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Gary Salvner
Hello, AHHS classmates, I’ve not joined this chat before, but the recent comments about Vietnam and our personal and national struggles during that difficult time have tempted me to toss in a greeting to you all. Fresh out of undergraduate school, I faced (as many of us did) the prospect of being drafted into the war (with a low lottery number and relatively healthy body). I found an alternative as I joined the Teacher Corps to work for two years in all-black schools in St. Louis, MO. With the deepest respect to those who sacrificed in that “real” war of our times, I wasn’t subjected to possible death daily, but segregated St. Louis was a different kind of war zone then, and I worked with kids beaten down by economic, cultural, and racial limits placed upon them. I have utmost respect for those who went to ‘Nam, and I honor the memory of those we lost and those who survived. (Previously a few have mentioned Ed Schell, our classmate who died there. Ed sat behind me in home room for three years, and I never knew a more gregariously cheerful person than Ed. His loss in that war was a loss for us all.) But as several of you have mentioned, there were other ways to serve, and I did my best to find one.
I went on to teach in the Detroit area for several more years, and then, suddenly when the war ended, I surprised my faithful wife (and even myself) and abandoned my long-held plans to enter law school, and instead I enrolled in the University of Michigan PhD program in English Education, after which I took a job at Youngstown State University in Ohio, where I worked with first generation college students for almost 40 years. (Another aside: Youngstown was so much like our hometown, a working class, hardscrabble place of economic decay and resilient hopes. I used to smile when I looked at the federal unemployment rates in the 80s and saw Youngstown and Saginaw trading places for last place on that list.)
I’m now retired in North Carolina and still head up to Youngstown regularly to work on a project I helped to start 40 years ago to encourage reading and writing among young people. We’ve served over 100,000 kids so far and are still going strong.
Back to the Vietnam discussion. If any of you are looking for a means to discuss war and remembering those lost with young people, let me recommend Gary Paulsen’s middle-grade novel The Monument, about a small Kansas town who decides to create a monument to their war dead and finds itself in all kinds of conflict about what that monument should be. It’s a great work for your grandkids or other young people you know and opens up a conversation about what monuments should be (also an urgent topic for these times). As it happens, I know Gary Paulsen and wrote two books about him. I happen to still have a small supply of bookplates that he’s personally autographed and would be happy to send one to you for your young person’s book. Just email me at gary@salvner.com.
I get back to Saginaw very rarely, though I still have family there. Do know, however, that I carry our small city and my AHHS memories with me wherever I go. I learned some important lessons in Saginaw and our alma mater. One of the biggest lessons is that we’re here on this rock of earth for one purpose—to serve.
My best to all of you.
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