Why I'm not the next Jack Germond

The great political reporter -- he hated being called "journalist" -- and columnist Jack Germond has died at 85.

He'd been covering politicians and the messes they made from the 1950s until he retired in 2001, first with Gannett and then the Washington Star and later The Baltimore Sun. He was a fixture on The McLaughlin Group on public TV, got parodied on Saturday Night Live and wrote a bunch of books.

Not bad for a member of the Baton Rouge High Class of 1945.

I'm a member of the Baton Rouge High Class of 1979, but I am not now nor ever will be as accomplished as the late Mr. Germond. I do like martinis as much as he did, though.

THE REASON why I'll never be as accomplished at, well, anything as Jack Germond was at committing journalism . . . er, reporting is that I was committing smart-assed crap like the drawing above when I ought to have been studying or paying more attention in class. I found this, as I found all kinds of other stuff that has been or soon will be featured in this cyberspace, when cleaning out the home of my misspent youth in Baton Rouge.

The above drawing, however, may have been a little clue to my later avocation. In other words . . . get the net!

I suspect my mom never threw it out because she wanted evidence to back up "I told you so!"

Rest in peace, Jack. Your stellar legacy will face no competition from this fellow Bulldog alum.

The keys to the kingdom

 

Salvation can look like a Gideons' Bible.

It can look like a legal document, with a governor's signature and an embossed seal, commuting a condemned man's sentence.

Salvation can look like a beautiful woman with a pure heart, here to save you from your sorry self.

Salvation can look like a life preserver floating next to you in a choppy sea; it can look like an outstretched hand just before you slide off a precipice; it can look like the cover of your favorite record album.

Salvation, for me, looks like a brochure from the spring of 1976, one advertising this strange, unbelievably cool thing the East Baton Rouge Parish school system was calling a "magnet school." Inner-city Baton Rouge High -- venerable and grand and buffeted by the forces that had turned a small town divided by race and "the tracks" into a middle-sized city atomized into warring neighborhood enclaves -- was being remade into a school focused on academics and the performing arts, and not just anybody could get in.

THE SCHOOL'S new principal, Lee Faucette, was making the rounds of high schools and junior highs to make his best pitch to those schools' best students. And . . . sweet Jesus! Not just anybody could get in!

If you've ever been to junior high and hated it -- especially if you've been to junior high and absolutely hated school because you were somewhat good at it. . . . Well, if you have . . . and did . . . because you were . . . you know.

You know what a salvation Baton Rouge High was for kids like me -- for kids like us -- precisely because it was made for learning and not crowd control. Because there, you didn't have to be ashamed of learning. Because everyone there was there because there is where they wanted to be.

WHERE I didn't want to be come the fall of 1976 was at Belaire High, a soulless monolith that looked more like a maximum-security facility than an educational one. And to me, those magnet school brochures Mr. Faucette passed out looked like a Gideons' Bible, a commutation, a beautiful woman, a life preserver, an outstretched hand and a Bruce Springsteen album rolled into one glorious package.

I found this when my wife and I were in Baton Rouge cleaning out my elderly mom's house -- the home of my youth.  I saved it, and then she saved it, and then 37 years later, there it was stuck in a box jammed on a shelf. Sometimes, the only thing between you and a flood of blessed memories is cardboard, one-eighth-inch thick.

When we had to head back to Omaha, we filled our Toyota RAV and my mom's compact Kia with the stuff that mattered. My most excellent collection of 1960s G.I. Joes and Hot Wheels sits in the house that's no longer anyone's home, waiting for the estate sale.

The 1976 piece of card-stock salvation came home with me.

When alumni get mad, miracles happen

This . . .

. . . is the last I saw of my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High School. I took these photos in October 2007.

Baton Rouge High is my hometown's best high school -- one of the nation's best, actually -- filled with talented, high-achieving students. Literally, filled with what hope a poor, dysfunctional state can count on for the future.

The facilities they inhabited pretty much showed them what a city and a state thought of them -- and about its future.

THEN enough alumni saw enough of what had become of the grand old school at 2825 Government St. And they got mad. And the engineers told the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board that the piddly repairs that had been scheduled for the campus were wholly insufficient -- indeed, impossible, given how far gone the facilities were.

So, in response, the school board considered tearing down the whole campus -- including the main building, a Gothic masterpiece built in 1926. And Bulldog alumni got really mad.

What grew out of that was a miracle. Just look at this grand tour of the school taken Friday by Channel 2 in Baton Rouge, WBRZ.


