by David Klass
I saw Carla walk in with her parents and sit down near the front. Her mom carried a pad and looked serious and professional, as if she had come to argue a case. Her dad wore a suit, and I saw him shake hands with a few friends from the hospital. Carla looked tense and kept to herself. Except for a quick hello to Sophie, she didn’t talk to anyone. She just sat down with her parents on either side of her and waited.
I had very mixed feelings. She shouldn’t have taped Bamburger and created this mess and dumped on Kendall football the week before our biggest game. On the other hand, I’ve sat where she was sitting—in the eye of the storm of an angry Kendall board meeting—and I remember it well. You can sit there quietly and listen to people spew, or you can rise and try to defend yourself. Either way, it’s rough sledding.
The president of the board, Mr. Carson, gaveled the meeting to order. He’s a retired banker who never seems to be without a coat and tie. The superintendent of schools, Dr. Sparks, was sitting next to him. Dr. Sparks had just been hired in September, so this was his first community blowup and he looked a little nervous. I saw Principal Bamburger take a seat at the front table, and he also didn’t look particularly happy.
The board conducted their regular business first. They approved the minutes of the last meeting and did minor budget stuff and agreed to hire a contractor to fix some problem with the heating system in the elementary school basement. Each time a board member would state a motion, there would be a little discussion, and then it would be called to a vote and passed, and they would move on. The truth was that no one in the cavernous gym could care less. That wasn’t the show they had come to see.
After about thirty minutes they had finished their business and Mr. Carson stood to address the crowd. “Good evening,” he said. “We’ll now move to the public forum part of the meeting, where you get to speak up about what’s happening in our schools. I know many of you have strong feelings, and you’re welcome to present your opinions, but please follow our ground rules. Let’s be civil to each other and not mention any student by name. Who’d like to speak first?”
Several hands shot up, and he called on a woman near the front. She stood, and they brought her a portable microphone. I thought I recognized her, but I wasn’t sure from where. “My name is Mary Thomas, and I’ve lived in Kendall all my life, and I confess I’m not a big football fan,” she began.
“That’s okay, Mary, we like you anyway,” somebody called out, and there was laughter.
“I work at the library,” she went on, “and I love reading and writing. There’s a lovely young woman who comes to the library often to study, and she’s one of the best readers and writers we’ve ever had. Maybe she overstepped and some mistakes were made on both sides, but we don’t want to lose a student like that or tarnish her future. So I’d like to urge that the board use restraint and remember that young people make mistakes.”
There was polite applause, but the librarian didn’t sit down. Instead, she pushed her glasses a little higher on her nose and said: “I was also quite bothered by some comments of the principal that I heard on the news. He appears to be pressuring the football coach to win at all costs, and he also says some pretty negative things about his students. And I was wondering if he could explain what he meant by ‘pushing the envelope’ and ‘no guts, no glory.’”
She sat down, and there was a silence. Bamburger made no move to answer her—he didn’t flinch or even blink. He just sat there as if he hadn’t even heard her.
“This is a public forum where you can express your opinions,” Mr. Carson told us, “but it’s not a time when we question our school officials. Yes, in the front.”
A big man stood up. He was a former Kendall football player and a loyal Tiger booster, and he had a barrel chest and such a loud voice that he waved away the mic. “HEY THERE,” he boomed. “First off, let me tip my hat to Coach Shea and the Tigers. We’re so proud of you guys!”
There was scattered applause that knitted together second by second, till everybody in the gym seemed to be clapping. The ovation must have gone on for two minutes. All of us seniors stood shoulder to shoulder and let the applause cascade around us. “Hell,” Danny whispered to me, “it’s better than a pep rally.”
“It is a pep rally,” I told him.
