3 April 2021
I moved to San Antonio to live with my cousin Jo in the summer of 1984. She had a two story house on Ridgewood Court. Upstairs there were two bedrooms and a single bath. Downstairs there was a living room, kitchen, dining room, and 1/2 bath – and a floor furnace!
I had no job but I did have some money left over from my GI bill’s last payment and a little left over from my graduate stipend. For the first week or so Jo showed me all her favorite haunts in San Antonio but I knew I needed to find a job pretty quickly.
One of Jo’s neighbors was a woman named Laurie. She claimed to be an interior designer. I’m not sure she was actually licensed but I have to admit she was very good at interior design. In conversation one day, she admitted she needed someone to keep her and her business organized. She operated the business out of her second floor apartment which also housed her teenaged daughter. What is it about mothers and daughters? They fought constantly. I agreed to run her office and get her organized. I figured who better than I – Mr. Anal. Boy was I wrong.
The statement about organizing the Democratic party is like herding cats applied to Laurie to the nth degree. She was in the habit of dropping everything and going shopping five times a day because she forgot to pick the other four things up each time. Finally, it became my job to be the gofer to keep her from running off every few minutes. I even became the chauffeur for the teenage daughter to and from school. All this was compounded by her affair with a local Catholic priest.
Even though I was living cheaply at Jo’s, I needed money and got work as a helper to a contractor. It was off and on work but it paid. I probably wasn’t too good but I actually had experience at that since I had worked construction right out of high school.
I got to know San Antonio quite well. The one thing I learned quickly was not to get anywhere near any roadway from 8-10 am or 5-6 pm. San Antonio had a way of stopping traffic dead on every roadway at rush hour. I loved the museums, the Japanese gardens, and, in particular, all the cultural events available. I think Jo and I attended every art opening in the city.
Jo was still working at Incarnate Word University and I often made it home before she did. I would clean house, cook dinner, and do anything I could to make her life a little easier – except I seemed to play too sad of songs on my stereo.
It wasn’t long before I realized I didn’t want to be a gofer or construction helper. San Antonio’s job market was not great. I decided to move to Atlanta and try my hand there. I had a friend from Jackson, Carl, who had transferred to Atlanta and he agreed to let me sleep on his couch until I could find something. I was there looking for a job when I got a call from Dad. A place I had applied for a teaching position called me for an interview. It was Broward Community College in Fort Lauderdale.
I drove from Atlanta down to Fort Lauderdale for my interview. I wasn’t sure where to go for the interview. There was the administration center in downtown Fort Lauderdale, the North Campus, the Central Campus, and the South Campus. I finally figured out the position was at the South Campus and that was where the interview was to be held.
I walked in for the interview with the faculty. I don’t remember who the third faculty member was but the other two were members of the department: Darla Culmer and Steve Davis. They asked a few perfunctory questions and then said “thank you.” I was stunned. I had traveled all that distance for a fifteen minute interview. I didn’t get up and leave. Instead I said I had a few questions for them. I proceeded to ask them a series of questions and I think it threw them off guard.
I next met with the department chair, Mike Kovacs, and the provost of the campus, Ann McGee. Again, the perfunctory line of questions. I immediately started asking them questions and asked Mike if I could see the science facilities, especially the laboratory facilities. The position was for someone to begin teaching botany and zoology on that campus. Mike agreed to show me around and we talked more as we toured.
Later, I was to find out I was just a courtesy interview. They had already decided who they wanted for the job and they were just dotting their “i’s” and crossing their “t’s” for legal purposes. It depends on who you asked. If you ask Darla and Steve, they would say Mike didn’t want to hire me but they did. If you ask Mike, he would say the faculty didn’t want me but he and Ann did. In reality, I don’t think either “wanted” to hire me but I simply did a better interview than the other candidate.
By the way, the other candidate had a meteoric rise after she was turned down for the position I got. She went to North Campus and became department head, then Dean of Academic Affairs and finally Provost of Central Campus. I tease her sometime that I was responsible for her successful career as an administrator.
Mike, Steve and Darla all became good friends. Soon we added another faculty member, Daryl Miller and to this day we are all still good friends. However, it took me a little while to adapt to south Florida living. I’ve lived in a lot of places but this place was the hardest to make friends.
