Let Us Now Praise Paul Cummins
The justly famed and revered Los Angeles educator saved my young life. After heading the English department at the then Harvard School for Boys (now Harvard-Westlake), Cummins fell afoul of the stern headmaster Father William Chalmers when he turned the department into a progressive oasis, and left for the more enlightened Oakwood School. The next year, after I was elected Harvard School's senior class president (against Chalmers's best efforts), I too crossed swords with the headmaster when I opposed the school's compulsory military program at the height of the Vietnam War. Chalmers forced me out midway through my senior high school year, writing to every college to which I applied that I should not be admitted because I was a "disciplinary risk." (Only UC-Santa Cruz, bless them, took a chance on me.)
Cummins, sympathizing with me, pulled strings to let me attend Oakwood the final months of the school year and graduate from high school. If he hadn't, I would've been drafted and fled to Canada -- or, more likely, gone underground.
Paul Cummins was -- and still is -- closer to my older brother Stephen Talbot and to my brother-in-law Dave Davis. In addition to teaching them English, he also coached them in varsity football. Cummins was a man's man in the old, best sense --- he was handsome, smart and believed in the life of the mind as well as sports. (He played football at Stanford.)
After serving as the vice principal at Oakwood, Cummins went on to found the legendary Crossroads School and New Roads School in Santa Monica, and became a leading educational advocate for at-risk and incarcerated youth.
At 86, Paul Cummins is still one of the good guys.
Every January, Cummins also sends a booklet of his poetry to his network of friends and admirers. He was moved to write the following poem because he took note, like many of us did, of the 60th anniversary of JFK's murder. I'm posting the poem's burning first stanza. The fire still burns in Paul -- so does the wisdom.
JFK Redux
"The sun allows you to see only what the sun
Falls upon: the surface."
-- Frank Bidart, "Against Silence"
Out the window care, tossed, no?
Yet did we not care before?
Care who did what and how and why?
And care when some plot uncloaked,
Did we not respond vigorously?
Say when a head of state assassinated?
The murder in public of the president --
Followed then by the periodic unraveling
Of an oafish conspiracy exposing treachery
Only to have it officially swept aside,
For how could the country abide
Knowing it was the country itself --
Its own elected and appointed caretakers
Who conspired to murder their own leader --
He too liberal for their oligarchic machinations,
He a threat to the ever-expanding industry
Of war -- now as we can clearly see --
Now the condition of perpetual war
So ingrained it simply must be.
Besides, who cares?
Paul Cummins and friend