Well before Tommy went to jail, the attacks on the Debnams’ house had begun to subside. Perhaps it was the sudden police diligence, perhaps the alarm of white adults at the rash of injuries, perhaps simply the boredom of youths tiring of their long campaign. By the end of 1976, Olbrys and Kennealey returned to other duties and RUN withdrew its defenders.
But the siege had taken its toll on 185 Centre Street. In midsummer, Frank Leonard, the Debnams’ white tenant, died of a heart attack brought on, his physician suspected, by the constant turmoil surrounding the house. Meanwhile, the ordeal had helped to blight the Debnams’ marriage. Unable to forgive Otis’ prolonged absences during the worst violence, Alva suspected that he was running around with other women. Otis vehemently denied this, insisting he had been working night and day to support the family. But their differences proved insurmountable. Before long they were separated.
Alva and her children remained on Centre Street. Once every six weeks or so, a rock or bottle came through a window. Occasionally a late drinker on his way home from the Irish Rover or the Emerald Isle would stop outside the house to shout a slurred epithet or two. But, after a time, most of the neighbors learned to ignore the intruders in their midst.
26
McGoff
Watch out, dearie,” a male voice muttered. “I’ve got your number.” “Who’s this?” asked Lisa McGoff. “Never mind,” said the voice. “You just be careful.” Confused, Lisa hung up.
The next night the voice was back, warning: “You’re a little girl with a big mouth. If I were you, I’d keep it shut.” “Who is this?” Lisa cried. He hung up.
All that evening in March 1976 the McGoffs debated the mysterious phone calls. At the telephone company, Alice had dealt with her share of cranks, most of them obscene or abusive. But, neither dirty nor angry, Lisa’s caller delivered his warnings in a feathery whisper which lent them a special terror.
His admonitions seemed directed at Lisa’s role in the White Caucus. That spring of her junior year she had led repeated demonstrations downtown to protest conditions at Charlestown High. Her name appeared in the paper, her picture on TV; anyone could look up her number. At first Lisa suspected one of the blacks at school, but the caller sounded more like a white adult. The McGoffs couldn’t understand what he was up to.
Several nights later, he called with an explicit threat. “I’ve got your girlfriend,” he warned. “If you don’t stop talking, I’m going to kill her.”
Panicked, Lisa called all her best friends, who were safe and accounted for. The caller was apparently bluffing, but the McGoffs took no chances. The next morning, they reported the threat to Captain MacDonald at District 15, and on MacDonald’s advice, Lisa stopped answering the telephone. Her mother and brothers screened all calls, accepting only those from friends. Eventually the mystery caller abandoned his campaign. But for weeks to come Lisa dreaded retaliation. Afraid to walk to and from school alone, she begged her brothers and classmates to accompany her. Particularly fearful at night, she remained home evening after evening rather than risk assault from a dark alley.
Just as she began to regain her composure, the April 5 march on City Hall concluded with the attack on Ted Landsmark. Crouched by a wall at the edge of the plaza, Lisa watched the fists and feet flailing at the black lawyer, the American flag leveled at his chest. Sobbing with terror, she buried her head in her hands, trying to disappear.
It wasn’t so much the racial confrontation which horrified her—she suspected Landsmark of provoking the incident—as the fury of the assault. For weeks she relived the episode in her nightmares. Always the dream was the same: huddled by the wall, burrowing into a corner, she shrank from the menacing creatures which thrashed about her. Each time she woke clammy with sweat, shivering with apprehension.
That spring ended on a sour note. The Last White Class felt particularly close to a teacher named John Brennan, another former Dallas Cowboy drafted by Frank Power to keep order at the school. John was a Townie through and through. His marriage to a Connecticut girl had broken up in part because she didn’t like the Town and he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Lonely after she left him in 1975, he spent much of his time with the school’s embattled seniors, encouraging their resistance to busing. As class adviser, he was more of an older brother than a teacher. Billy McGoff and many of his classmates would go down to Big John’s house in the evenings and sit around for hours playing records.
John Brennan’s favorite song was “I’ll Always Love My Mama,” a disco number by a black group called the Intruders, about a black man’s love for his mama.
