Chapter Thirty-Six: The Walkie-Talkie is Calling Me

Chapter 36: The Walkie-Talkie is Calling Me

6:30 a.m.

At least once a month Rex Stewart, my mentor, and I meet for breakfast before school.
Rex’s advocacy for children in our community and his energy in working on programs to help them is superhuman. King Middle School is in the poorest neighborhood of Lakeboro. Rex is the principal there as well as the chair of the County Children’s Alliance and involved in many of the committees associated with it - such as anti-bullying, pro-active fathering, stopping child abuse etc. When we meet for breakfast, I pepper him with questions and ask for his advice. Rex not only answers my questions, he gives me feedback telling me how he and others in the community perceive Prospect and the changes I am making. Rex tells me he has spoken to Prospect students and they appreciate that I am making Prospect into a “real school” as opposed to a boot camp. In addition to inspiring, these talks always have tangible benefits. Today I talk to Rex about my fledgling Activity Period and he suggests my chess team and volleyball teams play his teams. (Rex has over 40 after school clubs at his middle school). Later, when I bring this news to my students, it’s met with great enthusiasm.

7:30 a.m.

I email all the Prospect principals to remind them of our conference call today. Last week we determined a mutually agreeable time and date and I called Fred, the business manager of The Boss, to set up a conference bridge. The idea came from a recent conference call with The Boss during which all the principals wanted to talk about dilemmas and solutions. The Boss cut us off saying he scheduled this call and side conversations were not appropriate. At the end of the call I suggested we have a separate call so the five principals can share success stories and challenges. The Boss told me to set it up with Fred. He reminded me the cost will come out of each school’s budget.

8:00 a.m.

In our morning meeting I talk about “best practices.” Teachers should not struggle in isolation. Very often a peer has developed procedures or techniques to make difficult jobs easier. I encourage my team to brag about successes, talk with each other and visit each other’s classrooms during their prep periods.

My newest teacher, Hannah gets her class today. I am very excited about this young white woman with an MA in counseling and a longing to be a teacher. She has been on campus for a week observing teachers, counselors and students. She is enthusiastic and ready for her class. I team her with Yvonne, my quietest teacher.

Billie, the PE teacher, puts her arms around the shoulders of RitaMae and Hannah and announces she, Billie, will be their mother. I am uncomfortable with this move, but I’m not sure why.

Midge phones during the morning meeting. She’s sick and won’t be in today. This is the fourth day in a row she has called in. I’m not very friendly or sympathetic on the phone. We’ve been scrambling to cover her class. When I hang up, Sam asks: “So, is the fax machine on?” I laugh with the team at this reference, but I worry maybe Midge doesn’t plan to return. I also worry about covering classes. Jordan is off today (he requested this day weeks ago for medical tests) and now with Midge sick, we are very short-handed. I ask Buffy to take her class and Midge’s thus combining all the elementary students. I ask Daphne and Sam to divide up Jordan’s students. Meeting adjourned.

8:30 a.m.

After the meeting I remind Yvonne that today I’ll do a formal, planned observation in her class. She asks to radio me once she is ready, sometime around 11:00. I agree.

The walkie-talkie is calling me. Lynne, my business manager, tells me I have a call from Jordan. Even though Jordan is off for his medical appointment today, he wants to talk to me about Seth, the boy who believes his future is in jail. Jordan recognizes Seth’s giftedness and has developed an independent study program to keep Seth challenged. He left the proposal on my desk a week ago and wants my feedback. I already read though the proposal and I now tell Jordan I approve it. Jordan is quickly becoming as wonderful a teacher as Daphne. Jordan, Daphne and Sam are on the same team. Now this team is truly the dream team. Jordan tells me Seth feels he ought to be in 8th grade but somehow last year, while in seventh grade, he didn’t earn enough credits to pass. Jordan did some research on this by reading through Seth’s cumulative folder. He shares his findings with me. Last school year, Seth was at Prospect from August to early November, he was then sent to JDC (Juvenile Detention Center – jail) for two weeks. Seth returned to Prospect for a month but right before Christmas he was returned to JDC and then sent to a boot camp until June. No wonder Seth is repeating seventh grade. I thank Jordan for his work on Seth’s behalf, especially on his day off.

8:45 a.m.

