It could only be chalked up to happenstance that I found myself on the last day of the 2022/23 school year settling down on a bench adjacent to the Elementary School I attended back in the 1960’s. The day was slightly overcast and not as warm as one might expect the temperature to be for the beginning of the summer. It was official, I could see a couple of remaining teachers carrying boxes to their car, school was dismissed until Labor Day. The Ernest Myer Hurley Elementary School (named after the principal at the helm when I was matriculating) didn’t look much different from the way I remembered it on a very similar day exactly 56 years when I rode my bicycle home on the quarter mile trek back to my house on Hook Street. There were very few vehicles left in the parking lot, but I suppose everything looked apropos considering the date. There is always an eerie quiet that can be heard at a school ground the moments after the final yellow bus has left the building. Staring out over the solitude of a vacant ball field, that I recalled as the stage for classic fourth grade softball games that my big brother starred in. Memories that I was sure had been lost along the way came rushing back. Mrs. Hutton was my first-grade teacher, and a blond girl, named Kelley Cahill, with a big gap in her two front teeth, was my crush. At seven years old my progressive parents allowed me to find my own means of transportation to and from the halls of academia. In 1967 I assume it was reasonable to put a seven-year-old on his two-wheel bike with the red streamers flapping in the open air.
Was it coincidence that 56 years to the day I ended up back at the exact same spot? Lol. What a day! The triple crown of happiness for a kid: The last day of school, the first day of summer, and the longest day of the year all wrapped up in one. On that June day in 1967 I pedaled down Zandhoek Road with a breeze blowing through my hair and an eternal summer of sun and fun ahead of me. In those days everything in my life centered around baseball and the Beatles. Across the street from my house lived our babysitter, Doreen Lyke. Miss Lyke had been diagnosed with a classic case of Beatle derangement syndrome by the time she reached 16. In the back of our house we had a makeshift baseball diamond where I honed my skills with the top teenage ball players from Hook and Walnut streets. I still see my dad, jogging from our back yard, his lean long body dolled in a white tee shirt, kinos, and a pair of high top Keds. In my seven-year-old mind any ball field I was ever on with my dad he was the best I ever saw. There he was running at me, I tossed him the mitt we shared ‘one day I might get to be just like him,’ I said to myself. After the game it was time to go across the street and have some of Mary Lyke’s home brewed iced tea and listen to some tunes from four mopped topped teenagers who resided in Liverpool, England. I could have never imagined then, living in my idyllic Shangri la, that what lay ahead was going to be anything but perfect.
Before I knew it, it was 15 years later and I wasn’t standing on a major league pitching mound. Instead I perched in front of a bunch of 16-year-olds in a classroom somewhere in Pine Bush New York. My parents had eked out livings in teaching gigs and it always looked like not such a bad idea to me. Let’s start with the fact that it is a full-time job with benefits, 20 weeks of vacation a year, and you can retire at 55. Throw in snow days, wind days, heat days, cold days, and much more….. it was a no brainer that a lazy Peter Pan type would decide to be a teacher. Besides, becoming an adult was never a priority for me. The truth I’m finding about myself in the late stages is that ‘I’m a teacher, but I could not sustain my passion for teaching working within in the constraints of America’s public education systems. Today, I feel blessed to have been able to be a teacher and coach in the Public-School systems for seven years. The years I spent in the classroom and on the basketball, courts were without a doubt the most intense of my life. Everything I am today, every word I say, and all the attitude I have developed were baked the deepest from my experiences in the 23 years I lived in the public school system. It can happen in life. One moment you are gloriously chasing your dreams in a certain direction, and then a strong wind comes along and moves you in a different direction. Starting over can be the most frightening of times.
What does a naturally born teacher do after turning his back on his life’s destiny at the ripe old age of 28? Of course, he can’t wait to be an insurance salesman. I had identified myself as three things before turning 30: A school kid, an athlete, and a teacher. I do not mean to offend when I say I doubt anybody grew up dreaming about being an “Insurance Man”. In the most critical juncture of my life my best option was pounding the pavement selling insurance. I had walked away from everything I knew, whatever identity I used to own was gone and all my apples were thrown into being a businessman. The toughest questions I had to face came from my parents, simultaneously, ” What the hell are you doing?” And the more basic, “Why in the world?” There were several factors, but it came down to a voice inside of me. Untethered security and stability or take a shot at life moving over to a different lane. The six-month running conversation I had with myself back in the spring of 1989 went something like this: ‘Rich this is the time to suck it up. Eat your humble pie, finish up your credits, and get a teaching and coaching job in the same district.’ That voice had control of me right up to the very end. Another voice that speaks truth to myself was relentless, ‘No way can I continue to listen to bells and administrators for another 30 years. It will not end pretty.’ I jumped right into the business world and never swam in the shallow again. I handed in my teaching license, collected the $3,452 which had accumulated in my union retirement fund and signed up for my three-week course to be an insurance broker. In one years’ time, at the age of 29, I quit my stable chosen career, got married, moved to a new city, and started my career in the world of finance. ‘Hello, my name is Rich Siegel and insurance is my game.’ Go figure. Let me not forget I was broke.
It was June 23, 2023, the day after I my respite at Ernie Myer’s school. I was driving my car around looking for a parking space during the local high school graduation. The covid kids, warriors who missed far too much time while the so-called experts held their education hostage for two years. Covid was finally in their rear-view mirror as they marched towards the stadium in their maroon gowns and white caps. You could see the water dripping off the tassels swinging side to side. I watched from a distance as the undaunted graduates braved the rain as if they had expected it. The clock in my head had quit running on school time some 35 years ago when I started the long journey into business and finance. And now here I was falling out of the other side of those years. For the first time I officially allowed myself to question myself in reference to my life altering decisions back in 1989. ‘Did I do the right thing for myself leaving the teaching profession?’ I stopped moving my fingers for several minutes before I gave myself time to reflect before formulating my reluctant answer. ‘I don’t know. I will never know,’ And ‘What’s the difference?’ I thought about how much the characteristics at this time reminded me of similar
crossroads and that once again it was time for dramatic alterations. A time when I needed to act, when I needed to adjust, even reinvent. I had to change my perspective, I needed time to reevaluate my priorities preparing for the end of the game.
Somehow, after all the in-betweens, I had ended up in the exact place I started my journey 60 years ago. The little boy from Hook Street had put a lot of mileage behind him. He’d driven some smooth rides and there was more than his share of highways where he didn’t miss a pothole. After all the bumps and bruises I had come through the storms relatively clean, still with a fighter’s chance. I was sitting in front of my old elementary school in the processes of a major make-over. My phone started buzzing, and I was
thrust back to the reality of the day. “Hey dad just wanted to let you know our flight is delayed and I’ll be at the airport in Puerto Rico for the next 12 hours. Not a big deal, I’ll be back in Providence tonight.” I hung the phone up and thought about how far my daughter had already traveled, and how many open highways that lay ahead for her. The great philosopher Carl Jung saw life in the round as “something forever coming into being and passing on.” All those sayings I vividly recall form my youth, “What goes around comes around.” “We reap what we sow.” “Every dog has his day.” I could hear Mrs. Hutton asking us to turn the page. “See Pete run. Look at Spot. He is Pete’s dog.” It seems like such a long time ago. It also seems like it happened yesterday. Along the way the words have gotten bigger, and the
world kept getting more and more complicated . There will be many times when you’re out there alone on the road when it will be prudent to listen to that voice calling you home to your roots. Once you return to the starting point it will all come back to you. You just have to get back on the bike again and start pedaling.