I’ll always love my mama
She’s my favorite girl
I’ll always love my mama
She born me in this world
Sometimes I feel so bad
When I think of all the things I used to do
My mama used to clean somebody else’s house
Just to buy me a new pair of shoes
I never understood how mama made it through the week
When she never ever got a good night’s sleep
Remember when we used to run around there
Steal the hubcaps off the cars
And take the batteries too
We was lucky we ain’t got busted, man
Hypnotized by its driving rhythm-and-blues beat, Billy and his friends couldn’t hear enough of the song. At the senior prom that spring, they made the band play it twelve straight times. When it came time for the seniors to choose a song to sing at graduation, there was no contest.
But to the Minority Students’ Council and some black parents, this was a blatant effort to slip racial innuendo into the graduation ceremony. To them, “I’ll Always Love My Mama”—with its focus on a black scrubwoman and her ne’er-do-well son—had clear racial overtones. Besides, James Howard, the black music teacher, had plans of his own—he’d been preparing his predominantly black Glee Club, of which Cassandra Twymon was a member, to sing at graduation, and the song he’d chosen was “We’ve Only Just Begun,” a ballad about young people starting off in life together.
We’ve only just begun
White lace and promises
A kiss for luck and we’re on our way
And yes we’ve just begun.
In May, the debate grew angrier. The blacks formally protested “I’ll Always Love My Mama.” The Last White Class didn’t want Howard’s black Glee Club singing at their graduation. Moreover, the whites contended that “We’ve Only Just Begun” was black propaganda, a way of saying, “We’ve only just begun to take over your school.”
Bob Murphy had to make the decision, and he chose to omit both “I’ll Always Love My Mama” and the Glee Club. James Howard at the piano would play—and the seniors would sing—“We’ve Only Just Begun.” But when The Last White Class gathered at Hynes Auditorium on June 2, Billy McGoff and his classmates stood silent all through the song. To Lisa it was, indeed, as if some alien force had taken over their school. After Billy’s graduation, she decided she didn’t want to return to Charlestown High in the fall.
It was a wrenching decision. All her young life she’d looked forward to being a senior there. To most young Townies, that was the Big Moment: for one brief year, before starting to earn a living or raise a family, they were Kings and Queens of the Hill, masters of all they surveyed. But for Lisa busing had changed all that. Her junior year had been one long succession of boycotts, walkouts, sit-ins, and demonstrations. To be sure, she had helped orchestrate some of that unrest, but she had had enough. She couldn’t take another year.
When Lisa told several teachers of her decision, they were distressed. A solid B student and born leader, she was a prime candidate for a college scholarship. She mustn’t sacrifice all that. Alice took a different tack. Lisa didn’t have to return to school if she didn’t want to—Alice would support whatever decision she made. But why decide right then? Perhaps she’d feel differently in the fall.
Through most of that Bicenten
nial summer, hanging out at the Harvard-Kent gym, playing basketball and volleyball with her friends, Lisa tried to put the high school and its problems out of her mind. Then in mid-August she spent a rare week away from Charlestown. Boston University sponsored an “adventure-challenge camp” in New Hampshire for underprivileged city youths. Modeled in part on the Outward Bound program, it was designed to teach young people about the natural environment, encourage them to take prudent risks, and help youths from different social backgrounds function as a team. In the group which arrived in the foothills of Mount Monadnock on August 8 were nine young Townies, Lisa among them.
Lodged in Robert Frost House—a large cabin flanked by huts named after Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau—the campers followed an exacting regimen. Rising at 6:45, they ran a half mile, did thirty minutes of calisthenics, took a plunge in Halfmoon Pond, then breakfasted on flapjacks and bacon before embarking on a rigorous schedule of organized recreation. At first, they concentrated on games intended to promote cooperation and interdependence: the “human knot,” a spider’s web of arms and legs which had to be untangled without anyone letting go, or the “trust fall,” in which each camper fell backward from a ladder into his colleagues’ arms. At midweek, they set off on a three-day bivouac: canoeing along Lake Spoonwood, climbing Mount Skatutakee, pitching two-man tents on the summit. By Friday they were ready for the climactic tests: a steep slide along a nylon cable into the icy waters of the Nubanusit River, and the “high traverse,” in which they climbed a sixty-foot rope ladder, then inched their way along cables suspended between two trees, while someone on the ground held a safety rope looped over a cable and attached to their waists.
