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SOME NOSTALGIA

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With Maura Healey, Massachusetts will have its first woman elected governor in the state’s history with a 50/50 shot at also having the first Lesbian governor in the country.

With Former Boston City Council president Andrea Campbell as the new Attorney General, Diana DiZoglio succeeding Susanne Bump as auditor, and Treasurer Deborah Goldberg serving a third term in office with the exception of Secretary of State Galvin, the top slots in the Massachusetts State House will be women and young at that, not just some new old guys moving into expected slots.

In light of Abigail Adams’s admonition to her husband, John,  in July 1776, and after the 246 years since, perhaps it is time, now that we have remembered the women, to make Abigail Adams’s birthday a state holiday.

Don’t tell a Gay man who has fulfilled all known requirements imposed to obtain a particular end that after getting the Wicked Witch’s broom he now needs to get some new thing not mentioned before. At my age I am fully infused with the Wizard of Oz and know what he was attempting with Dorothy just was as attempted in Oklahoma City.

That is that in order to avoid delivering on what was promised upon completion of a task, another task is added because the expectation was failure on the last one, not success.

Considering that all it took for the Good Witch to get the Ruby Slippers on to Dorothy Gale’s feet was a wave of a wand which meant she could have waved them into her own hands, the clicking of heels and the No Place Like Home chant to get home, and the elimination of the Wicked Witch by water, this all could have all been accomplished just after she got there, so there was no need for all she went through to get re-housed when it was within her power to handle it all within minutes of the house crushing the witch of the East.

She was told to see the wizard and to do so by just following the Yellow Brick Road and getting a big send-off with lots of singing, waving, and thoughts and prayers. Instead of the instant return home that was available, this pubescent young woman wandered off on her own meeting three odd adult men of questionable character from the get-go, receiving threats on her life, getting kidnapped, being tortured by Auntie Em’s showing up in a crystal ball just before the monkeys flew off, with each of her compatriots being tortured, let rust, and de-strawed before she finally got the broom the wizard, at their first meeting, had demanded she get in order to go home, only to have the Wizard attempt to make her go get something else when she was not told there would be a series of tasks and after going through what she had not known about but was known to those who could have gotten the slippers, dispatched the Wicked Witch, send Dorothy home, and restore order, all before the audience would have had time to register the Black and White movie was now in color.

Glinda, although all smiles and dimples was the actual Bad Witch for having put Dorothy through all she went through knowing she never had to.

These trials and tribulations were initiated after the fact an after Dorothy had already begun the process of moving on.

When tenants in my building were told to leave, there were statements and promises made.

There was to be a meeting, or at least personal face to face conversations that would help clarify the situation and explain any help the new owners would extend and informing us that we should either leave, or, if we chose to remain, do so during construction and paying the higher rent when construction was completed.  

The next day we were told we all had till November 1 to leave.

Tenants were also informed at that time that such construction would begin on that date as well, but on the morning three days before that declared date, a crew of workmen with chainsaws entered the courtyard and hewn down any bit of vegetation there, a two-hour task.

The fact that I was handed a written notification, only to have it instantly altered indicated to this old Union guy that if written words are so easily changed, the same will be true and even easier with the spoken, so when I needed a clarification, I wanted it on writing.

A main concern was affording the move from one place to another that would require, first and last months’ rent, a security deposit in addition to or in place of last.

Initially claiming,

“WE have worked with dozens of tenants in similar situations and are confident that we can provide you with viable options to assist you in relocating during the construction period or remaining at the property if you choose to do so. It is important that I sit down with you and explain all the options so that we can figure out a plan that works best for you,”

With no such meeting taking place and clarifications morphing with each email, phone call, or text seeking specifics my faith in the word, spoken or written, of the new owner was weak if there at all.

I had been informed repeatedly that the new owners would help with the moving costs giving us twice our present rent, an amount far less than what a move would cost in first, last and/or security deposit  with assurances of paying the cost of moving possessions as far as ten miles out of the city.

I was told,

, “the company will subsidize up to 2X current monthly rent to assist with relocation,”

And the local, newspaper was told,

“We have offered financial support in the form of cash payments or direct payments to new landlords to assist with the costs of securing new housing. We also offered to organize the logistics and to fund the tenant’s moving expenses.” 