FIVE YEARS AGO, I was heartbroken at what I saw of my old school. No more.

Today, my heart soars. Investing in your children -- and in the places most important in their lives -- is never, ever a mistake.

These are the things futures are made of.

Baton Rouge High: Victory's in sight

The last time I walked through my alma mater, it looked like an abandoned building in Detroit. Or north Baton Rouge -- whatever.

The pictures I took the fall of 2007 prompted the photo-shop proprietor in Omaha who developed some of them to ask whether Baton Rouge High School had been destroyed by Katrina. And now. . . .

"Restoration" and "rebuilding" are wholly inadequate terms for the two-year project at Baton Rouge High that's now wrapping up. "Resurrection" is more like it.

I mean, when I was a student there approximately 14 million years ago, we didn't even know the auditorium had these big, beautiful windows near the ceiling.

And that last time I was on campus, I was near tears at the sight of what had become -- due to abject neglect by the local school system -- of my old school. I look forward to my next visit, where I intend to wander giddily through the halls of the school that pretty much saved my life with a big, stupid smile on my face.

Talk about "We will raise our standards high, till known from shore to shore." This is something over which proud alumni can totally "raise our banners high."

For dear old Baton Rouge High.

Simply '70s: All I want for Christmas

Santa: Click on ad for better resolution!

Dear Santa,

I know I'm jumping the gun a little bit, this being just the end of September, but I figured you'll need a little lead time to get this for me.

I don't know how many Spotmaster 5300 Multi-Deck broadcast cart machines there are out there anymore. I enclosed a 1976 ad for one from Broadcasting magazine so you can see what it looks like. If you find a Spotmaster 5300 Multi-Deck broadcast cart machine, you probably will have to have your elves fix it up some so I can play with it.

It's like a great big 8-track tape deck, only with six fewer tracks and more better sound quality!

I used to use a deck just like this a lifetime ago at WBRH, 90.1 FM, the booming 10-watt radio voice of Baton Rouge High School. Since it's probably too much of a job even for Santa to transport me back 35 years (and many more than 35 pounds), this, I suppose, will have to do.

I hope you can find me one of these, Santa . . . that would be really swell!

Oh, the fun I could have!

Please give the reindeer some apples for me.

Love,
Favog

Well, at least the rats like the place

If I still were a student at Baton Rouge Magnet High School, I would be dreaming of climes far distant and repeating "It's always darkest just before dawn" with the same kind of urgency that propelled Dorothy to furiously click her rubied heels and incant "There's no place like home."

I've written much about my old alma mater in this space. And much of that writing has been about how the educational powers that be in Baton Rouge allowed the place to become a crumbling dump unfit for animals, much less a city's best and brightest teenagers.

Eventually, it came to pass that those school-board powers that be were forced to recognize that something had to be done -- that something drastic had to be done, because the campus was too far gone for going along to get along.

That meant razing the whole campus, save the historic main building, and starting over. And that meant finding a temporary home for Baton Rouge High for a couple of years.

THAT NEW HOME turned out to be the recently abandoned Lee High School, killed by the soft bigotry of low expectations and the inevitable consequence of low performance. The school board shuttered Lee before the state Department of Education could take it over.

To be succinct, the former Lee High is a dump -- as evidenced by these clippings from the BRMHS student newspaper, Campus Currents. In some respects, it's apparently a worse dump than the old joint. And it's fitting, on so many levels, that a school named for a man revered in the South for battling human rights and history to the Confederacy's last breath should be a big, mid-century modern slave cabin.

Complete with the rat droppings.


NO ONE EXPECTS that people charged with the education and welfare of a city's children should turn a school's temporary quarters into the Taj Mahal. One would expect, however, that any administrator who gave a rat's ass about children under his care would at least get rid of rats' feces before the Baton Rouge High move-in date.

One would expect that the gym would be bee-swarm free. That the football field wouldn't be infested with fire ants.

In most places in these United States, you'd expect that. Baton Rouge isn't one of those places.

Baton Rouge is one of those places where people -- more specifically, white people -- complain about how high their low taxes are, then happily pay thousands per year in "private-school taxes," which simultaneously allows them to destroy public education, not worry about having destroyed public education, and keep their kids away from the Mad Max moonscape they made of public education.

IN OTHER WORDS, no one cares whether anybody cleans up what the rats left behind.

And no one can say with any confidence that the brand-new Baton Rouge High -- awaiting the next crop of a city's best and brightest come fall 2012 -- won't, in due time, be just another neglected dump that teachers have to muck out before their students show up.