Of the forty campers in Lisa’s group, seventeen were blacks from Roxbury and the South End. She came to know three of them—Tony, Nelson, and Herb—reasonably well. On the bivouac she shared a campfire with Nelson, who proved a skillful short-order cook. When she did the high traverse, it was Herb who held the safety line, assuring her against a fall.
When the week was over and the camp bus brought them back to the city, Lisa found the leave-taking more difficult than she’d expected. Those days in the mountains had been so intense, the feelings of mutual dependence so keen, that bidding goodbye to kids she barely knew, she was surprised to find her eyes brimming with tears.
In September, Lisa resolved to go back to Charlestown High. To leave now, she realized, would be the coward’s way out. Why should she let a bunch of black kids ruin what could be the best year of her life? She still didn’t care for most blacks—they were too loud, too raunchy, too alien. But her brief experiences with a few classmates the year before and those vivid moments in New Hampshire had dissipated the fear she once felt. No longer did she see most blacks as potential rapists or assailants; she could live with them if she had to.
But if she went back to school she was determined to have a traditional Townie senior year; Garrity and the black kids weren’t going to take that away from her. She was going to have a yearbook, a prom, a banquet, a formal graduation just like everyone else. And to make sure that things turned out as she planned, she would be senior class president.
The family often joked about a McGoff “dynasty” at the high school. Danny had been senior class president in 1974. The following year Billy narrowly lost his race, settling for Student Council vice-president. Both Alice and her sister Donnie had been class treasurers, while Uncle Steve Texeira had been president. Lisa was determined to follow in that succession.
She faced a formidable opponent: Eddie Irvin, the “shop mug” convicted of kicking Ted Landsmark on City Hall Plaza that spring. A lively wisecracker and practical joker, Eddie had long been a popular figure in the electrical shop. His role in the Landsmark affair, far from discrediting him with most of his classmates, had only fortified his reputation. For weeks he’d been in the papers and on TV, making him the closest thing the school had to a genuine celebrity. Class vice-president the year before and still supported by a solid bloc of shop votes, Eddie was the odds-on favorite to move up to president.
Some teachers and administrators found that prospect dismaying, fearing it would be viewed as fresh evidence of Charlestown’s racism; despite Lisa’s aggressive leadership of the White Caucus, she struck them as the lesser of two evils. One teacher was so determined to block Eddie Irvin’s path that he borrowed a time-honored technique from Boston’s electoral wars, persuading a third candidate to enter the lists. Since football captain Jim “Chippa” Godding also came from the electrical shop, his candidacy was calculated to split Eddie’s natural constituency.
Lisa didn’t see the race as an ideological contest. She liked Eddie and stood by him after his arrest. But while she hadn’t sought to profit from his conviction, she was prepared to accept any support the issue might bring her. Campaigning that fall with fierce resolution, she plastered the school walls and bulletin boards with brightly lettered posters proclaiming: “Don’t Goof Off—Vote McGoff!” And while Eddie ran alone, Lisa put together a slate of popular girls: Carolyn Wrenn for vice-president, Kelly Gamby for treasurer, and Joan Smith for secretary.
When the votes were tallied on September 27, Eddie Irvin had built up a heavy margin in the electrical shop, but Chippa Godding drew off just enough of the shop mugs for Lisa to squeak through by twelve votes, carrying her running mates with her. At dinner that night, the McGoffs hailed the latest member of the dynasty.
In the following weeks Lisa took on a number of other functions: secretary of the Student Council, editor in chief of the yearbook, staff editor of Chip, the student paper, and seats on the Senior Activities, Senior Banquet, and Prom committees. With a hand in virtually every class activity, she was now in a position to work toward the traditional Townie year she craved. Her classmates were weary and perplexed, eager for someone to show them the way; underclassmen traditionally followed the seniors’ lead. If she played her cards right and carried her supporters with her, she might help restore some semblance of the good old days at Charlestown High.
