Mendacity Lost

Years ago I read an interview in which a professor of English Literature at the University of Alabama was asked how he felt about the football coach, Bear Bryant, being paid ten times more than he was. The professor -- apparently a modest man -- answered: "If I was as good at doing my job as coach Bryant is at doing his, I might complain. But as it is . . . ."

All these years I believed that the reason I remembered that interview (while forgetting countless others) was because I was a Bear fan. It didn't come home to me that maybe the professor was telling the God's honest truth. Coach Bryant really was that good at "doing his job." He actually did make a huge difference in the way the young men in his charge played the game.

I finally caught on just this morning. The local newspaper had run a special edition insert featuring the county schools. What an awakening that was! A full-color broadside showed the smiling faces of the winners of an Inventors Fair, in which fourth grade kids had actually invented useful things: a light for wheel chairs, a better gate latch, a multi-purpose toy table, and many other truly creative objects. These were fourth-graders, mind you, not even out of elementary school. I knew some of these kids, and remembering them as I had seen them in everyday life, the idea began to take hold that somewhere in the Waverly Yowell Elementary School, lurked teachers of Bear Bryant stature.

The idea firmed up when, on an inside page, I saw two of the High School's great teachers, coach Eddie Dean and drama teacher Donald Hitt being honored by plaques hung on the high school wall. I had done time as a coach myself, and also as a player on a stage, so I knew just how difficult it would be for those two men to have compiled their records. Dean had won two state championships the article said, which was indeed a notable achievement. But when I read the next line, the hair literally stood up on the back of my head. Donald Hitt had guided his forensics teams to ten, count 'em, TEN state championships. And he is a still a young man.

How could it be, that year after year Madison County High School was producing championship performers, actors, impressionists, and interpreters who were better at their jobs than the kids in all the other Virginia high schools? Well, obviously, it wasn't in the kids' genes to be great stage players. They're just ordinary kids . . . well, maybe a shade above ordinary (they do come from good southern stock, mind you). But to say they were "born actors" would clearly be wrong. They were just lucky enough to have been put into the path of greatness. You see, Donald Hitt is a genius. It's that simple.

Of course, Mr. Hitt will never be paid as much as Bear Bryant was. The taxpayers of Madison County can't afford that kind of money. But if we could reward our teachers in accord with their real value, we would learn that teachers like Donald Hitt, Eddie Dean, and the nameless fourth-grade teachers at Waverly Yowell, are priceless. There just ain't enough money in the world to pay them what they're worth.

But we can afford -- and we cannot deny them -- our deepest and kindest regard. Donald, Eddie, teachers: what you have given those performers, football players, and inventors will remain in their hearts and minds forever. You have shaped young minds, and made a difference in the world. An old man thanks you.