I kept waiting for someone on the department to ask me over for a get together. Not a word. They all lived their separate lives and once their day was over at BCC, they left everything behind. Finally, I got tired of waiting and threw a party at my place and invited everyone including the lab staff (we didn’t have to prep our own labs). Everyone had a ball and we started to do that on a regular basis. I like to think I had a little to do with that.
When I moved down to take the position, I found a place called the Lincoln Chateau in Hollywood on Lincoln Street (the streets are named for Presidents). I took a year lease. It was OK at first but turned into a nightmare. My next door neighbor went berserk one night and shot up his car and claimed he had been attacked. My a/c didn’t work for almost 6 months in spite of constant complaining to the management. If you parked in anything other than your designated parking space you were towed.
Mike Kovacs, the department chair, had a new girlfriend and he needed to move out of his little garage apartment off Funston Street in Hollywood (Hollywood/Pembroke Pines was the location of South Campus). I was introduced to his landlady and moved in. This was where the first faculty parties were thrown. I had a kitchen, living room, a tomb of a shower, and a bedroom the size of a closet. The parties were great. We even had the police called in on us one time.
The one thing about the city of Hollywood is every segment of society hates the other segment. The Italians hated the French who hated the Germans who hated the Russians who hated everybody.
My landlady was an 80+ year old Italian woman with her 80+ Italian boyfriend. She constantly brought me over all kinds of Italian dishes but I finally got to throwing them in the garbage when a soup she brought over one day had a distinct soapy taste.
After she decided to go up on the rent, I moved to a place near Cordoba Road in Fort Lauderdale. I loved this place. It was another garage conversion and the rent was reasonable – for a while. The guy was a bachelor for the first year but then he married a woman with two kids: Amanda and Blake – no fooling – shades of Gunsmoke. She decided my rent was too cheap even though I was finishing the interior and making repairs at no cost to them – I guess I did too good of a job – and she raised the rent.
Anyway, when she raised the rent – exobitantly – I moved into a friends condo in Fort Lauderdale and stayed there for about three years. A good friend, Judith Reiss, insisted I start looking to buy with my GI Bill and that’s when I moved to my current place. I’ve been here 27 years.
The college campus was relatively new. When South Campus was first established, it had been in a Presbyterian Church on Federal Highway in downtown Hollywood. While the new campus was built, they also operated out of a shopping center across the street from its current location. Finally, three new buildings were constructed and the science labs were in building 70, along with my office.
Early in my tenure at South, Peggy Green from North and I attended a seminar to promote the Keys Marine Lab on Long Key. We both agreed it was a perfect place to bring students on field trips.
You had to get a species permit from the state. In all they years I took students down to the Keys, not once did a Game and Fish officer check my permit. Just a few steps away was a canal across the street that had a mangrove area. It was better diving than on the coral reefs.
There was better diversity in the mangroves and most of our specimens came from there. You did run the risk of nurse sharks but fortunately, they are very docile.
One year I was teaching a plant morphology course for Florida Atlantic University and took students to the Keys to collect marine algae. I needed a permit and applied to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. I got a phone call from the director – a good ole boy from the panhandle. We chatted a little about the permit request and it seemed there was no problem. Then he said “Pardon but could I ask a question?” I said sure. He said “What the hell is an algae?” I explained and he signed the permit and sent it to me in the mail.
The Keys Marine Lab was next door to one of the better restaurants in the Keys. It was called The Little Italy. I would eat all my meals there when students would use the kitchen at the lab. Sometimes, we would all meet up at Little Italy for the last night in the Keys.
Another place I took students on field trips was to Archbold Biological Station near Lake Placid, Florida.
The main attraction to Archbold were the native scrub jays. They mated for life and had extended families (kids and grandkids) within a territory. They had no fear of humans and you would often bend down to look at something on the ground and one would land on your shoulder. I would take raw peanuts (unsalted) with me and feed them for the students. Technically that was a no-no but everyone at the station did it.
I spent 29 years at the college. I also bought in 5 years of Mississippi retirement and 4 years of military so I, in effect, retired with over 34 years in the Florida retirement system (somehow they didn’t count all the years but accepted the money which was all I really needed – it boosted my retirement pay).
In that 29 years, I did establish the botany and zoology programs on South campus and then watched it disappear when the universities classified those courses as 300 level courses. I ended up teaching mostly majors biology for premedical, prepharmacy, predental and preveternary students.
