Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Mr. Reid’s Girls—Part II

Author’s note: The first part of this story was posted in November 2011 for those of you who would like to go back and read it.

I am home to visit my dad nearly 30 years after graduating from high school. My sister joins me for a couple days so that we can go through all of our mother’s clothes. Dad wants us to sort through everything because , he says, “I don’t know what’s worth giving away, or what you girls might want for yourselves.” I call one of my old friends, Abby Brooks, a girl I have kept in close contact with over the years, to see if she’d like to come over one evening while I’m there after my sister leaves. She does and, while Dad watches TV out on the glassed-in porch, we sit in the family room talking.

After almost two hours, Abby shifts around uncomfortably on the couch and says, “OK, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you for almost a year, but I’ve only just gotten up the courage.” Abby then tells me that a little over a year earlier she received a phone call from CiCi Howard. I am astonished by this news. Abby goes on to say that CiCi’s minister husband was on the other phone extension and that CiCi then went on to explain that her daughter had had a premonitory dream that involved Abby. “The whole thing was very strange,” said Abby. CiCi then warned Abby that, in the dream, her daughter, who CiCi gave more credibility to by insisting knew none of these names prior to having the dream, saw that Abby Brooks was in danger by continuing to be in contact with Laura Fischer. Me? Had I heard right? Had Abby just told me that CiCi Howard’s daughter had a dream with our specific names? It seemed highly improbable and undoubtedly completely made up and I said as much to Abby. I held my breath for a moment because I really didn’t know how Abby was feeling about this revelatory dream. Happily, she agreed that it was unlikely. Her only puzzlement was in trying to figure out why she had received this phone call in the first place.

I then told her about what I had witnessed the night of our graduation, something I had kept completely to myself all these years. Abby asked, “Did Mr. Reid ever say anything to you about it? Had he seen you that night?” Abby knew that I had seen Mr. Reid on numerous occasions over the years. Whenever I was home visiting, even after my children were born, we would often go to a Friday night football game over at the high school. Mr. Reid was “The Voice of the Wildcats.” He had announced the home games since 1964 with his beautiful baritone voice and commanding knowledge of the game. At halftime, I would go say hello and we’d hug one another with all the affection of old friends. He and I had even sung together at Abby’s first wedding where, during the rehearsal, we giggled and nudged each other like flirtatious school chums. “No,” I said, “I’m not sure whether he saw me that night or not. I’m pretty sure it was just CiCi who saw me, and whether she said anything to him at the time is anyone’s guess. He has never behaved as if he’s embarrassed about any knowledge I might have.” Abby nodded her head taking it all in, and slowly grasping the reasons why she received that phone call. “Do you think that phone call was all about feeling guilty?” she asked. I assured her that this was precisely what I thought.

Flash forward another two years and I’m looking at my Facebook news feed one morning while my father sits across from me at our kitchen island eating his breakfast. I scroll down the page and see that both Sharon Ford and Robert Garner have recently clicked that they like “Help Reinstate Marcus Reid as the Voice of the Wildcats.” I look up at Dad and ask, “Has Mark Reid been fired as the Friday night football game announcer?” Dad says he hasn’t heard anything and that nothing’s been in the paper. I click the link to do some more investigating. There are already over 500 fans of this page. It is Thursday, and the page was created just the day before. I read on the Wall that they’re hoping to get 1,000 names by Saturday night. As I peruse the comments, they are all highly supportive of the man. Many are outraged that he should be “treated in such a fashion after giving his life to the school.” I find the link to the Galveston Daily News article and click. Apparently Mark was called into the school to meet with the principal and the head football coach and athletic director. He was told, “It’s time for a change,” and that they’d like to do something nice for him as he steps down. The suggestion is to do some sort of send-off during halftime at the first home game. Mark refuses “the honor” preferring to just be done if that’s the way they want it. He is quoted as saying he’s perfectly capable and eager to continue in the job even though he’s 77 years old, but also says that he really wasn’t given that choice. I read through more of the posts and someone has said that they have found out that the school intends to remove his name from the dedicated building that bears his name on the Galveston High School campus. Could that really be true? And if it is, I am now pretty convinced that these are not isolated, whim-of-the-moment, the high school principal just wakes up one morning and decides that “it’s time for change.” Something most certainly has precipitated the need.

My imagine goes wild, for knowing what I know, how can these revelations be anything but completely related to what I know? And I am very probably the only person who is an actual witness to Mr. Reid’s indiscretions. Ahem, crimes. Regardless of CiCi’s culpability in the matter, the fact remains that she was his student and maybe even a minor at the time. Even if she wasn’t a minor, and a case could be made that she was a consenting adult, his place of power as her teacher disadvantaged her and he took advantage of that. How many girls were under his power over the years? Mark retired from teaching in 1996 after almost 30 years. Just a rough calculation brings me to a number somewhere between 120 and 150 with perhaps just one singled out girl each year. Maybe.

What I think is that the Galveston school board, or perhaps just the high school principal, has been questioned in some sort of fact gathering phase of a criminal investigation, of which Mr. Reid could himself be completely ignorant. Speculating further, the school has decided to take the PR hit up front in the event something more serious comes to light. Only time will tell, and perhaps nothing will come of it or my wild imaginings. There are statutes of limitations, after all, for these things. But, I can’t help but wonder whether the past has caught up to what was the future.


Copyright DJ Anderson, 2011

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