It was the beginning of school, fall 1979. There was a teacher strike, and it was my senior year. We sat in the grass in front of school playing guitar singing songs and supporting our teachers. Alaska was after all the richest state in the union and probably could afford to break off a piece and throw a couple extra bucks to the people who were responsible for shaping our lives and the states future. As we sat carelessly in the warm fall sun I had no way of knowing there was a storm on the horizon. It was going to swallow me whole and spit me out and permanently change the course of my life, it was called Vice-Principal Luce, and this first semester of my senior year would be my last semester at Dimond High.
We already had one run-in with Vice-Principal Luce. Due to some family issues, I had spent the summer living with my ex-stepfather at his home in College Gate. When I enrolled at Dimond High as a returning student, Vice-Principal Luce felt that College Gate was in the East High school district and I needed to go East High School. My dad argued that this was just a temporary arrangement and that I would be back at my mom’s home and would be attending Dimond High my senior year. He felt there was no reason for me to transfer to East High for only a month or so and then have to transfer back to Dimond High. I had my own car, so transportation was not going to be an issue. The school administrators over Vice-Principal Luce agreed with my dad.
This was strike one!
At Dimond High we had Principal, Mr. Savage. He was as far as I’m concerned, the coolest Principal any school ever had. Mr. Savage love music and drove a Mustang Mach 2. The relationship that I had with Mr. Savage could best be described as the relationship Juan Epstein had with Principal Lazarus at his school in the sitcom “Welcome Back Kotter.” Anytime I would wind up principal’s office Mr. Savage and I usually wound up talking about music and then he would send me back to class with the casual warning “behave yourself.”
Vice-Principal Luce and I however had a relationship that would be best described as the Vice-Principal Murney in the Vin Diesel movie “The Pacifier.” Vice-Principal Luce seemed to be a man who felt that his authority should not be questioned and to do so would probably lead, in his mind, to anarchy and a complete breakdown of the system. I had already questioned his authority and won. It was simply a matter of time until we clashed again.
About halfway through the semester good friend of mine, Greg Ebbert (Yes that Greg Ebbert), and I decided to skip PE. This was the class we had right before lunch, and go to A&W and have ourselves a two hour lunch? As we started to leave from the boy’s locker room we noticed our PE teacher Ms. Swatich was sitting on the bench out in the breeze area in front of the gymnasium. There was going to be no way for us to get past her without her seeing us. If she saw us we couldn’t skip class. Then Greg says let’s go back into the boys locker room and go out the side door that leads through the swimming pool area. We will go out that way. I thought this was a great idea.
As we were walking through the pool area, the swim class was in the bleachers. As we were walking by several people called out of the class “Hey Byers!!” and “Hey Ebbert” we just laugh it off and pretended like we were celebrities walking the red carpet at the Academy Awards and waved. When we got to the area right in front of the office the coach who was responsible for that particular swim class at that particular time intercepted us. I’m going to refer to this coach as “Coach R” he was a short man with a bad attitude. He proceeded to chew us out for interrupting his class. I pointed out to him that class hadn’t technically started yet and that either way I apologized and told him it would never happen again. I thought that was the end of it. As we turned and started to walk away he told us to stop and go back the way we came. If we had gone back the way we came we are going to have to go to class so that wasn’t an option. So I just said “No, I don’t think so” and kept walking towards the door. “Coach R” reached out and grabbed me by the sleeve of my coat. What he said next shocked me. He pulled me towards him so his face was right up close to mine and said “Look… faggot go back the way you came!” In one fluid motion I spun my arm around on top of his and yank down toward causing him to lose his grip on me. Then I gave him the finger and said very loudly “F**K YOU!” I then turned and walked away out the main door of the swing pool area. I went out to the parking lot got in my car and drove to A&W for lunch.
After lunch we headed back to Dimond. I parked in my regular parking spot and walked into the school. I was greeted by a member of the security staff. We all remember Shaft… tall black guy that always wore sunglasses inside the building and never really said a lot but he could stand in the hallway and look real cool. He told me to come with him. He then got on his walkie-talkie and informed someone on the other end that he had found me. A woman’s voice answered back and said vice principal Luce is waiting for me in his office. I knew the rest of the day was going to suck.
Shaft took me to the office and made me sit on a chair outside vice principal Luce’s office. After about 10 minutes “Coach R” came into the office area and went into Mr. Luce’s office. In about two minutes Mr. Lewis called for me to come into the office. When I came in I was told to shut the door and sit down.
