Not all memories come readily to mind. When my brother, Denny, and I wrote the collaborative diary of our childhoods – “Growing Up In Stephentown” – I had forgotten about ‘Joe.’
Thinking about it, I conclude that courage has many faces. Perhaps the most subtle of these is the refusal to relinquish one’s sense of self-worth; to refuse to have others dictate your value as a human being; your self-esteem. I was taught that lesson years before I could understand it.
Joe taught me…
He was the music instructor in the small, rural high-school I attended. He might have been middle-Eastern or of Slavic extraction. He was a clean shaven man of modest size with straight black hair.
As I recall, although not a virtuoso, there was no instrument in our orchestra he could not play. He would scurry around to the various sections from woodwinds to brass to strings, pull a circular pitch-pipe out of his pocket and indicate the note we were to play, or the key to play it in.
I went through a phase – trying to appear grown-up, I suppose – where I called all my teachers by their first name. Most of them reeled me in, insisting on decorum. Joe never did. One day, I asked him why he didn’t mind.
He said, “You can hear respect in a voice, no matter if you call me ‘Joe’ or Mr. Somebody. I hear your respect for me; call me whatever you like.”
Word circulated that this odd little fellow was an artist, and would paint portraits of his wife in various stages of un-dress. It was scandalous to many of my student peers. I took a rather different view: If the man likes to paint pictures of his wife in their home, what’s the big deal?
But his most enduring lesson was taught during the annual student versus teachers basketball game. Since our high school was so small, for this event it was ‘All Men All Deck’, whether or not they were athletic. [As I recall, no women teachers ever participated which may have been just as well, as the men may well have been shown up!]
The laughter would start as Joe came into the game. He had no sweats or sneakers; he just took off his tie, his jacket, and his shoes, and slipped around the floor on his black socks and dress pants. He played horribly – even worse than I. But as the students – and some of his colleagues – laughed, Joe kept a smile on his face.
Some remembrances from brother Denny:
I remember that, in glee club, Joe would take the girls’ part of the melody and sing it in a falsetto that would have embarrassed any ‘he man’, but he was merely trying to teach, so it didn’t bother him.
Because of his narrow face and a large nose, his nickname was ‘snake.’ Students would hiss when he came in a room. To my shame, I thought it was cool, so I echoed their cruelty. One day I made the hissing sound and the look on his face stopped me from every doing it again. He didn’t know where the sound came from, but I did… I never did it again.
He did yoga before it was popular in the U.S.
He did get punched in the face as a dance chaperone when some dropouts crashed the dance. The next school day, he told us about it – his huge black eye invited curiosity – but he refused to name names or report it to the police.
What a man!
Lucky? He was that.
He knew he was not well or widely regarded; he didn’t care. He didn’t take it personally because for him, it wasn’t personal. Joe was Joe; take it or leave it.
Here was a man! Here was a mentor who said nothing but displayed much. It took me many years to gain the advantage of his instruction.
– Lucky Garvin
