Hey, Jude,
don’t let me down,
take a sad song
and make it better…
Remember to let her
under your skin,
then you’ll begin
to make it better.
I heard these by now already nationally recognized lyrics emanating
from a shower stall on fourth floor Morrison Hall off the men’s quadrangle at Southern
Methodist University (SMU). The singer
was terribly off-tune and off-key, but there was an energy and enthusiasm that
were engaging. As I completed the brushing
of my teeth, a tall (6 feet, three inches), lean dude emerged with his towel
wrapped around the waist of his otherwise naked body. He grinned broadly, gave what I would come to
know as a mirthful, inimitable half-circle wave, said “Hi,” and walked on.
I soon came to know that this was Dennis Weltman, one of several
first year students of the 1969-1970 academic year at SMU from Abilene, Texas. His room was just off the elevator, and his
door was frequently open. Soon after his
memorable serenade, I poked my head in and said,
“Man, you cannot sing a lick.”
“You’re right,” he said, “but I like it.”
That was the beginning of an enduring friendship of 51 years and
counting.
It is Dennis, who many including me called, “The Ol’ Dene,” who
when first learning that I was investigating the inner workings of the
Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) and making monthly appearances for Public Comments at meetings of the MPS Board of
Education commented,
“Oh-Ohhhh… Those folks do
not know what they’re in for.”
Dene and I hit it off immediately.
We both love to laugh.
We are both fundamentally optimistic about our own lives but deeply
skeptical about the pretensions of those in authority, those who rise to top
positions in the education establishment, those who are way too full of
themselves and their putative importance.
Dennis was the son of a Jewish dentist and his Church of Christ
wife. He was not conspicuously religious
but deeply admired his dad, found inspiring the life trajectory of his immigrant
paternal grandparents, was particularly fond of granddad “Pops,” loved motzaball
at Wall’s delicatessen, called Simon and Garfunkel “two good Jewish boys,” had
an affinity for Barbara Steisand, and peppered his banter with comments such as
“schlemiel,” Yiddish for something like
“fool.”
My mom still remembered, late in a life that stretched to a mirthful
96 years of age (departing on 16 September 2017) how once when Dennis visited our
Houston abode, arriving late by fifty-five minutes, I chided him at his 6:25 PM
entrance,
“Man, you said you’d arrive by 5:30---“
And he retorted in his quick, dry, droll manner, replete with West
Texas accent,
“I lied.”
…………………………………………………………………………..
I found early on that Dennis planned to be a high school math
teacher.
I had visited SMU for first year student orientation with my
family in summer 1969 and there, on 21 July 1969, witnessed on atelevision, with
other campus visitors gathered in the parlor of a dorm near the Student Union,
that iconic landing of the first American (Neil Armstrong) on the moon.
I met with my adviser, provost and contemporary United States
government scholar Ruth Morgan, and declared a major in political science; placed out through testing for one semester of Spanish and a full year
of English (a class called “Discourse in Literature” that I later wished I’d
just gone ahead and taken); and signed
up for a broad curricular schedule of calculus, physics, introduction to
political science, a required liberal studies course called “Nature of Man”
(later given the less sexist appellation, “Nature of Human Nature”), survey of United States history, and required
physical education. All of these courses
were in a sense required, because they met certain subject area categories; I mention particularly the required physical
education course and especially the liberal studies course to emphasize the
high value at SMU placed on an education both broad and deep.
I hit the SMU campus leaning toward law or the Christian ministry
as professional aspirations. I loved
debate and the study of government and already had definite political
views; and attendance at East Dallas
Christian Church and others of the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ denomination--- along with serious reading of the Bible with a decided emphasis on the gospels
since grade 6 --- had given me a firm
attachment not to dogma but to Christian ethics and the example of Jesus’s
love, active in the world.
But the Ol’ Dene’s signaling of commitment to teaching struck a
resonant chord with me that soon jibed with my keen interest in civil rights
and feminism. I soon sought out SMU Volunteer
Services, signed up for the tutoring program offering assistance to inner city
children of the Dallas Independent School District (DISD), and quickly was
tapped to head that division of the campus volunteer organization. I coordinated programs that sent tutors to
youth group homes and institutions for the mentally challenged, as well as
those serving the Dallas public schools.
I volunteered myself at the West Dallas high school of L. G. Pinkston;
at Buckner Youth Home for orphaned and troubled children and adolescents; and at a school for students with cognitive
challenges. The experiences were all instructive and
formative; the commitment at Pinkston proved
to inaugurate a relationship that would
be especially intimate through 1975; and
the whole experience pertinent to youth and public education confirmed that for
me the zeitgeist of the times and my own activist inclinations led seamlessly
to the mission of the teaching young people and serving families living at the
urban core.
At SMU I very organically moved onto a course that I would run for
the remainder of my life.
Which is to convey, I run this course still.
More determinedly than ever,
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