A Blog of Personal Thoughts

Yesterday and Today

March 2026

In 1950s when we lived in Maine, we still had the family home in Massachusetts. We made frequent trips between the two places. We stopped at Howard Johnson’s for lunch. My parents had 50¢ or 75¢ sandwiched sandwiches. I always asked permission before I ordered a $5 or a $10 lobster. They said yes and never asked me to share any of it. Yesterday and today are very different.

In today’s world, my grandson offered to make me a boat on his 3D printer. I accepted with delight. Instead, I received two lobsters with the boat still waiting at his home.

Two lobsters! He could not have given me a better gift. These inedible delights sit side by side on my desk. I look at them and adjust them a few times a week as their parts accidently get pushed by papers. They are “uncooked” since they are not red. These two are moveable and I enjoy putting them back in a reasonable position when I bump them.

Lobsters don’t live in Alaska waters so I must wait till I go back to Maine or Nova Scotia to order one for dinner. Lobster is my favorite, although Dungeness crab and black cod run a very close second.

Another yesterday occurred in the early 1990s when I was principal at Quinton Heights Elementary School. It was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The school had invited some of the dignitaries from Topeka to help us honor the day and give us short speeches. My school was 58% minority—about 46% Black, 10% Native American, and 2% Hispanic. At the end, the students stood and sang “We Shall Overcome.” A beautiful ending to the program. But it wasn’t the end. They sang “We Shall Overcome” a second time, signing the words as they sang it again. I, the principal, was supposed to give some words of closing after that. I was moved to tears and so choked with emotion my voice cracked enough everyone noticed. I don’t remember the dignitaries who were. I just remember my wonderful students and music teacher who sang and signed this beautiful song.

What many people don’t know is that Topeka was the site of the 1954 Brown v The Board of Education of Topeka, the case that reached the US Supreme Court to desegregate schools. I remember sitting in our New York City apartment reading the headline

The New York Times.
May 18, 1954
LATE CITY EDITION
HIGH COURT BANS SCHOOL SEGREGATION;
9-TO-0 DECISION GRANTS TIME TO COMPLY

Big black headlines at the top of the first page with its box saying “All the news that’s fit to print” in the top left corner.

Meanwhile, I sat in a living room chair at home reading the headline and article before leaving for Grace Church School. As I read the headline, I wondered what was wrong with Topeka, Kansas that they had segregated schools. I went to a private school in New York City. In our class of 21 students, we had a black student, a West Indian (or perhaps he was from India; I never asked and he never said ), and a Chinese student. All that seemed very normal to me. Topeka did not.

Little did I know that I would live as a school psychologist, then as principal, in this place in the middle of the country called Topeka, Kansas. Part of my thinking in working for the public schools was that I had had a privileged life. It was time to pay back to society the gifts I had received. It was time to work in a school with what we call underprivileged children. I was one of the “overprivileged” and I owed it to society to give back what I could. That singing and signing of “We Shall Overcome” was one of many times I felt fulfilled.

An interesting fact I learned once I worked in Topeka was that it is the only school district desegregated by the U. S. Supreme Court. All other schools are desegregated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which desegrated schools and workplaces based on race, religion, color, or national origin. Topeka Public Schools do not fall under the Civil Rights Act. Why not? Because if it did there would be a conflict between the justice and the legislative branches. Therefore, any racial problem in Topeka School System falls under the courts not the law of Congress.

Where are we today? I remember 10 or 15 years ago thinking and saying that when the Whites became a minority in the US, we would have a major shift. We see that shift occurring now. It seems to me that white people are afraid of being in the minority. Some try to turn the clock back to the supposed wonderful 1950s when women stayed home and took care of the children while men went to work. What are the people in the pictures of those years? White. How many pictures did we see of Blacks, Native Americans, Asians, Hispanic families in this supposed idyllic environment. None. Much more than the climate is changing. Cultural mixes all over the world are changing.

Times have changed. I remember when I was 13 at Grace Church School and wearing a school uniform, my father telling me that I couldn’t walk down the street with Michael (because he was Negro, the term then). I thought: There were eight of us, all in our school uniforms. What difference did it make? What I learned from that was not to tell my father when I walked down the street with Michael. Michael was intelligent, creative, very humorous and witty, and became an Episcopal priest and Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in St. Louis. Michael P. P. G. Randolph. I never asked him what his middle initials stood for. Years later, we talked about our mothers being in a nursing home at the same time and the cost of it. He said he might need to sell some of his Manhattan property to pay for it. I gulped and said nothing. I didn’t have any Manhattan, or other, property to sell. He was from Brooklyn and his mother was single and a social worker. I thought Brooklyn and a single parent meant poor. As adults, Michael was either pulling my leg, again, or he came from a lot more money than I did. Either way, it didn’t matter…he was a good friend. At our 50th grammar school reunion (Grace Church School) in 2005, he and I walked together in Central Park deep in conversation. We walked along the paths of Christo’s The Gates, the saffron flags that fluttered along the walks. We always kept in touch be phone, letter, and email until he died.

Where are we today, Michael, and my other friends, old or young, alive or now gone? The world is drastically changing, and some try, oh so vainly, to halt its continuous forward, unstoppable movement.

We humans are homo sapiens. There is no Black or White or Asian or Native or Hispanic race. I’d like to remind all of us that we are of one race and one race only, the race of homo sapiens.