The walkie-talkie is calling me. RitaMae asks to speak with me but not in my office where there is no privacy. We stand near the pitcher’s mound where she tells me she is losing patience with Neeley. When they switch classes, his homeroom is so out of control she can’t teach; Neeley’s students have fallen many chapters behind RitaMae’s homeroom. I suppose when I teamed up RitaMae and Neeley, I was hoping for a miracle. RitaMae is a certified teacher who screams and yells too much, but she knows how to teach lessons and has good (not great) classroom control. Neeley is still so scattered not a day goes by that a counselor isn’t called to his room to quell an uprising. I promise to work with Neeley but I warn RitaMae, it probably won’t be today.

8:55 a.m.

I give my email one last check before the students arrive and the real excitement begins. There is an email from The Boss. I have to read the email twice; The Boss’s writing style is muddled and confusing, but the intent of his message slowly becomes clear: although he approved the conference call between all the Prospect principals, The Boss has become uncomfortable thinking we would hold such a call without him and he has changed his mind – approval for conference call revoked. I send an email to the other principals to cancel the conference calls. Then I race outside to help with bus arrival already in progress.

9:20 a.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me. Lynne asks me whether Adoncia got off the bus this morning. No she didn’t, and come to think of it, I haven’t seen Adoncia for a couple days. Lynne divulges that a public school in Lake County just phoned and requested Adoncia’s school records because she is enrolling. Adoncia went from her family in Brownsville Texas, to her uncle and his girlfriend in Lakeboro, to some friends of the girlfriend in Lake County who need a babysitter. SBAA had agreed to consider both Adoncia and Alexia/Pilar. I ask Lynne to call SBAA to let them know Adoncia is gone. Goodbye Adoncia.

9:30 a.m.

The walkie-talkie is calling me. It’s Counselor Rosie. She says I should call her office. When I do, Rosie tells me she didn’t want to blab over the walkie-talkie but I really ought to go observe the chaos outside the cafeteria. It is Neeley’s and RitaMae’s classes….

Every day after breakfast and lunch, teachers Jana and Stone make their students line up outside the cafeteria on the far edge of the sidewalk by the trees. They must stand there until they are absolutely quiet, then the line will move toward the bathrooms. Typically they don’t have to stand more than a few minutes before the students quiet down.

It looks so easy. My morning meeting talk on best practices inspired RitaMae and Neeley to adopt Jana and Stone’s silent line technique with their students. Their first mistake is to line up the students right next to the cafeteria rather than on the far edge by the trees. As the students talk and roughhouse and curse and poke, they also scrape the new paint from the building and secretly scribble graffiti onto the pale yellow cinderblock walls. The cafeteria windowsill is now a collage of missing paint and loose paint chips.

Neeley and RitaMae’s students don’t care that they have to stand in line until they are quiet. A few complain about having to stand up in the hot sun, but mostly they enjoy the free time. RitaMae and Neeley drag chairs out of the cafeteria so they can sit while the students don’t get quiet. These teachers are convinced the failure of the Jana/Stone procedure is due to their student population: clearly I have assigned them “worse” students than Stone and Jana have. Neeley seems to have forgotten that when I teamed him with RitaMae, in an effort to increase his chances for success, I let him pick which students he would have in his new homeroom.

What RitaMae and Neeley don’t know is that Stone and Jana tell their class they will have one 15 minute break in the morning and one in the afternoon. Every minute Stone and Jana have to wait for the line to become silent, is a minute lost from those “recesses”

As far as RitaMae’s and Neeley’s classes can tell, the longer they talk and play, the less math and reading they’ll have. No problem.

I watch and wait for RitaMae and Neeley to see their experiment is a failure. They don’t. After fifteen minutes I tell them it isn’t working and they need to stop or add the recess incentive.