When the ovation died down, the big man spoke again. “It’s a damn shame that mud is being kicked on our program by one of our own students. Especially this week, when we should all be pulling together. But some people are so rich and selfish they feel they can do anything and get away with it. Now, I also heard what’s on that tape, and the principal didn’t say anything wrong. It wasn’t about winning at all costs, it was just about winning. Maybe some of his words weren’t PC, but it was a private conversation. Taping somebody is against school rules, and taping your own principal is just plain shameful. To hell with restraint. We don’t need that student at Kendall.”
He sat amid loud clapping and shouts of “You say it, Frank.” I glanced at Carla. She squared her shoulders and looked right back at the man who had just spoken.
“Let’s keep things civil,” Mr. Carson reminded us. Before he could call on the next speaker, someone near the front shouted out: “So are you going to expel her or not?”
“We’re not going to get into specific disciplinary actions,” Mr. Carson answered. “And please do not speak if you haven’t been recognized.” He wiped his forehead with a white hankie. I had a sense that he didn’t like where this meeting was going. He was trying his best to keep a lid on it, but it was like a flood tide, and any second it could bust through the barricades. “Yes, Jim,” he said.
Jim Porter, a lawyer and former mayor of Kendall, stood. “Hey, all,” he said with a smile. “I’d just like to clarify what Frank brought up about taping a private conversation and posting it. It’s not only despicable but it’s also illegal. It’s akin to trespassing.”
“What about freedom of the press?” someone called out.
“Doesn’t apply,” Jim explained. “If she’d turned it over to a newspaper or TV station, a case could be made. But since she posted it herself on the Internet, there’s no freedom of the press issue here. You have a student who violated both a school rule and a law of the land.”
“Please don’t call out questions, or discuss specific students, or I will end this meeting,” Mr. Carson warned, and then he saw something and he kind of swallowed his words. Carla was standing. Her mother was trying to tug her back down, but she waved her hand, and someone passed her a mic. Mr. Carson told her, “You don’t have to speak.”
“I think I do,” she replied, in a soft but clear voice. And then she spoke to us all: “Good evening, everybody. My name is Carla Jenson. I’m profoundly sorry to have caused so much trouble. Principal Bamburger, let me apologize for taping your words. I shouldn’t have done that. I was scared and angry.” Bamburger glared back at her from the front table but didn’t say anything.
Carla went on in a louder voice. “Nobody wants our team to win this Friday more than I do. If you’ve read my articles, you know how much I care about our Tigers. But I felt there was another football story here that needed to be told. A story about a player who may not be ready to go back on the field, and a team that needs him to win, and a principal who is applying pressure. I understand what football means to all of us here in Kendall, but there are some things that are more important. That’s why I did what I did, and if you want to kick me out of your school, in the end you’ll be kicking me out for telling the truth. And we’ll all have to live with that.”
Carla sat down, and there was a moment of silence, as if the crowd was trying to figure out whether her brave words were admirable or haughty. A few people clapped for her, but there were louder jeers.
“This is the last time I’ll remind you to remain civil,” Mr. Carson sternly admonished the audience, but of course he couldn’t control it. Carla had just put Kendall Football itself on trial. That’s, I think, why so many people had co
me—they sensed that this might happen. And that’s why Coach Shea had told us all to show up. For better or for worse, after she spoke the focus shifted from the rights and wrongs of taping the principal and the coach to our program at Kendall and the dangers of high school football.
An old lady asked whether the football player in question had been examined by a doctor.
Mr. Rosewood rose with dignity to explain that Danny had been cleared by his doctor to play before the Jamesville game, but they had rested him an extra week to be supersafe. “Now he’s ready and raring to go,” Mr. Rosewood said. “I love my son and I would never do anything to endanger him. And the last thing we need is to create a big issue and divide this town at just the wrong moment.”
That drew sustained applause, and Danny, sitting next to me, nodded and shot his father a thumbs-up.
Several men in the audience who had played for Kendall related their colorful war stories of having been knocked out or injured on the field and returning to play with no bad effects. “It’s part of football,” they seemed to be repeating in different words. “You get your bell rung, you wait till the docs say go, and then you go back out and tear up the turf again. No guts, no glory is right. This has been going on for years and it’s part of football.”