But there were other influences at work. Determined to keep busing at the forefront of Townies’ attention, Powder Keg went on agitating. Alice McGoff attended every rally and demonstration she could, and when school opened in September, Alice and other Charlestown mothers resumed their prayer marches up the hill. On October 4, Powder Keg called a major boycott at the high school, urging all students to walk out in protest against “the second year of judicial tyranny on Bunker Hill.”
For the first time in many months, Lisa failed to join a boycott. The night before, she told her mother, “I just can’t do it, Ma. I’m class president now. I have to set an example.” For both mother and daughter it was a difficult situation—others would surely notice that Lisa had failed to follow her own mother’s lead. But except for refusing to put her kids on a bus, Alice had never insisted that her children fall in line behind her. If they were old enough to go to high school, they were old enough to make their own decisions. “Don’t worry about it, Lisa,” she said that night. “I’ll do my thing, you do yours.”
In part, Lisa’s new attitude reflected urgings from the new senior class adviser. The class of ’76 had drawn much of its militancy from its adviser, John Brennan. So great was Brennan’s influence on The Last White Class that Headmaster Bob Murphy suspected him of fomenting many of Charlestown High’s troubles and allowed his contract to lapse.
Lisa and her classmates turned instead to an exuberant math teacher named Pat Greatorex. In a town known for vivid personalities, Pat was an original—a squat fireplug who played ferocious linebacker for the Townie team, a wild man off the field as well as on. Once he had a few drinks in him, he would swallow everything in sight—a handful of change, a lighted candle, a dozen roses—earning himself the title of “Geek,” a carnival performer who bites the heads off live chickens. He was equally renowned for other antics. Once, after the Townies had beaten a team called Billy’s Cowboys, Pat showed up at the 520 Club dressed only
in red bikini underwear, boots, a ten-gallon hat, and a belt of six-shooters, winning him his second moniker, “the Rhinestone Cowboy.” His special blend of muscular virility and raffish derangement made him a legendary figure in the Town.
When Lisa asked him that fall to be senior class adviser, Pat said, “I’d like to help you guys, but I’m not interested in all that sit-in and walkout garbage. If that’s what you’re into, count me out.” Lisa assured him she was tired of it too, that all she wanted was an old-fashioned senior year. “Okay,” said Pat. “I’m your man.”
Not everyone appreciated Pat’s approach. He got more than a few anonymous phone calls warning him to stop playing Garrity’s game. And up at the barbershop his friends told him that Bobby Davidson of the Defense Fund had been going around town saying that Greatorex was a “nigger lover.” A few days later, outside the high school, Pat braced Bobby against the fence and told him that if he mentioned his name once more he’d punch him in the nose.
One obstacle to the kind of year both Pat and Lisa wanted was money. The prom, the senior banquet, the class trip were all expensive, so Pat and Lisa devised a scheme to raise the necessary funds. Pat bought candy wholesale; Lisa organized a cadre of senior girls to sell it during lunch hour. They called their plan Project Zit, after the pimple which often accompanies a sweet tooth; they posted signs in the corridors reading: “Fat is beautiful. Eat more candy.” The school’s hunger for sweets was insatiable. The class raised $4,000, earning Pat Greatorex still another nickname, “the Candy Man.”
Greatorex enlisted several colleagues to help him minister to the class of ’77. One was Dick Glennon, a civil service instructor, who served as adviser to the yearbook staff. Since Lisa was yearbook editor, she and Glennon worked closely together, and that was fine with her, because she had a powerful crush on him. The principal romantic interest in Lisa’s life remained Chuckie Hayes, a Townie hockey star who played for Don Bosco High. He was everything she’d always wanted: blond, blue-eyed, a superb athlete. They had dated all through high school, and the summer before her senior year he gave her a friendship ring, which Lisa assumed was the first step toward their engagement. But that didn’t stop her from mooning over Dick Glennon.
Common Ground Page 86