9:45 a.m.
Boyd is sitting in my office. I smell him before I see him. Boyd is a chubby, strawberry blond, white boy who looks (and behaves) younger than his thirteen years. Whenever I see the phrase, “working poor,” I think of Boyd. His mother works nights in a hospital. I’m not sure what she does there but I do know they don’t pay her enough. Mom’s long hours mean no one makes sure Boyd gets dinner, takes a shower or has clean clothes. Boyd reminds me how much I want a shower and laundry facilities here at Prospect. Boyd, like most of my students has serious anger control issues, but unlike his peers, he responds like a tantrumming two year old. When Boyd is mad, you almost want to laugh but there is something so pathetic and sad about him, you don’t. Boyd is kicking my desk, scowling, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists when I enter my office. His dirty shirt is dirtier than usual with a huge wet looking dark stain just below his sternum. He catches me looking at the stain and becomes more agitated. Sometimes I let Boyd kick and curse until he is calm, then we talk, but I am in a hurry today, so I press ahead – not usually a wise approach when dealing with upset youths but today it works.
“What’s with the stain Boyd?”
“That’s why I’m so mad; it’s my mother’s shirt. She doesn’t know I have it. She’s gonna kill me.”

Boyd is crying now and his shame at crying makes him even angrier. I’ve had the displeasure of observing Boyd’s mother when she is angry with him. On more than once occasion she has come to pick him up – face slapping, ear pulling and lots of loud, sarcastic profanity.

“Take off your shirt.”
“Huh?!”
“Take off your shirt and we’ll wash it in the sink.”

Boyd does and stands bare chested in the bathroom in my office scrubbing his mother’s shirt with a bar of soap. When he is done I hang it on the back railing to dry. I hand Boyd a few books and tell him to sit and read while his shirt dries. I have extra sneakers but no extra shirts. He pushes his chair close to the table trying to hide his chubby white stomach. Fortunately the shirt dries fast in the hot Florida sunshine.

10:00 a.m.

The walkie-talkie is calling me. It’s Ruth, the cafeteria manager. She calls me and the counselors saying there is a riot involving the elementary students. Buffy and her class arrived at the cafeteria in time to see the RitaMae/Neeley debacle but apparently it was not clear to her that their silent line approach was not working. Buffy decides she will try it too, despite her double sized class today (she has her students and Midge’s since Midge is ill). The elementary students don’t just talk and poke, they start fighting, almost immediately. The Counselors and I are called and over half the elementary students end up in the counseling room.

I learn that sometimes teachers try to adopt a technique they understand only superficially, with predictably bad consequences. I must be careful what I advocate in the morning meeting.

10:15 a.m.

The walkie-talkie is calling me. Daphne asks me to come to her classroom to observe Karla. Karla lives in The Forest with her mother in a single-wide trailer with a large hole in the roof. Karla’s moods are erratic, on Mondays she is often sick and exhausted. She falls asleep in class or, if we allow, on the floor in the library. She denies she is hung over but admits she doesn’t sleep all weekend; she just drinks coffee. RitaMae has seen Karla selling flowers outside a local bar on Saturday nights. Her mother, Karla says, stays with the Rainbow People in The Forest and leaves Karla on her own. According to her records, she is supposed to be taking Lithium, but the prescription ran out and her mother won’t renew it. Daphne is concerned about Karla. Today Karla’s eyes are red and wet; she has been crying and sleeping in class. She tells Daphne she hasn’t seen her mother in more than a week. Her mother is with the Rainbow people.

Karla begs Daphne not to call DCF. Someone called DCF on her oldest sister and they took away her sister’s three-year-old baby. Karla cries as she tells Daphne this. Daphne and I have two phone numbers for Karla’s mother, one is a neighbor’s house and one is the home Karla’s mother cleans on Thursdays only. Daphne will try Mom on Thursday. If no luck, I will try leaving a terrifying message with the neighbor. We decide to do this before we throw Karla to DCF.

Despite my concerns about Karla, being in Daphne’s classroom is a pleasure. It is a comforting place. She has the last portable on the left on south campus (previously used as a time-out location for severely mentally handicapped children in another school). It is divided into three small rooms and one larger room; the doorknobs are at the top of the doors (to keep the former occupants from leaving). The walls are painted in high gloss lime green and lemon yellow. The non-traditional paint matches Daphne’s non-traditional outlook. When I enter, the students are finishing breakfast, reading the daily newspaper and cutting out articles for their current events lesson. Tyryona and Selma are in one of the small rooms. Seth, Edgar and Shandon are in another small room. Darrin is alone in one room. Karla, Timmy and Darius sit in the main area. The portable is fairly quiet. Daphne walks around answering questions and helping pronounce unfamiliar words in the newspaper. I sit in the main room. Karla shows me a photo on the front page of the paper of some people living in The Forest. “I know them,” she proudly declares. “They’re Rainbow people like my Mom.” Before I can make further inquiries, Karla continues. “My birthday is on Thanksgiving but we aren’t doing nothing since my Mom will be with the Rainbow people all day.” Karla gets up, throws her milk carton in the trash and takes her newspaper into the room with Tyryona and Selma.