A short young man with thick glasses stood up. “The problem with that,” he said, “is when a player’s had a concussion, no one in the world can be sure exactly when it’s safe—if ever—for him to return to the field.”
“What are you, a doctor?” somebody heckled.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said. “A neurologist at Kendall Hospital. I study brains. One of my jobs is to help decide when athletes who have suffered concussions should return to play. There are tests that we give, and there are prescribed formats that we follow, but the truth is that no MRI or CT scan, and no recovery-from-symptom checklist, can be perfectly accurate predictors of exactly when and how safe it is. We just don’t know. We can’t know. But what we do know…”
Someone called out, “Sit down.”
“What we do know,” the doctor continued, and he didn’t seem intimidated, “is that there’s groundbreaking work going on at the Boston University School of Medicine. They’ve taken the brains from dozens and dozens of professional athletes after death—and some amateurs—including one eighteen-year-old. They’re not just testing football players’ brains but hockey players’, too. And what they’re finding is incontrovertible evidence of extensive damage, throughout the brain, starting at a young age.”
He sat down, and it was as if someone had cast a pall over the gym. Mr. Carson glanced at his watch. “We only have ten more minutes. Tom?”
Coach Shea stood up. “I’ve been the coach here for thirty years, and I’d like to thank you for your support. We run a clean program and we’ve worked hard this season and put ourselves in a place to win it all on Friday.”
There was another ovation, as if by clapping for Coach people could wipe away what the neurologist had just said. “I may be a football coach, but I’m not a dummy,” Coach went on. “I know that what they’re finding out medically is very important. I care about my players like they were my own sons. That’s why I rested Jerry earlier in this season, and that’s why I rested Danny last week.”
Coach Shea stood tall and looked proud, facing the community that had trusted him with their sons for decades. “But I know of no better vehicle for teaching life lessons and building character than high school football. When we win the championship on Friday, we’re going to win something much more valuable for our town than just a trophy for the case. We’re going to show eight hundred kids that they can be the best, that hard work can pay off, and that even a town like Kendall, with all its problems, can rise to the top. And that’s important, too.”
There was the loudest ovation of the night. All of us seniors were standing up side by side and clapping and hooting and hollering.
“Of course football is dangerous,” Coach Shea admitted when the clapping finally died down, looking right at the young neurologist. “Always has been, always will be. We’re doing everything we can to make it less so. Better helmets. Different rules. And we’re trying to listen to you docs. In soccer, heavy balls hit heads. Are we gonna outlaw soccer? In wrestling, people get tossed to the mat. In diving, you slam down into the water. All of these sports have risks, but they offer great rewards. Are we gonna tell our kids to sit home and study all the time and when they want to blow off steam to play tiddledywinks?”
People laughed. The neurologist didn’t answer, but it was kind of easy to imagine him playing tiddledywinks.
Principal Bamburger walked out next to Coach Shea, put his arm around the old coach, and finished for him. “No, Tom,” the principal said, “we’re not going to settle for tiddledywinks. We’re going to go on doing what we love to do at my school. At our school. Carefully. Safely. Never pressuring a student or a coach and following the advice of doctors, but also listening to our student athletes and their families. We’re a proud football town, and we don’t need to be told what to do or to have people break laws and accuse us of all kinds of bad things for publicity at just the wrong time.” He glanced up at Carla. “Rules have been broken and examples must be set, so that I can run my school.”
Carla’s mother popped up to her feet. “I’d like to respond to that,” she said. She was a small woman, but somehow her voice seemed as loud as the barrel-chested guy’s.
“I won’t allow a give-and-take,” Mr. Carson said.
“My family’s been taking, and I have a right to respond,” Mrs. Jenson asserted. Then she did a very smart and brave thing. She walked down the bleachers to the front, so that she was standing next to Mr. Carson and sharing his mic, looking right at Principal Bamburger.