There are several things I am proud of during my tenure at the college. I spent two years as Faculty Senate President and two years as UFF Chapter President. Those two years almost killed me and did cause me to have a nervous breakdown. I spent those two years visiting faculty and administrators on all four campuses on a weekly rotation. There was a time I knew every administrator and every faculty member at the college and most of the support personnel. This was with an enrollment of over 46,000 students so there were plenty of faculty and administrators and support personnel. The president of the college one time at a Faculty Senate meeting was answering a question about whether or not faculty would believe something I said and he said there was no question in his mind about my influence on the faculty. I later led a vote of no confidence in him.
A good friend and colleague, Steve Watnick, suggested to me it was time to bring before the board of trustees the idea of domestic partner benefits. I was reluctant because the board of trustees was appointed by a Republican governor. I had to take it to the Insurance Committee first and I pulled all the data together to show that offering domestic partner benefits did not cost the institution (or institutions) more money. The insurance agent for the college, Lloyd Rhodes, surprised me and supported my claim.
The real problem on the insurance committee was physical plant. They were mostly high school graduates and were probably very leery of domestic partnership because of the “gay” connotation. One guy was speaking against it when his buddy elbowed him in the meeting and told him to shut up, it meant his girlfriend could get on the college insurance policy. It passed unanimously in the Insurance Committee.
Amazingly, it passed the board of trustees and was enacted for the college. The Florida legislature tried to bully the college into nullifying the policy but to the college’s credit, they stood by the policy.
Another thing for which I’m proud is the Wall of Fame for the Science/Wellness Department on South. We had a lot of students go on with their education and become outstanding in their field. At the time, the college did not really trace former students. I spent a lot of time working up a list of former students who had done well in the post-BCC careers. I asked the other Science/Wellness faculty to do the same.
Once a year the Science/Wellness Department would welcome new science oriented students to campus and do faculty introductions, do icebreakers, etc. The book representatives would often provide us small gifts or donations through the bookstore for prizes. We would then introduce the Wall of Fame winner for the year. They would make a small speach and we’d take their photo and mount it in a frame and put their bio with it and put it on our “Wall” of Fame. It was quite impressive what some of our past students accomplished.
One got into Harvard in premed (he later changed to business), another got a PhD at Penn State in biochemistry (ahem!), another became a physicians assistant through the masters program at UF and became associated with a famous thoracic surgeon. Another got a free ride to the University of Miami medical school.
For years I had been trying to get the campus to put in a nature trail. Finally, Hank Martel, one of my department chairs over the years, got promoted to the dean of academic affairs on South and he found the funding for the signage.
During my last years at the college, I promoted the idea of Professor Emeritus. When a faculty member retired, the college didn’t keep up with them since the state paid their retirement. I learned quickly as union president that retired faculty were great to serve on college committees. It then hit me to have the college acknowledge their service through the emeritus concept. There was a great deal or resistance from the administration until the dean of academic affairs on North Campus supported it. Hettie Williams and I had a rough relationship when she was dean on my campus but she and I finally had a breakthrough. She supported the idea of Professor Emeritus and brought other administrators along with her.
As it passed the board, the idea was to issue an ID card, allow for access to the libraries of the college, reduced rates for functions at the college, ability to take one course per semester free of charge, a faculty parking decal for all campuses, and an office space reserved for emeriti.
Also before I left, I digitized the biology, botany, zoology, and anatomy and physiology slide collections and placed them on the web so students and faculty to access them any time and any place. The site has now been archived and they can still make use of those. I did the same with the herbarium I constructed.
I also made instructional videos on lab safety and the microscope. One problem we had was students missing the first lab where those were the main topics. Lab safety was critical and so was the microscope. The videos allowed the students to review the concepts and be ready for the second lab.
In addition to those videos, I put out additional videos on things like how to read a pipette, how to use a pH meter, how to dilute an acid, etc. I still get emails from some faculty thanking me for the videos and requests to use the slides and videos.
Finally, I was fortunate enough to be awarded the Endowed Teaching Chair twice. This was started by Will Holcombe during his presidency and continues to this day. Corporations, businesses, and individuals endowed the fund and a specific number are awarded each year. When it first started, the award was $7,500 to the faculty member and $5000 for equipment/program purchases. It’s since been reduced in amount but I was fortunate in the two years I was awarded it, I got the larger sum. It really helped out financially. I’m not sure it really meant I was a good teacher but I certainly worked hard for the college for 29 years.
Stay tuned!
