in peace, Randee.