A teacher's lasting influence on a future educator
Letter writer Bernard A. Bilawsky remembers his East Flatbush shop teacher Richard Braithwaite, pictured here when he was a principal in the early 1980s, as “strict, kind and patient.”
East Flatbush of the 1950s was one of Brooklyn's many ethnic neighborhoods. Its population was predominantly Jewish, with some Italian and a dab of others. Many of its children of that time would become the retired doctors, lawyers, accountants and educators of today's Long Island and South Florida.
It was also the neighborhood in which I grew up during those years, and Newsday, through an anniversary announcement in LI Life in September last year, sent me back in time and place. It stated that Francena and Richard Braithwaite of Jamaica, Queens, were wed on July 19, 1952, and had celebrated 61 years of marriage. They were both retired New York City principals.
During the later part of the 1950s, I was a student at the brand spanking new Meyer Levin Junior High School 285. Levin was an Army Air Corps hero, killed during World War II. Little did we kids know that, in a few years, many of our classmates would also serve, and some die, in a place then called French Indochina, later renamed Vietnam.
Back in that day, all of us kids were required to take shop classes ("industrial arts" in '50s education speak), and each shop was for one semester.
The shops were also segregated by gender. There were boys' shops and girls' shops. In an embryonic equality gesture, all boys had to take one girls' shop, and girls had to take one boys' shop for a semester.
The shop that I enjoyed most was electrical shop. I was assigned to it in the fall. We made two projects in that class. One was a wooden skeleton head pin, made before Halloween, with little bulb eyes that lit up when we pressed a button attached to a battery. The other was a lamp made from an empty Mott's apple juice jug that we were all required to bring in.
The teacher was a young man of color, a relative rarity at that time. He was tall (at least compared to us), always immaculately dressed under his shop coat, with shoes brightly shined. He was a model teacher -- strict, kind and patient -- especially with zero-shop-talent students like myself.
His name was Richard Braithwaite and, as it happened, he also knew my dad, who ran a newspaper wholesale business in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, where Mr. Braithwaite resided.
That semester, I often spoke to my dad about that class and Mr. Braithwaite. Those discussions gave me an early understanding of the abuses people of color suffered in America during those years and before.
Many years later, I ran into Mr. Braithwaite at Brooklyn school District 19's office, and we had a brief chat. By then, he was a supervisor, and I a teacher in that district. In the early 1980s, I heard through the grapevine that he had retired from the school system.
The late historian Henry Adams wrote, "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." And so it is.
No doubt Mr. Braithwaite has little or no recollection of any of this!
Bernard A. Bilawsky,
North Massapequa
SHARING A ROOM ISN'T SO BAD
It was a Sunday morning. Our bedroom door was open. In marches our little girl. She is demanding her own bedroom. It's tough to live with big sister sharing one bedroom.
I sympathized with her. So I told her my tale of woe: I shared a bedroom with big brother. When he was drafted into the Army, I had the bedroom all to myself. Three years later, I went into the Army. Try sharing quarters with 35 other guys marching around Fort Dix in the winter. When basic training was finished, we headed to the Far East.
As luck would have it, I was secreted to medical equipment maintenance school in the Tokyo area. No more marching with rifle and backpack. On the ship across the Pacific, I bunked with hundreds of other guys. Got the top bunk in case someone got seasick and threw up. In the school camp, I had to share one room with five other guys. When the course was finished, I transferred to Okinawa. Just four shared one room.
When I was discharged, I had my own bedroom. Big brother was married. Four years later, I got married.
I could tell by her expression she felt sorry for me. Poor Dad doesn't even have his own bed. He has to share it with my mother. At least I have my own bed! Where is that little girl now? She is a patent attorney with two children who have their own bedrooms. She has to share a bed with her husband. I am sure she is delighted.
Conrad M. Johnson,
Massapequa
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