Wrinkled by Time...First "Fight" and Football

First Fight and Football

Teaching at Woodrow Wilson also led to the first fight (uhhh…misunderstanding) Dad and I had.  Just for background…By November (1969) I was beginning to learn how to survive in a ghetto school and teach subjects for which I had no training. 

"Teacher" Patti...(I don't have too many pictures from these days)

But more excitement was to come. 

Our generation can remember the strife and dissension common during the late 60’s.  In January of 1968 the USS Pueblo had been seized by the North Koreans. The TET offensive began and anti war rallies were common across the country as so many protested President Johnson’s handling of the war in Viet Nam.

Here in California, Cesar Chavez began his first fast for non violence as college campus’s exploded.  Bombings in Laos, the massacre at My Lai, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy fueled tensions.

In  October 1967 Huey Newton (who had gone to Woodrow Wilson and Oakland Tech a few years earlier) was involved in the shooting death of Oakland Police Officer John Frey.

He was convicted in September of 68 of manslaughter to serve 2-15 years amid cries of conspiracy in the community…feelings were high as I began teaching my first year fresh from BYU.

 July had seen a huge “rally” in front of the Alameda County Courthouse to “free Huey.”  At the summer Olympic Games in Mexico City San Jose State athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in the black power salute during their medal ceremony to protest the treatment of African Americans.  

 

 In October 27 soldiers serving brig time attempt to stage a sit-in protesting prison conditions; all are tried as mutineers. 

On the 5^th of November Richard Nixon was elected as President….this did not go over well in the Bay Area…on November 6 at San Francisco State the Black Student Union and the World Liberation Front led a student strike clashing with police and making national headlines. 

This was the community I came into each day trying to figure out what to do in my art class and how to teach non readers in my English classes.  I don’t quite remember the triggering issue (probably having to do with Huey Newton) and probably instigated by student unrest for various reasons at nearby University of California-Berkeley…the students at Oakland Tech started some sort of demonstration throwing typewriters out of the second floor windows and generally running amuck. This brought the Oakland Police who were also concerned with the trickle down effect on our school just a block away. Nothing had really happened at Woodrow Wilson but just before lunch the entire student body was brought into the auditorium and told we were going to be dismissed early until things settled down. They slowly began to allow students and teachers to leave. I drove back  to San Francisco that afternoon with the other two (white) teachers in my carpool.

We were pretty shattered.

Needless to say I was eagerly waiting for John to get home from dental school so I could fall in his arms and tell him about my horrible day and get a little well deserved comfort!

Now about the fight…About 5:30 John rushed into the house and heedless of my desperate efforts to start sharing the events of my day made a beeline for the TV and told me to wait because he had to see the sports on the news! I burst into tears (which he ignored because he was dialing into the news)…I’m sure he was astounded that watching the news evoked such a dramatic response from me!

What I didn’t know and found out later after I stopped sobbing was that the day before had been a big football game that has gone down in sports history as the “Heidi game”…with only 1 minute left to play the Oakland Raiders were losing to the New York Jets  32-29. NBC cut away from the game for this last minute to start the TV Movie Heidi on time at 7pm Eastern Time.

 

 Little did they know that Oakland would come back in that last minute and score TWO touchdowns to  ultimately win 43-32! 

John was rushing home to watch the replay of that exciting minute….I eventually calmed down and understood  his desperate need to see the sports.(Although, as you well know<  he was always pretty desperate to watch sport!)