Educator of the Year – Remembering Milton

I wasn’t on the faculty at Jane Addams High School for long when I realized there was something special about Milton.

Milt’s job description was Stockman and his office was in the school’s basement and was lined with shelves holding reams of paper,   school stationery,   notebooks,  folders,  boxes of pencils and pens,  printed forms,  and a myriad of other school supplies.   And standing along one wall were two large,  heavy-duty photocopy machines.

If you needed something copied – and usually several class sets of material were needed – you brought it down to Milt and put it in a box on his desk where it would wait its turn.  But if you needed it in a hurry,  Milt would sit you down,  give you a cookie from the bottom drawer of his desk,  and make the copies while you waited.

But I soon realized that many of my colleagues seemed to gravitate to Milt’s office whether or not they needed supplies or copies.  And in fact those cookies in his desk weren’t the only draw.

Milt had long known the administration and most of the staff,  and knew the inner workings of the school.  He was a good listener,  a wise advisor,  and a shoulder to cry on,  especially for new teachers overwhelmed by the challenges of working with our inner-city students.  And I saw that many of the students a sought him out as well.

It happened Addams was one of selected New York high schools that had a pre-natal program and a day care center in the building for our students who were pregnant or were already parents – teenage girls who might otherwise have dropped out of school.  The program provided them with a social worker and with medical counseling and support,  and provided the infants and toddlers with nurturing caregivers while their mothers were in class.

Because the nursery was on the same floor as the school library where I worked I would often see Milt coming down the hall to play with the babies,  and would sometimes catch him singing lullabies to them at nap time.

Then one day Milt gave us the devastating news that he’d been diagnosed with cancer.  He’d soon be leaving Addams and we all knew how much we’d miss him and the perpetual twinkle in his eye.  And then a few months later came the heartbreaking news that he had died.

Milton’s funeral was in a large church in Harlem,  and when his bereft son spoke there wasn’t a dry eye in the sanctuary.  Then Milt’s sister remembered that when her own son graduated from high school Milt offered to lend his nephew his much-prized,  brand new car to take his date to the prom in style.  The young man protested but his uncle insisted,  generous as always.  Milt wanted to give his nephew a very special evening to remember.

Then a young woman spoke who we learned was Milt’s tenant and lived on the first floor of his house.  Her landlord,   she told us,  watched over her like a surrogate father,  waiting up on nights she was out until she was safely home.

It had been an annual tradition at our school for us to choose a worthy “Addams Educator of the Year”  from among our faculty.  Although Milton was not technically a pedagogue,  one year we gave him that honor for his homespun wisdom and his generosity of spirit.  And of course for that drawerful of cookies.

–Dana Susan Lehrman