Your Daily '80s: High school radio, 1987

The WBRH staff, circa 1980

This evening on Your Daily '80s, we listen to a full three hours of high-school radio the way it was in 1987 in my hometown.

The station: WBRH, FM 90 in Baton Rouge.

The school: Baton Rouge Magnet High School.

The student disc jockeys: Judy Jetson and Stan Malone.

The date: Friday, Sept. 18, 1987.

The music: Rock 'n' roll, baby!

You have to break a few eggs. . . .

Call this post You Have to Break a Few Eggs to Make an Omelet, or . . . the history of my old school, Baton Rouge High, as seen through "the phone egg."

Above, we have the phone egg, and classmate Hardy Justice, as seen in the pages of the 1979 Fricassee.


THEN, the phone egg -- minus the pay phone -- as seen in the fall of 2007, when the school long had slipped into disrepair and dilapidation.


AND LAST WEEK . . . destroying the campus -- well, much of it, anyway -- in order to save it.

One thing they ought to save, at least, is the phone egg. And when the new gymnasium rises from the rubble of the past, they ought to refurbish the "egg," put a '70s vintage pay phone in it (complete with nickel phone calls) and place it next to an entrance.

Because the past is part of all our futures.

3 Chords & the Truth: Crank it up!

The last time I posted a "WBRH episode" of 3 Chords & the Truth, it was an accident.

When I finished putting that particular program together back in February, it struck me that one of the musical sets sounded a lot like what we might have done at the radio voice of Baton Rouge High School 3o-something years ago. Or something like that.

This "WBRH episode" of the Big Show, however, is entirely on purpose -- as in, "If I could bring the WBRH of old into the present day . . . and then do the afternoon rock show there again, what would I do?"

THE ANSWER is simple: Something a lot like this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth. Of course, that's a lot like most editions of 3C&T, but not exactly.

If I had a shift on my high-school radio station once again, there's probably one or three things I do here I couldn't do there. But after I'd had a while to work on 'em . . . who knows?

This week, it's the spirit of '78, updated and plopped down in July 2010, right here on WBR . . . er, the Big Show.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Grateful in a strange land

I have lived in Omaha, by God, Nebraska for 22 years now and -- still -- there are times when I feel like a stranger in a strange land.

Saturday was another one of those times.

That was the day Central High School opened its doors to the community to celebrate its 150th-anniversary school year -- it was founded in 1859 as Omaha High School, just four years after the city's incorporation and eight years before Nebraska would win statehood. Its present building, the "new" Omaha Central, went up between 1900 and 1912.

You see what a beautiful structure it is.

ALMOST half a lifetime ago, I immigrated to Omaha from a foreign land . . . so to speak. Specifically, an exotic and strange Caribbean outpost by the name of "Louisiana."

It has been rumored that "Louisiana" is not a foreign land at all, but instead one of these United States. Technically, that may be true.

Technically, the cop running the small-town speed trap doesn't have a quota to make, either.

Anyway, I grew up in Baton Rouge, where I graduated from the oldest school in the city. Baton Rouge High came into being sometime around 1880 -- this in a city settled in 1699 and incorporated in 1817, five years after Louisiana became a state.

Its present building, the "new" Baton Rouge High, went into use in 1927.

You see, in this 2007 photo, what a dilapidated structure it is.

Having done no meaningful maintenance -- obviously -- on Baton Rouge High since I graduated in 1979, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board managed to get a sales tax and millage renewed so it would have the money to fix the school facilities.

This after toying with the idea of tearing down the building after years of never toying with the idea of keeping it in good repair.

OF COURSE, "fixing" Baton Rouge High now requires tearing down the entire campus, save the historical main building. And the fate of the original building will involve more "renovation" than "restoration" -- there's not enough money for a full restoration.

All this will require relocating the entire student body for two years as the campus is renovated and rebuilt.


AT OMAHA CENTRAL, meanwhile, keeping up with the times -- and technology -- hasn't meant destroying the charms of a bygone age, save some false ceilings in classrooms here and there. Above is Central's courtyard, created when the "new" school was built around the old, which left what you see here upon its demolition.

Some years back, covering the courtyard with a clear roof created an atrium, now used as a gathering space and food court.


WHEN A NEW gynmasium opened at Omaha Central, workers renovated the old gym (above) into a second cafeteria and multipurpose space. Another view is below.


