Umbrella, Pager, and Heart in Hand

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

I was part of a conference planning committee, and they asked me to put together a session on the importance of diversity in higher education.

It’s OK—you can take a look at my picture again and wonder just what made anyone think I knew something about diversity 20 years ago. The request surprised me, but I had a surprise for them in return—and best of all, he was on speed dial.

He showed up about ten minutes late, but given that he was press secretary for the Detroit mayor, I was grateful he was able to show up at all, since the only advance planning we’d made was one 40 second phone call. He had an umbrella in one hand, and a pager was popping off his hip every 30 seconds. Right then and there, I was humbly grateful—he showed up, even though he and I weren’t the closest of high school friends, during a time when squeezing stuff like this on the agenda wasn’t really supposed to be a priority. But we went to a high school that nurtured instinct, and he knew what an event like this could do, and since you don’t get to move mountains every day, he was here.

I introduced him, making sure to highlight his success as an all-state basketball player and one of the best non-DI college players of his time. I talked about how he came to our private high school in the Detroit suburbs as a Detroit resident, who was promised a better education in exchange for making us a better basketball school. That handful of scholarships brought our high school enrollment to maybe 10 percent black. Maybe.

I meant to ask him if he knew that before he agreed to leave Detroit every day for one of the richest suburbs in America, but once I gave him the mike, it was clear I should, as every good counselor does, shut up and let the client talk. He talked about how proud his family was to have a child honored like this, going to one of the best high schools in the country on a full scholarship, and how his athletic accomplishments were legendary. He was pretty tall to begin with, but when he told this story in that room full of counselors, his 6-5 frame easily expanded to 6-10. He couldn’t wait to start school.

Until he got there, and he couldn’t wait to go home. He’d put on his best clothes—not the stuff he had to wear to church, but the green open collared shirt and matching pants and cap that, in his words, emulated Curtis Mayfield of Superfly. He walked up the stairs to the front door, ready to have the entire school impressed, and walked into the chaos that Roeper School is known for to this day. Brilliant kids—and I mean, truly brilliant kids—going to a school that believed you helped the students understand the big picture of learning, then got out of their way, coaching more than teaching, seeing learning as a mutual journey of exploration. If that wasn’t enough of a surprise, the guy—at least, he thought it was a guy—with the mop head of hair and ripped jeans that welcomed him with a “Hey Man” was enough to remind him; he wasn’t in Detroit anymore.

I asked him for about 35 minutes of time, and for the next hour, the pager popped and he flowed—what it was like to live in two worlds at the same time, and how it shaped his view of the world. One particular conversation he mentioned was from a party he went to in his hometown neighborhood, where everyone else was celebrating the local high school’s qualification for the state basketball championship. He was supposed to be on that team, but he took the scholarship instead, where his team got to the district championship, and that was it. Worst of all, when that announcement was made at his new school’s weekly assembly, about 6 people clapped. Half-heartedly.

After about an hour, his pager had been jumping on and off, and he had to stop a couple of times to compose himself. I kind of figured he wouldn’t have time to write a speech for this, and I was right. This had been an hour of speaking from the heart, and when his heart was too full, he had to let it even itself out, all in front of a room full of counselors who knew what they were witnessing; catharsis, humanity, honesty, and power. We asked for questions, but the participants were smart enough to realize that would only spoil the effect. That was why the only question he had to answer was “My high school needs to hear you. When can you come?”

He hurried away because the pager finally showed a number that had to be answered. For about 15 years after that, we saw each other at basketball games (where he coached and sang the national anthem), talked to students of color about what college and life meant to him, and the philosophical space he thought our high school should move to. His advocacy for movement, for doing things, for helping those society had too long ignored, inspired his work as journalist, coach, teacher, civil rights advocate, and citizen of the world.

Cliff Russell left this world far too soon, before he got to make all those speeches, before the larger world could see what I had witnessed every time I spent time with him. This was a mighty man with a heart of gold, who treated the world fairly, and worked to show the world how it could be more fair. His story kept a room full of counselors at full attention for a Friday afternoon; his legacy left Detroit poised to be a better place. We close Black History Month promising, as we always do, to find new ways to work toward that goal. I close this day, as I always do, grateful for the role model I had who changed the world of counseling for an afternoon and forever— umbrella, pager, and heart in hand.