Class News

Today's Featured Biography

 
Hugh Bozenhard Van Skyhawk

I want to mention someone we all should remember: Douglas McBriarty, assistant principal of St. Petersburg Senior High School in the early 1960s. I doubt that there has been a month in my life in which I haven't at least once remembered him.

I became homeless at the age of fourteen. The reasons why are now important only to me. On the day that happened I had the good luck to find a room with a small kitchen close to the home of my best friend, John Rickerson. The room I rented was in walking distance from SPHS. The next day I found a job washing dishes in a diner from 4 p.m. to midnight to earn money to pay rent and other expenses.

I was young and healthy and bore the strain of work, school, and almost no free time. Strangely, my grades at SPHS remained excellent ('straight A's' we used to say). But, even at fourteen, a person regularly needs eight hours of sleep. Usually, I got only four.

The result of this was that I was reported to the principal's office for being habitually late for class. When I realized that continued tardiness would lead to more problems with the principal's office, I tried staying home, calling in sick, and catching up on my sleep. As could be expected my number of days absent increased to the danger point.

It was at this point in my young life that Douglas McBriarty appeared at the screen door of my kitchen one morning around ten-thirty. I hesitated but finally opened the door and asked him to come in. Mr. Mac (that's how we referred to our assistant principal in those times) told me that soon my number of days of absence would exceed the number allowed in a year in order to be qualified for promotion to the next class or, in the final year, for graduation.

I remember Mr. Mac sitting across from me at the kitchen table and looking at the room I had fixed up as my new home. I had pasted over the broken plaster in the walls with colorful posters announcing bullfights by famous Spanish or Mexican bullfighters. I still have the poster that covered the hole in the wall near the kitchen table announcing the next bullfight of the legendary Manolete (30 August 1947), the fight he didn't live to fight, having been gored the day before and dying in the hospital hours later. Mr. Mac looked for a long time at that poster then nodded his head slowly in understanding and spoke:

"Give me a key. I'll come by in the morning
and make coffee to wake you up for school."

And he did exactly that for months, and I didn't drop out of school and graduated with the class of 1963, went on to college and, finally, I became a professor of comparative religions. None of that would have been possible had Douglas McBriarty not knocked on the screen door of my kitchen one morning in the year 1960. As you see, I am still very grateful to our assistant principal.


Best wishes,
As always,

Hugh

VIEW ALL BIOGRAPHIES

U.S. Armed Forces

Class Poll

Featured Links

Visit Other Classes