Daphne has also asked me to observe Edgar who is doing really well. She wants to work on returning him to public school at the semester break next month. He is still behind academically, especially with his reading, but he has avoided all fights, even when provoked. I promise Daphne I’ll make a call to Henry.

10:30 a.m.

The walkie-talkie is calling me. It is Stone. He regrets to inform me he just vomited in the parking lot. He is going home. I am short Midge, Jordan and now Stone. I ask Billie, my PE teacher to cover Stone’s class. She is not pleased.

11:00 a.m.
The walkie-talkie is calling me. It is Yvonne telling me now is a good time for me to observe her class. The students are fairly quiet. Yvonne is reviewing for a test using an overhead projector and an outline of topics recently covered during a unit on Florida history. As I walk around the room I find that few students are on-task. Jillane is eating a bag of cool ranch Doritos. Caleb is drawing pictures of knives. Tayshaun, like three other boys, has a hat on and is sleeping. Several students are wearing coats inside the room.

I tell the hat and coat wearers to remove the outdoor apparel. They grumble and protest that Miss Yvonne said it was okay. I tell Jillane to put away the Doritos. She does and just as quickly takes out a bag of cheese popcorn that I just as quickly confiscate. I remove elastics from wrists and hijack paper airplanes. Attack of the mean principal. Yvonne’s class maybe orderly, but like Neeley’s students, few are learning.

11:30 a.m.

The walkie-talkie is calling me. Lynne informs me a DCF caseworker is here to see Alexia/Pilar. The caseworker tells me she wants to take Alexia/Pilar to lunch, tour SBAA, discuss attending SBAA and talk about moving Alexia/Pilar from her Grandmother’s home to a foster home. Caseworkers rarely take students off campus. Alexia/Pilar is excited to go. I wonder how she will feel when the caseworker discusses a foster home.

12:00 p.m.

The walkie-talkie is calling me. It is Rosie. She tells me to phone her office. When I do, she tells me Hannah, my newest teacher, is crying. She met her first challenge: Tayshaun and Owen. Tayshaun told Hannah he and Owen made Crystal quit and they made Doctor quit and they can make her quit too. Hannah was warned about these two and she is feisty. She tells Tayshaun she won’t quit even if he shows her his boxers! Tayshaun and Owen, work hard at unraveling Hannah, they partially succeed; after Hannah drops her students off for their group counseling session she goes to Rosie’s office crying. I go see her there. I try to provide support, advice, encouragement. At least she didn’t cry in front of the students.

12:30 p.m.

The walkie-talkie is calling me. Lynne tells me public school liaison Henry is on the phone and doesn’t sound pleased.

Henry has a complaint. When he sends us a fax on an incoming student, we need to contact that student within 24 hours. I know this. Henry says we failed to do this with two students this week and he reminds me if we can’t get in touch with a student, we should contact his office and they’ll get social workers involved. I know this too. I apologize to Henry. A lot of bucks stop here and some of them just fall off the plate somewhere.

I know the procedures Henry describes and I thought they were being followed. For some reason Stephanie has dropped the ball. I make a note to speak with her and print a new copy of the intake procedures to review with her. Lynne defends Stephanie saying she is going through a difficult time right now; her estranged husband (Tappy Gonzales the bus mechanic) is pressuring her to come back home. Her new “boyfriend” is afraid he’ll be shipped out to Iraq and she has been thinking a lot lately of her son who died in a car crash two years ago. She has also had some kidney problems.

Why is it that so often people who are drawn to “helping” professions, need so much help themselves?

I call Henry back a few minutes later to raise the question of returning Edgar to public school. This is a major undertaking because Edgar was formally expelled. We need to go before the school board if we want him to return. Is he really doing that well? The soonest he could return would be the end of January. I want him back at the start of the second semester, right after Christmas, but that isn’t going to happen. Henry promises to get the paperwork rolling. We set up a phone interview for Edgar, Henry and the principal at the public school Edgar will attend.

1:00 p.m.