Vice-Principal Luce stared at me for about a minute and then said “Coach R” has brought to his attention that you disrupted his class this morning and when he spoke to you about it you became very belligerent and told him to F*** Off and made a threatening gesture towards him. Is this true?” I told my side of the story as I saw it… yes we had walked through his class but the bell had not rung. So class had not started yet, when “Coach R” confronted me about interrupting his class. My first response was to apologize at which point “Coach R” actions, I felt were intended to humiliate us in front of his class. When I refused to do so he grabbed me and called me a faggot. Vice principal Luce looked at “Coach R” when I was finished and asked if this was true. “Coach R” denied that he ever used that word with me. My response was “so now you’re going to sit there and lie about it?” Vice-Principal Luce then looked at me told me this was not over and I was to return to class.
About five minutes into my last hour class there was a knock on the door. It was Queen B another of the schools security personnel she told Ms. Ditter that I was wanted at the office and that I should come with her. As he started down the hall she told someone on the other end of her walkie-talkie that she had me and that we were on her way. I woman’s voice came back and said that she was to take me to the cafeteria.
When we entered the cafeteria it was empty except for one person it wasn’t vice principal Luce. It was Principal Savage. He told Queen B that she could leave and that he wanted to speak to me alone. After she had left Mr. Savage told me he was disappointed in me. He understood how I was upset about what “Coach R” had said to me but he couldn’t overlook the fact that had I not been skipping class the situation would not have presented itself. He said he had talked to several students that had been in that class and that they confirmed that class had not started and that everything had been low keyed until “Coach R” grabbed my arm and said something to me at that point whatever it was he said seem to had upset me greatly.
No one in the class that Mr. Savage talked to had heard what “Coach R” had said, but it had clearly changed the tone of the confrontation. Mr. Savage told me I had to, by the end of the day, make amends with “Coach R” and to bring this situation to its conclusion. I asked him what he felt I should do. Mr. Savage told me to go to him and apologize. My response was… “a person calls me that to my face and then I have to apologize to him?” Mr. Savage said “Mike I can’t have my student body declare war on my teaching staff… And that’s what you did. If you apologize this end here today.” I assured him I would.
At the gym I asked where I could find “Coach R”. His last Class was sitting in the same bleachers and he was giving them some kind of talking to. When I walked through the door he stood there looking at me with something between distain and disgust. I walked over to him and told him there was something I needed to say to him and maybe we should walk over towards the office. His response was “No! What you said this morning, you said in front of my whole class so anything you have to say now you can say in front of my whole class.” All I could think is… my God this man is such a pompous ass and I am going to let him have it.
So I let him have it. I told him, I was here to apologize for what I had said. I told him I still felt the same way but as a student I was wrong to express it. I told him that in doing so I had lowered myself to a level that he was very familiar with and I assured him that the only reason why I was there and apologizing was because he had the ability to have me expelled from school and that’s what happens when you give power to a little man. I then lead forward and whispered very softly to him that only the two of us could hear it that if he ever called me anything like that again to my face I would kick his ass. I then smiled broadly so everyone could see, turned and went back to class.
The funny thing is that after school that day I had diving practice. Some of the kids in “Coach R” last class were also on the swim team. They came up to me and said “dude what did you say to “Coach R”? I told them “that that was between him and me.” They said what ever was it really pissed him off because they spent almost the entire class just swimming laps and he was angry for the rest the class.
When I think back on all those years and it’s been 35 years and if “Coach R” was, let’s say 35 years old he’s probably pushing and 75 years old now. In the back of my mind I have this image of him in some geriatric ward of some nameless hospital in the Midwest lying in a pool of his own urine while being ignored by his own children and grandchildren. I don’t need anyone telling me that I need to let that go and I shouldn’t harbor ill feelings in my heart. But I am an Alaskan who doesn’t hunt therefore I have plenty of karma to spare.
With Vice-Principal Luce this was Strike Two.
The rest of the semester seemed to progress uneventful until right before Christmas break. Me and some friends got this idea and pulled a shenanigan that was to have huge repercussions. I’m not going to go into what the shenanigan was because many of the people involved are on this site and are still friends of mine and as for the target of our ill thought out prank after all these years I want to extend my ongoing apologies. At the time it didn’t seem that bad. But many times people over react, police are called when no police are needed. I found myself in Vice-Principal Luce’s office again
(Strike Three).