WHILE WE'RE speaking of gyms, I guess you might want to see Central's new one:


AND WHILE I'M showing you Omaha Central's new gym, I suppose you might like to see Baton Rouge High's gymnasium:


IN CASE it isn't obvious, there are no potholes in the floor of the Omaha Central gym. There are large ones in the floor of the Baton Rouge High gym.

And, yes, the locker rooms at my alma mater are as nasty as they look. Tetanus may be a concern, I don't know.

It is difficult to explain things like this to Omahans, who support inner-city public schools like Central -- that of the beautiful old building, and of the brand-new gymnasium and football stadium.

In fact, about two-and-a-half years ago, when I got some of my Baton Rouge High pictures developed at an Omaha photo lab, the proprietor asked my wife about them. He wanted to know whether the photos were of a school destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

In other words, what people in my hometown had come to accept as normative, people in Omaha assumed was a victim of a catastrophe.

I come from a foreign land. Things are different here in the United States.

Potholes are what you try to avoid on city streets after a rough winter. Potholes are not what you worry about breaking your ankle in during phys ed.

At dear old Baton Rouge High, the old gym will not be renovated into cafeteria space. It will be bulldozed.


THE NEED for bulldozing speaks volumes about the esteem in which public education is held in my old Louisiana home.

Above is a common sight in the 1927 main building at Baton Rouge High. Moisture intrusion is causing plaster to fall off the walls in chunks. Has been for years, apparently.


MEANTIME, IN OMAHA, this is what it looks like in the hallways of Central High. Remember, this building is a couple of decades older than Baton Rouge High. Here's another view:

What it comes down to -- as I've said over and over, ad infinitum -- is culture. The South, and particularly Louisiana, never has been inclined toward public education.

Likewise, the South -- and particularly Louisiana -- never has been inclined toward a strong civic culture . . . or functional egalitarianism.

Recall that my alma mater, Baton Rouge High, did not exist until around 1880. Baton Rouge incorporated, remember, in 1817.

In 1859, the year Omaha Central came into being, there were public schools in Louisiana -- and at least one in East Baton Rouge Parish, I gather, but they were few in number and less than rooted in their communities.

That is because the South was -- and is, to a substantial degree -- a society based on class, and the privileges thereof. If your station in life allowed you the luxury of an education, that could be purchased.

If one was of mean estate, that's how one was apt to live out one's days -- poor. And ill-educated.

And for the vast majority of Southern blacks in 1859. . . .


A CENTURY AND A HALF later in Baton Rouge, those who have the means can purchase a fine, private education -- and that's where you'll find most white kids today. In private schools. Where they fled, starting in 1981, when "forced busing" came to town in the name of racial integration.

Meanwhile, the most prestigious public school in town looks like a casualty of Katrina. More than 30 years ago, when I was a student there, Baton Rouge High was notable for being the least decrepit school I'd attended.

To hell with all that.

To hell with a system where, yes, a school board can erect a nice, new facility where one once lay in ruins -- laid waste by official malfeasance and profound civic indifference -- but where one also has little confidence that what soon will be state of the art won't, in a decade or three, be in just as sad a state as the ruins it replaced.

To hell with it.


Children are a society's treasure, and if what befell Baton Rouge High is any indication -- and it is -- my hometown for decades, if not forever, has been casting swine before pearls. Children also are not stupid, and also for a couple of decades or so upon reaching adulthood, they've been voting in a referendum on the Gret Stet of Loosiana.

With their feet.


THEN THEY BECOME -- like so many of my generation of native Louisianians -- transplants in a strange land, one day walking into a public school and finding they have no frame of reference for the relative wonder they behold.

Like refugees stepping off a plane just arrived from some Third World enclave, they find themselves strangers in a strange land.

And "strange" is good.

3 Chords & the Truth: This reminds me . . .

WBRH radio was where I got my start doing this kind of thing . . . with "this kind of thing" being 3 Chords & the Truth, the musical half of the Revolution 21 media empire.

The FM voice of Baton Rouge High School has been around for nearly 33 years now. Without the training your Mighty Favog got there during the station's earliest days, the Big Show would be hugely nonexistent all these years later.

THAT'S WHY it's so appropriate that one of the sets in today's episode is soooooooooooo quintessentially WBRH: The Rock 'n' Roll Days. It just is.

If you're up for a bit of sport, see whether you can figure out which set. This should be easy if you're from Baton Rouge and go back a ways.

And if you're interested, you can read more about WBRH here. And here. And here. And here.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Baton Rouge High raises its cry . . . for the coach we all adored

If you think about it for a minute, you realize that the bottom line in education is love.

Parents who love their kids enough to want something better for them.

