Jacksonville Reflections - grammar school (#0310)

Hendricks Avenue Elementary school...unfortunately most of my memories of it are negative, though that’s of my experiences, not of the school itself.

The school was a mix of post-war white kids – wealthier one’s who lived in the nicer developments along the river and west of Hendricks Ave (above in the picture on the previous photo), and a mix of poor and middle class kids who lived east of Hendricks. Even though there was a sizable cluster of black kids living in a cluster among the white kids that went to the school, they were bused to a black school that was further away – something my parents wouldn’t explain when I asked them why that was the case.

In our own school culture, the kids from the wealthier neighborhoods managed to keep themselves separate from the rest of us. Bullying, ‘you want to fight’, and other put-downs used to create social division were everyday occurrences among the poorer kids (but probably also among the richer kids). Since I was short for my age, sickly, and had poor athletic abilities (bad hand/eye coordination), every moment of free or play time was a period I feared – and the teachers were typically of little help. Like many a boy that would eventually discover he was gay, I sought escape from those hazardous normal activities by being in school plays and music groups, and volunteering in the library.

The greatest exception at Hendricks was my third grade teacher. I was sick with coughing and sore throats often as a child, which I now suspect was a mild form of asthma but they didn’t diagnose that in those days – instead, the family doctor kept giving me penicillin, the new wonder drug. In the third grade I became quite ill from what I was many years later told was probably an overdose of penicillin. Due to that, I had special dietary needs and was often not able to regularly engage in normal activities for much of that grade. The principal talked to my parents about dropping me back a grade, but my third grade teacher and my parents felt it was best for me to keep progressing – she was heroic in making special accommodations for my getting through that year.

(One of a series of photo-essay postings on personal history and race with keyword FlaAla0518)