This time Vice-Principal Luce made me an offer that I could not refuse. It was pointed out to me that I had enough credit hours to graduate. If I went ahead and graduated the topic would be dropped. If I decided I wanted to remain in school he would start procedures to expel me and all my friends who were involved. That would mean five other people would be at risk of being expelled. So I went ahead and agreed to graduate. I got my diploma and when on Christmas break. Everything was fine until all my friends went back to school.
After my friends all went back to school, my dad approached me and asked me what my plans were. I said I really didn’t want a job, and the truth was I was just a little scared to go to college. So I told him I wanted to go to Europe. He informed me that I was not going to sit around the house and he was not going to pay for me to go Europe. Then he said “what you need to do is go into the Army. Think about it, you can go Europe for more than just a couple of weeks and you have a job when you get there.” All I could think was… what a great idea. Not realizing that my dad had just played me like a 5 pound trout caught on a 3 pound test line.
So the next day I went down join the Army. 17 is the perfect age to join the Army or any military branch. You’re in the best physical condition of your life and you’re used to people telling you what to do. So I was off the basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. After that AIT (Advanced Individualized Training) Fort Gordon, Georgia. Then in August I touched down in Frankfurt, Germany. It had been a long road but it was worth it. I was assigned to my first duty station and immediately sent to the field. The first three months in Germany I lived in a tent. I met Colin Powell. He was a General and used our site as his field headquarters. He was a two star general at the time and was simply my commanding officer. I met Gen Powell three times. People ask me what it was like to meet him. He was a General and I was a PFC and I did my best to blend in to the wall of our Ops tent.
After we came in from the field, we had a person who came in to rotate back to the United States. He had been on an EDCN site (early deployment communication network). I had performed so well in that prior field exercise, I had been chosen to replace him and was sent once again to the field where I would spend the next two years living in a tent. As bad as that sounds it was actually the best duty I ever had in the Army. No sergeants, no officers, no saluting, no formations, no inspections, no G.I. parties, just get up every day and do your job and when you’re off you are off.
One day the support vehicle that brought us our supplies every two weeks which included C rations, mail, and replacement parts for our radios showed up with a new guy. The new guy was a sergeant and immediately told me that he heard all about me and that I was somebody who could drink just about anybody under the table and he was looking forward to taking that challenge that evening. Now all I could think is that someone back in our headquarters was messing with me by way of the sergeant. The reason for this is that I do not drink and never have. I am the easiest person to drink under the table. Or maybe I should say I am the hardest person to drink under the table because I’m not going to play that game. But he kept on pushing the issue until I told him okay he was on, but only under my rules. He agreed I told him that we would go to the Gasthaus in the little village and have dinner and there we would drink schnapps and we will see who is the last person standing.
So that night after my duty was over and shift change had been made. Everyone went down to the Gasthaus, so there was about eight of us. We referred to this Gasthaus as “Gasthaus Ingrid” and the reason why is because the owner of the Gasthaus had a very pretty daughter same age as me whose name was Ingrid. Ingrid was pretty much the first German girl I ever got to know, she was really nice and really sweet. When we came in she came to our table. Being Americans that far out in the countryside we always traveled with a certain air of celebrity to us. The Gasthaus was full and everyone heard what I said next. I told Ingrid that “we’re going to have a drinking contest. That this man, as I pointed to the sergeant, believes he can drink me under the table and I was here to prove him wrong and that we were going to drink schnapps, and what I wanted her to do was to bring everyone at the table a shot of water except for the sergeant. He was to get a shot of schnapps each time.” I told her this in German. So every time around was brought out we all got water and he got schnapps and all the Germans were in on it and they would gather around our table when Ingrid brought a tray of drinks out. And they would all sing at the top of their lungs “Ziga Zaga, Ziga Zaga, oi oi oi!” Then we would all down our shots of water while the sergeant drank his schnapps.
I won the drinking contest or to better put it the sergeant lost. After dinner we put him in his Jeep with his driver and sent him back to headquarters. I never saw the sergeant again he had been such an embarrassment that they transferred him to another unit. I jokingly said after that you don’t want to go talking smack to someone who…
1. Smarter than you
and
2. Speaks the language.
In hindsight I know that we were actually lucky he didn’t die on the way back. It was about a two-hour drive and we ran a very good possibility that when they got back to our unit and they try to get him out of the Jeep. He could’ve been dead from alcohol poisoning. But I was only 18 at the time and that thought had never entered my mind.
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