Teachers who love their students enough to put in long hours for low pay . . . usually after digging deep to purchase classroom supplies the school system never bothered to.

Sometimes, it all bears fruit in students who develop a deep love for learning . . . and who will, someday, complete a sacred circle of life. They will love their kids enough. . . .

IF YOU PICK UP the newspaper in my hometown, though, you'll find there's a thin line between love and hate -- and it seems a lot of folks love to hate the East Baton Rouge Parish (La.) public schools:

For the third consecutive year, Survey Communications has polled heads of household in East Baton Rouge Parish — 800 of them this go-around — with half having children in the school system and half with children who attend other schools. Those interviewed, as in past years, were read a series of statements and asked if they agreed or disagreed.

This year’s results showed an across-the-board decline. For instance, in the past, more than 90 percent of respondents agreed the school system “welcomes partnerships with community businesses or civic groups.” This year, only 80 percent agreed with that statement.

Only 46 percent of respondents agreed that students in the school system “can achieve at/above the level of other students in private/parochial area schools,” down from 58 percent who agreed with that statement last year.

Boston suggested that a rise of negative press last year, including the state takeover of eight low-performing schools, is the likely culprit.

“A lot of times what happens with those sorts of reports, it creates fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of the general public,” Boston said.

Boston, however, suggested the downturn may be temporary. “This is not something that warrants any one of you running out in the street and jumping out in front of a bus,” he said.

THAT'S PROBABLY BECAUSE if they haven't jumped in front of a bus by now -- what with the school system going, since 1981, from almost 70-percent white to 80-something percent minority and with the state taking over several schools a year -- those now serving on the board don't have a suicidal bone in their bodies.

Let's face it, experts (like the PR guy in the Advocate story above) can spin poll numbers any way they want, but it's undeniable that, for a long time now, not many people have been loving up on the parish's public schools. And while the board considers a big public-relations campaign to turn sinking poll numbers around -- and, frankly, the school system could use a PR makeover -- its members need to realize that what their world needs now is love.

Board members need to love every kid in the parish, not just those in their districts. And people in Baton Rouge need to love every kid in the parish, too, not just their own.

White needs to love black, black needs to love white, rich needs to love poor and poor needs to love rich. Young needs to love old, old needs to love young, and everybody needs to love seeing kids learn.

Learn the right things.

From teachers and books.

In the classroom.

UNFORTUNATELY, true love is a rare enough thing -- especially in education -- that it really sticks out when you come across it.

Cities and states that truly love their schools tend to stick out in national rankings. They're the ones at the top of the good rankings, at the bottom of the bad ones . . . and they're the places with all the good jobs.

Then there's Louisiana. And, specifically, Baton Rouge.

If you're a parent in Louisiana, places that love their public schools are, more than likely, where your children will end up. Believe it or not, there are places in America where private school is a lifestyle option, not a perceived necessity.

And when the expatriate sons and daughters of Louisiana raise their children in these far-off places, they might be paying higher property taxes, but they won't feel compelled to pay a much more significant "private-school tax."

I was born, raised and educated in Baton Rouge. And I left for someplace I'm convinced is much, much better. National statistics and rankings are convinced of that, too.

While I was growing up -- and being educated -- in Baton Rouge, though, I knew where I was feeling the love . . . and where I wasn't. The former were rare enough to stand out in my mind three and four decades later.

FOR THAT MATTER, some of the latter were horrible enough to stick out, too.

Like fourth grade at Red Oaks Elementary. That was bad. A 9-year-old hasn't lived until he's had a lazy battleaxe of a fourth-grade teacher who likes to yell . . . and to grab a fistful of a misbehaving boy's Beatles-style mop top and walk around and around his desk until the flowing locks were twisted tight like a rope.

That was the only time I didn't mind my culturally retarded parents forcing me to wear short hair slicked down with Greasy Kid Stuff.

Later on, there were the little rednecks at another school -- all-white, of course -- calling the two beleaguered African-American teachers the N-word to their face.

And then there was junior high, otherwise known as Hell's Anteroom.

There, we had one potbellied sadist coach who used to laugh and laugh when a bunch of hoods -- in ninth grade for something like the third straight time -- would corner a younger kid during P.E., throw him down, pull up his shirt and give him the "red belly." Today, that would be known as "assault and battery," and I have no idea exactly how I managed to avoid that particular junior-high fate.

He also was particularly fond of firearms and, once a year or so, would have some geezers bring in lots of heavy firepower to show off to the Future Criminals of America. If you ask nicely, I still can explain to you what "M-1 thumb" is.