The walkie-talkie is calling me. It’s Rusty, he wants me to come to his office to discuss something he just learned. Rusty begins with a review of facts I already know about our students. Kembrall is Claymont’s henchman. If you mess with Claymont, you’re messing with Kembrall. While Claymont is a sharp, bright, articulate boy, Kembrall is not. He is big, slow and lumbering. Kembrall is in Daphne’s homeroom. Then the clincher: Kembrall’s uncle is wanted for the murder of Selma’s brother and Selma is also in Daphne’s homeroom. Oh, and was I aware that while I was Ebencorp’s headquarters in Tampa, three girls accused Kembrall of sexual molestation?

1:30 p.m.

Rex Stewart phones. A few days ago he interviewed one of my teachers for a position at his school. Yvonne. How is she doing? First I tell Rex I was unaware that Yvonne was out interviewing. Then I share with him the story of Yvonne, Caleb and her belief that I was going to fire her. I end with a description of my observation in Yvonne’s classroom today. Rex says he suspects Yvonne wouldn’t do well in his school either, and that he guessed as much from the interview. I only wish I had been as savvy as Rex when I interviewed Yvonne. After I hang up, I make a mental note to ask Rex to share with me his interview procedures.

2:00 p.m.

The walkie-talkie is calling me. The DCF worker has returned with Alexia/Pilar and she wants to speak with me. Alexia/Pilar is leaving to go to SBAA. Although SBAA is an alternative school, the small size (40 students) and all-girl atmosphere will provide a more nurturing environment for Alexia/Pilar. If she can behave and not get kicked out, she now has a shot at a future! Alexia/Pilar is gathering her belongings and saying her goodbyes. She asks me for the Walkman I confiscated from her months ago. Unfortunately, when I go to get it from my desk safe I see that I can no longer open the safe.

When I arrived at Prospect there was an open safe on my desk filled with prescription drugs. I had Shasta, my transportation manager, destroy them as per policy and for a while the safe sat empty. Stone asked if he could take it home but found it is securely bolted to my desk. The safe has a spinning combination dial lock and a key. When I first began to take contraband from students, I put it in a lock box in a metal cabinet. The lockbox quickly filled up and I began to use my desk safe. When I began to store student items in the safe, I locked and unlocked it using the key. This worked fine until I want to remove Alexia/Pilar’s Walkman. It seems someone spun the dial. Now the key alone won’t open the safe and no one knows the combination. I guess the students’ contraband items are secure. I promise Alexia/Pilar I will find the combination, open the safe and bring her the Walkman.

Rosie and Alexia/Pilar have been close. Alexia/Pilar recently confided to Rosie that she doesn’t have any dresses or skirts and wishes she had some. Alexia/Pilar has always exuded toughness with a swagger and threats of violence (which she regularly proved were not empty threats). She tells Rosie if she is able to go to a school without boys she’ll be able to be more feminine. Rosie’s daughter, Amy, has outgrown some dresses and skirts that will now fit Alexia/Pilar. She leaves us with hugs, hope and a new wardrobe. Goodbye Alexia/Pilar

2:30 p.m.

The walkie-talkie is calling me. RitaMae needs to see me. Did I remember she has to leave early this afternoon for a doctor’s appointment? No. She told me last week. Yes, I see it on my calendar. I weakly ask whether she can reschedule. No, she had to wait weeks to get in.

Activity period is not going to be fun today.

3:10 p.m.

Neeley and Billie suggest we take the students who usually have Stone, Midge, RitaMae and Jordan for Activity period and run one big kickball game. I am skeptical but they are confident it will work, they ask the Deputy to join them on the ball field.

It almost works. But we should have noticed Marcus’s hair is not braided.

Luis comes alive in kickball. He rarely comes to school, but he is here today and pretty mellow in most of his classes. Luis is very athletic. He likes to do back flips, cartwheels, anything gymnastic. He kicks a double and runs to second base. Marcus is the second baseman. On second base, Luis starts to turn back flips waiting for the next kickball player to be up. Marcus starts to boil. He calls Luis “a little fag.” Luis grabs the kickball from the pitcher and kicks it directly in Marcus’s face. A fight starts causing more than the usual chaos given the large number of students on the ball field. The Deputy arrests Luis. We finally get Luis to come to school and he ends up in jail.
4:00 p.m.