“My name is Victoria Jenson, and I’m the mother of the student who’s been pilloried tonight,” she said. “As you have already heard, she’s fully capable of speaking for herself. But I’m also a lawyer. As a mother, I’d like to apologize if my daughter—in her youthful enthusiasm—went too far. She’s very passionate about journalism. But she shouldn’t have taped a conversation and she’s sincerely sorry.”
I glanced at Carla. Her eyes were riveted to her mom, and she gave her a slight nod.
“I think many of us want the same thing here: to put this behind us and move forward in a positive way,” Mrs. Jenson continued. “On the other hand”—she looked at the superintendent of schools—“I am a lawyer, and since we’re publicly discussing legalities now, I want to state publicly that if a decision is made to expel my daughter, the response will be swift.”
Mrs. Jenson’s gaze swung to Bamburger. I know I’m not allowed to say that her eyes flashed, but there were hidden flames that I think might have scorched the principal’s striped tie. “Bullying and threats precipitated my daughter’s error in judgment, her rights were violated, unsubstantiated and possibly slanderous comments about her may have been communicated to colleges, and the specifics of her case and her disciplinary status have now been discussed at a public board meeting. In my opinion, those matters are actionable and could have serious repercussions for those responsible.”
Principal Bamburger stood up to face her, and his face was red. “Are you threatening me?”
She looked back at him and seemed to take his measure. “Unlike you, sir, I don’t make threats, I don’t yell, and I don’t try to intimidate. But my respectful advice to the board, both as a mother and a lawyer, is to take a step back, and let’s see if we can’t find another road to walk down. Thank you.” She walked back up the bleachers and sat down next to her husband and Carla. Mr. Jenson took his wife’s hand, and then Carla took her other hand, and they sat together as a family, linked by tight grips.
Mr. Carson seemed inclined to say a few closing words and end the public forum, but at that moment a stranger, who had gotten hold of one of the portable microphones, unexpectedly took over. He looked to be in his forties, a tall man with an
easygoing manner, wearing boots and jeans and a flannel shirt. Even though none of us had ever seen him before, he fit in well in the gym; he looked like another one of the concerned parents who worked hard and cared about their kids.
He walked to the front of the gym, where Mrs. Jenson had just stood, waved a friendly hand in a sweeping gesture, and said in a soft, polite voice: “Good evening to you all. My name is Gene Edmonds, and I’m not from around here. I drove here from Connecticut…”
“Then I’m afraid you can’t speak at our town forum…” Mr. Carson said, but the man wasn’t giving up his mic.
“Oh, I’ll be brief,” he promised. “But I do have something important to contribute. You see, I’m the president of a group called Dads Against Tackle Football. We now have more than three hundred members nationwide, and we’re growing quickly.”
“Turn his mic off,” someone called out.
“Why?” he asked. “Are you afraid of what I might say? You don’t have to be afraid. I’m not a doctor. I own a store in a small town, and I teach Sunday school, and I’m also a parent. My son Tad was paralyzed in a high school game and will never walk again. We do have many scientists in our group who could echo what the doctor in your audience was trying to tell you. Those doctors in Boston he was talking about—they have actual brain samples. They’ve done the hard science, right down to the cellular level. It’s not just a theory. It’s been proven.”
Again people tried to heckle him, and again he pressed on. “Many years ago, it wasn’t known for certain that smoking cigarettes was bad for your health, and it was kind of cool to do,” he said. “But then evidence started to come in that smoking caused lung cancer. And schools did their part and educated young people not to smoke.”
His eyes swept the big gym from floor to rafter. “I know this town,” he said. “I’ve never been here before, but I’ve been to towns just like it in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Texas. I do a lot of driving. I know how seriously you take your football here. It’s the quintessential American sport. Well, I have bad news for you. Football is dead. Especially for kids. No more Pop Warner. No more high school football.”