Oh . . . the M-1 rifle was quite a heavy weapon. The M-1 carbine was much more manageable.

Then there was Mr. (Deleted), our ninth-grade algebra teacher. That was the year I stopped doing well in math and, in fact, began to hate it.

Mr. (Deleted) would write all the equations on overhead-projector transparencies, then clean it off with lighter fluid. Flammable liquid + hot overhead projector = 30 teen-agers wondering if this be the day they all burn to death.

It also was Mr. (Deleted) -- the school's golf coach when he wasn't cheating death -- who informed me I surely would grow up to be a garbage man. With the mad mathematics skillz I picked up from him (not), I frankly can't figure out how he went bad on that prediction.

THE NEXT YEAR -- after giving hope one more shot and begging my parents to let me go to the brand-new magnet school -- I discovered something important upon arrival at Baton Rouge High:

School didn't suck.

Baton Rouge High would have been notable for me if the only thing it had going for it was an overwhelming majority of students who were there to learn. Well, that and the glaring absence of Coach Potbelly and Mr. (Deleted), the wannabe human torch.

But there was more.

That wonderful school was an island of tolerance, good will, racial harmony, and excellence in a city that too often has seen too little of too much of that sort of thing.

And we all took lots of crap from our "peers" because we did something different, stuck our necks out and dared to be part of a "different" kind of educational community. No, not "educational community" . . . community, period.

Exclamation point.

I well remember the cracks about the "maggot school" and "maggot faggots." Never have I been so proud to be called bad names.

And rarely has any school as a whole so embraced what was meant to be slurs and, with good cheer, thrown them back in the faces of "old times there are not forgotten."

Look away, look away, look away . . . Baton Rouge.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? I'm glad you asked.

Part of it was us. We were at Baton Rouge Magnet High because we wanted to be there. We wanted to have dreams. Most of us didn't want any more -- I don't think -- of the status quo in a middling, underachieving Southern state capital.

Part of it was that we were the best students taught by, for the most part, the best teachers. Things were expected of us.

And part of it was that BRHS was the most integrated school many of us had ever attended -- and it worked out. Blacks, whites and everybody else got along. Not only that, we formed close friendships.

Most of it, however, was love . . . L-O-V-E. Agape, even.

WHICH BRINGS ME to Coach Robert D. Holder. Coach Holder had taught high school in East Baton Rouge Parish since 1956 and at Baton Rouge High since 1970. By the time I arrived there, Coach Holder had been athletic director for three years and had achieved Official Icon status long before.

Thing is, Coach was the antithesis of the potbellied terror of junior high.

No sadistic laughter as teen-aged thugs terrorized P.E. prey. No taunts of "Hey! Don't hurt my BALL!" when some fallen victim had just gotten a premeditated faceful of leather in a dodge-ball game.

You see, Coach Holder -- even for those of us never lucky enough to have him as a coach -- was the definition of "cool" . . . in the most profound sense of the term. He didn't need to knock others down to make himself Big Man on Campus.

Instead, he spent 42 years befriending his students. Mentoring them. Keeping tabs on their schoolwork. Encouraging them. Serving as faculty sponsor for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

And, seemingly, trying to talk half the student body into going out for wrestling or track.

The Rev. Robert D. Holder died Oct. 20. Yes, reverend -- he was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1994. When he retired from teaching in 1998, Rev. Coach devoted himself full-time to his beloved Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church and to prison ministry.

SOME PEOPLE will see Coach Holder's obituary and see just another obituary -- born in Lumberton, Miss. Died in Baton Rouge. Retired educator. Air Force veteran (staff sergeant) of the Korean War. Funeral Thursday morning at Mount Pilgrim. Burial at Port Hudson National Cemetery.

I am a Southerner of a certain age, however. I know how to read between the lines.

Coach graduated from Southern University in 1951 with a degree in education. While Southern is a fine school, it wasn't young Robert Holder's choice to go there. Jim Crow made that choice for him.

Then, in 1951, he put life on hold to help fight the Korean War in the newly desegregated armed forces. In the Air Force, he could not only now fight alongside white folks, he could eat in the same mess hall, too.

But back in segregated Louisiana, he had to use the Colored Only water fountain and sit in the back of the bus. When he got out of the Air Force in 1955 and wanted to pursue a master's degree in education, he had to go up North to the University of Kansas to do it.

And after he had done that, it was back to East Baton Rouge Parish, where he taught and coached at Northwestern High School -- all black by order of the Gret Stet of Louisiana -- for the next 14 years.