The busses have left and Yvonne is in my office waiting for me to discuss my observation of her class this morning. She sits stoned-faced and I wonder whether I’ll get any responses or emotions. I begin with the positives but as soon as I mention some concerns, she becomes defensive, protesting “It’s not like I use the overhead every day.” Wow, at least she communicated! I tell her the problem isn’t the projector. I suggest other techniques to review for a test: a game of jeopardy or small group presentations, something active to get the students interacting and involved. Yvonne is back in her silent mode. I press her for a response. She finally says, robotically, “I do all those things, nothing works.” I ask some probing questions to try to gauge Yvonne’s job satisfaction but she denies she is seeking employment elsewhere and says she is happy here. I decide not to mention Rex Stewart’s call.

6:30 p.m.

Daphne is telling me she is thinking of quitting again. Instead of active listening, being supportive, dispensing advice, showing compassion or any of my usual approaches when she tells me her woes, I become somewhat forceful. “Daphne, your students and I need you. We need you at the very least, to finish out this semester. Let’s talk again before Christmas break. Daphne agrees.

Daphne then asks permission to take off for a few hours tomorrow afternoon. Seth has a court date and Daphne would like to appear in court with him, to speak on his behalf. She hopes to convince the judge not to sentence Seth to another boot camp. She has spoken with Seth’s parents and they are pleased Daphne is willing to go to court. Unfortunately Seth cannot be counted on to show his appreciation appropriately. Whenever Daphne or Jordan compliment or help Seth, his first reaction is to smile and appear pleased, but shortly thereafter he begins to misbehave around the person who advocated for him. Daphne is worried if she does succeed in helping Seth avoid a program, she’ll pay the price as the target of his anger. Given his background, Seth is clearly pushing people away before they can hurt him – he doesn’t trust the staying power of positive relationships with an adult. I’m not sure Daphne understands all this, but maybe she does.

Before she leaves my office, Daphne asks if it is okay for her class to throw a party for Karla before Thanksgiving. Karla won’t get a birthday since Mom will be in The Forest with the Rainbow people. It was Tyryona’s idea. I approve the time off for court and the birthday. I sigh as Daphne leaves, she is such a great teacher and I don’t want to lose her.

On my way home I stop at the Goodwill store and buy every navy blue polo shirt they have. At $3 each they are a bargain and worth every penny when I think of Boyd.

8:40 p.m.

Back in my apartment, I am concentrating on eating a large bowl of romaine lettuce while conducting phone interviews. The trick is to put the phone on mute and crunch while the prospective teacher is talking. I am feeling serious pressure to hire at least one and perhaps as many as five new teachers. I absolutely need a math teacher to replace Noreen and I may need teachers for two Title One positions (Math and Reading) for which I applied but my grant has not yet received approval. And, I have a hunch I may soon need teachers to replace Daphne and Yvonne.

I try to psyche myself up for these interviews saying: do not settle for warm bodies, the students need and deserve more. Nice, noble thoughts, but reality intervenes – I need teachers, and as charming and persuasive as I am, the bottom line is still poor pay, a long school year and extremely challenging students. Convincing good teachers to teach at Prospect is a tough sell.

As I try to persuade others to do what I have done, to take a stressful, difficult, low-paying position in a humid city they’ve never heard of, I wonder: what motivated me? Why was I driven to take this job, in this place? I was raised in a tony suburb of Boston, never seriously wanting for anything, so was it noblesse oblige? Maybe. But my social conscience could also date back to my parents’ divorce, when my father left, taking with him the checkbook and my college funds.

Overnight I was plummeted from upper middle class to poverty. As a college freshman, I suddenly had to learn to live with hunger and cold. I learned to make thick hot cereal to keep my stomach from growling between breakfast and dinner. I learned to stuff plastic bags in my shoes when I had to walk in drifting snow on my way from campus to work. I learned to negotiate the wholly unfamiliar world of financial aid and food stamps. I learned empathy and compassion for people who, up to then, had only existed in a remote, distant place outside the window of the Boston-Maine train.

I was lucky, my residence in the land of poverty was brief. But those few years of deprivation seemed to crystallize my already liberal outlook and social conscience, rendering me unable to be satisfied by simply making money, giving to charity and donating a few hours of my time each week. My conscience, my burden.

Now, how to find other people similarly afflicted….