Sharing the sidelines, applauding the spotlight

Haven’t talked to Donnell White in awhile, not since he became a teacher in 2002-about the time our sons graduated from OPRF High School together.

That’s how it works around here when you raise a family. From kindergarten through high school, you’re on “the parent circuit.” You get to know a lot of people because you share school events and sports events for 13 years, and then the kids go their separate ways in college and beyond, and you hardly ever see them or their parents again, except maybe Farmers’ Market or the Lake Theatre or at church or in restaurant hubs like Winberie’s.

Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, Donnell White and I shared the sidelines. Our sons played T-ball together in the early 1990s, Keith and Dylan, both promising athletes, and we hovered and worried and lived and died by their prowess. Keith was a quiet, shy kid, but a silky smooth athlete who glided around the bases. My son was all intensity and promise.

Donnell was going through what I was going through, suffering the way I was suffering, so we had something in common. A good man, easy to talk to, with a sense of humor, not full of himself-the kind of guy you always enjoyed seeing.

And he really cared about his kids.

Because he enjoyed working with kids, I asked him to pose for the 1994 Answer Book cover, instructing his daughter, Kelly, how to hit off a tee. It’s a staged photo, but it doesn’t look staged because Donnell is a natural instructor.

That was confirmed this past week when officials showed up in his classroom at Michele Clark Middle School in Austin to surprise him and his math students with the news that he’d been named a Golden Apple Award winner for excellence in teaching. A prestigious award, only 10 given out each year.

It’s a sweet story-a West Side kid who goes to work for the post office, moves to Oak Park to raise his family. Upwardly mobile but never forgets his roots and eventually goes back the West Side to teach-and teaches well. Reaches kids, the kind of kids he once was.

It’s a good story for Oak Park, too. Donnell was growing up when Oak Park was opening up. African-Americans began moving here, and moving up the socio-economic ladder, just like all the other ethnic groups that started out in the city and moved out as they moved up-Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Polish-Americans. Lots of those folks stayed here and planted roots.

Oak Park is perfectly situated to serve a critical function in this country’s evolution-increasing the black middle class. There’s so much potential here, so much possible synergy between Oak Park and the West Side.

Donnell White is a perfect example of how it works when it works.

He’s also a good example of the involved, caring, responsible black father of whom, so many say, there aren’t enough. Well, you’ll find plenty of them in Oak Park, and that’s worth celebrating.

Oak Park doesn’t deserve the credit. This village simply created the kind of environment where it happens naturally when all the other factors working against black males in this society are removed (or significantly reduced).

In the introduction to that 1994 Answer Book, here’s what we wrote about the cover photo: “[It] represents one of the strengths of our villages-caring parents who take the time to help their kids keep their eyes on the ball.”

Fourteen years later, he’s still doing it.

Hey, Donnell, take it from someone who shared the sidelines once upon a time. You look good in the spotlight.