Then it was on to Baton Rouge High just in time for integration under the "neighborhood schools" plan. (Yes, Virginia. In Baton Rouge, going to your neighborhood school was considered an integration plan . . . and it took a federal court order to accomplish that.)

BRHS was one of the few schools that actually ended up meaningfully integrated. I understand it was, er . . . interesting.

IMAGINE navigating that stretch of history in a land where not only are old times not forgotten, but aren't really even old times. At least not totally.

I figure an African-American of that generation would have a right to a fairly sizable chip on the shoulder. A lesser man than Coach Holder would have had a big one.

Me . . . had I been a few years older and black, I would have sported a whole damned log.

But that's not what Coach Holder was about. It's not what Baton Rouge Magnet High was about -- this in a city where the blue-light special at K-mart can turn into a racial pissing match.

The students at Baton Rouge High, to Coach and to any number of wonderful teachers like him, were just "the kids." To tell you the truth -- and I don't think this is a sad case of a middle-aged guy romanticizing his youth -- the BRHS of my late-'70s tenure was one of the least race-conscious places I can recall.

I think that's because we were a motivated bunch . . . and because we stood on the shoulders of giants. Educational giants. And Coach Holder was one of the "giantest" of them all.

When a man dies, those who knew him get to reminiscing, remembering all those little, unremarkable moments that make up a life. Only we discover those moments weren't so unremarkable at all.

Here are some of the Coach moments from the lives of some Bulldog alumni:

* I attended BRHS from 1977-1981 and remember Coach Holder as a constant presence always ready with a smile and a word of encouragement, and I never had him as a teacher.

*Coach Holder was my PE teacher and impacted my life from his positive example. He believed in me even when I did not always believe in myself.

* My freshman year was scary, and running track for the first time didn't help with the transition and nervousness, either. The first day I stepped into the gym to change for practice, Coach Holder, the Guardian, as I at some point began to call him, saw that I was afraid. He told me "Everything will be OK. All you can do is your best. I'll be watching you to make sure of it!" I never looked back and ran cross country and track for four years. He paved a way for my confidence and made my years at Baton Rouge High School memorable. For the confidence he helped me find, for the love of God as he always preached, I will forever be grateful for having him in my life.

* I attended BRHS from 1976-1979. In those years, Coach Holder was the head of the Athletic Department and was my wrestling coach. More importantly, he served as a mentor for me throughout my years at BRHS, and never relinquished that role. Over the last 30 years, I have worked with Rev. Holder in many ministerial capacities. He was one of the original instructors in our Fourth District Congress of Christian Education, and his class on effective Bible reading was one of the most popular year in and year out.

* Some of the members of the cross-country team decided that we didn't want to run to the LSU lake and back, so we went to a friend's house and ate snacks. Later, that friend's brother dropped us off a few blocks from the school. Coach Holder occasionally would get in his car and drive our running route to make sure we were all safe. Well, that was one of the days that he was out making sure that everyone was okay. When we returned back to the school, Coach Holder made us run sprints until our legs were about to fall off, and some of us threw up. We never cheated again.

* I knew Coach Holder since I was a freshman in 1973. He not only cared about what you did on the track or the field, but what you also did in class and helped mentor young girls and boys into responsible adults. I am still a good friend of his son Jonathan, and this relationship continues until this day. I will miss Coach Holder very much. Many of us are very blessed to have had this man in our lives.

* He recruited me to wrestle after I had him for tennis in 9th grade. Who can ever forget his rainbow suspenders and Bible? He was a true one of a kind. I remember after getting an A in his PE class, he was trying to chase me down to give me a 'B' for bad.

* In '73, Coach Holder was getting everyone into a huge variety of sports. He was unique. I remember he had us play everything from badminton to golf.

* The last time I saw Coach Holder was when I was still living in Baton Rouge, so it was probably in the '90s. He said something that still makes me grin: "David, you're one of the few in your class who hasn't gotten fat!" I definitely can't say that I've always lived up to his praise since then, but it's a nice memory to have. He was a very kind man -- like a huge Teddy bear. He had good words for me every time I saw him. He was a dedicated Christian and a strong coach. He was the sponsor of the FCA during my tenure at BRHS, and I considered him to be a wonderful mentor and a father figure to all of us.

* I attended BRHS from 1977-1979, and Coach Holder was the sponsor for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes -- of which I was an officer my senior year. Besides meeting on the appointed club meeting day, Coach Holder would meet some of us each morning at the flag pole to pray with us before classes. He was a very dedicated teacher and dear friend.

* I was on the wrestling team and a member of the FCA. Coach Holder was like a father to us, keeping his kids out of trouble. He put his faith into practice every day and was an inspiration to me and many others.

* I took regular phys ed for my first semester there, because one couldn't get in the ballet classes mid-year. I might have considered that a waste of time but for getting to know Coach Holder. He always tried to get me interested in athletics, but being a part of FCA and meeting at the flagpole was as far as I went with that. He didn't give up on a kid, though.

He had me by his side doing high kicks one day in an attempt to show me how good I would be at the high jump. I told him what we were doing reminded me of the Radio City Rockettes. I think he was a little disgusted with my attitude, but I thought he was adorable for trying.

He had a nice high kick for a grown man, too. It is probably good that we didn't have a girls basketball team or he would have been after me (6 foot 2 inches) for that, and he would have been crushed that I didn't go for it, unless he ever saw me play.

Still, he would likely have been there offering extra help whenever possible.

GET THE PICTURE? That's why a number of us Baton Rouge High alumni want -- after the upcoming campus renovations and rebuilding are complete -- the new gymnasium to be named the Robert D. Holder Memorial Gymnasium.

There could be no more fitting honor for a man who gave so much for so long to so many students -- transcending generational, racial and class divides in a city too long defined by what pulls it apart instead of what draws it together.

The above comments were drawn from comments left on alumni Facebook pages, and from an online petition to the parish School Board asking that the new gym memorialize a man who was Baton Rouge High. If the man shattered even one stereotype in a place and time infested by stereotypes, that would be reason enough to name the gym for him right there.

But Coach Holder did more than that. He stood for more than that.

ROBERT DANUEL HOLDER was the embodiment of the ideals Baton Rouge Magnet High stands upon -- that it's not what you are that matters, and it's not who people say you are that matters . . . it's the kind of person you become that matters.

It's the ability to think for oneself that matters. It's the ability to shatter narrow stereotypes by our actions and by the content of our character that matters.

The Baton Rouge High that I know stands for these things. It stands for these things because of faculty members like Coach Holder. Because of the great faculty who worked alongside Coach Holder.

They set the tone.

That critical mass of administrators (like magnet school architect and founding Principal Lee Faucette) and faculty gave our generation of students the freedom and the guidance allowing us to, in many cases, transcend what we thought we were when we walked into our place in Baton Rouge history that first day in 1976.

I owe -- we owe -- them all a debt we cannot repay. And Coach Holder stood . . . stands still, having transcended this vail of tears . . . not only on his own merits, but as a representative of theirs as well.

IF BATON ROUGE needs reminding of what a good public-school education can mean for a city's children -- and it does -- maybe the School Board doesn't need a big public-relations campaign after all. Maybe it just needs to remind a fragmented city that there was a man named Robert Holder, and he wasn't on the faculty at Parkview Baptist. Or Catholic High.

Maybe it just needs to remind a fragmented city that it's about to give up, perhaps, on the next "Coach Holder" . . . a kid on the "margins" of society who not only can't afford private school, but might not be particularly welcome in some of them.

Maybe it needs to remind a stratified city that the original Coach Holder was enabled, in part, to do such a good job with earlier generations of young Baton Rougeans because Kansas' margins were considerably wider than Louisiana's back in the day.

To tell you the truth, maybe the School Board just needs to use the example of Coach Holder and all those he represents to challenge itself -- it's capable of more. It can do better.

The once-upon-a-time example of a humble coach at the city's oldest school ought to accuse the school system as it inspires it. Challenge old assumptions; smash ugly stereotypes. Think for yourselves.

And remember that when we're all dead and gone, our white-folk dust and our black-folk dust will all end up the same shade of gray. Love one another.

AND THERE WE ARE . . . back to the bottom line of education. Love.

That is what everything's all about: Love. Love for your home . . . love for your neighbor . . . love of your children.

What public education in Baton Rouge needs is a good example. And the rest of the city could use one, too.

The Bible that Coach so loved says, in Matthew 23, "He who is greatest among you shall be your servant." Truer words. . . .

What Baton Rouge's public schools need is what Coach Holder had. Indeed, that's what we all need.

Please, let's name a new gym at an old school for a good man. Let's do it not just to honor Robert D. Holder -- though honors he deserves -- but let's do it to honor all those who put their "kids" before themselves.

Let's do it to remind ourselves that's really, really important.

Rest in peace, Coach.