They hadn’t. I brought information to the tenants

I had been looking for apartments and had all the applications, digital and hardcopy, and all relevant paperwork on file, and, in spite of personal feelings, I actively sought new housing.

When I heard that my application for the new apartment was accepted, I notified the owner and inquired about the moving costs. He had previously made statements about the funds in emails and to the press, and had assured me ,in writing,

“If you find an apartment, we can provide you a check within 24 hours to assist with your relocation expenses”.

I was also told to just call him if I got it.

With the process clarified as a) find an apartment, b) call him, and c) receive the check in 24 hours, which in this case would have afforded me time to cash the check and prepare funds to be handed over to the new landlord upon receipt of keys, and having agreed with the landlord because he was ill to keep the weekend key exchange open but definitely for Monday, I notified the new owner that I would need those funds.

However, he responded,

“I will be able to meet you on Monday to sign the relocation agreement and to provide you with payment.”

This was the first mention in any email or document that an ‘agreement” was called for. I was curious about this sudden, last minute, additional step, So I asked.

“What is a “relocation agreement’? I would assume as an agreement I have some input.”

He wrote back,

“The relocation agreement is a document stating that you are moving out of your apartment at Elm Street by the end of November and that in exchange for relinquishing possession of the unit, our company is paying you $1,600 and neither party will pursue any further legal action.”

I am not, a fan of these last minute add-ons, and this last minute add-on agreement thing was not my first rodeo.

I wanted specifics and asked for them.

The owner had had time to read the agreement that was most likely written by a lawyer or two, but I was going to be handed something to sign at the last minute under duress as the moving money is waved in front of me, so I requested further information and a copy of the agreement.

“In reviewing all printed and digital documents, notifications, and email clarifications of the details of the moving expense claim etc. there was no mention of an agreement to not pursue any further legal action until I notified you that I had a place and that I was requesting the funds you said would be delivered in 24 hours which would be Saturday, 11/05/2022.

Although I had hoped to get the keys today or some time over the weekend, I suggested to the landlord that as he was not feeling well, we put it off until Monday unless he got well sooner as I would have the funds by Saturday and could deliver them anytime over the weekend if things changed. 

In light of this added agreement, please forward to me a copy to read through and have my attorney’s read through as well, as you are asking for more than just me to leave.”

If this is just a routine thing it should have been mentioned up front.

Otherwise………

So, to avoid having to deliver, the Wizard delayed, or attempted to by adding one more thing. Don’t know what the motivation is here, but either he hates to see people just leave, or he has a need to just twist the nail, one more time as each tenant leaves.

I am moving out. I have brought the broom stick.

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Although the new owners of 191-193 Elm Street have a perfect right to do with their new acquisition what is best for their investment, it is not the buying, renovation, and raising rents that is the problem. It is the way the present tenants have been treated with most of the treatment employing the sudden change to provisions given to the tenants in writing which instantly cancelled the previous notifications

Clarifications were not forthcoming and when offered, it was nebulous enough to foreshadow an upcoming modification to any previous written notifications.

The other problem is that the building manager is not too truthful when speaking to the press as he has often explained the wonderful and theoretical approaches to the building and its tenants that do not match the written reality.  

The dismissive attitude is that the tenants are not informed or are incapable of seeing the difference between the written and spoken word.

Recently in a newspaper article that speculated that those buying all the property in the city were from elsewhere with no connection to the people of the city but only to its buildings, the great unwashed be damned, the building manager attempted to present a softer, kinder image of the company for which he works.

Although the newspaper established,

“TI Partners V, LLC, was incorporated in March and is the fifth such company (after TI Partners I through IV) to come into existence since 2020 under the umbrella of Terra Incognita Partners, LLC, a Pittsfield-based real estate management firm incorporated in February 2021, according to the Corporations Database of the Secretary of State’s Office”,

Mr. Osofisan, the building manager explained,

“It’s important to mention that Terra Incognita Partners is not some shadowy investment firm operating from afar. It is a one-man company and everyone I work with is from New Bedford. I am in the city every day surrounded by a diverse team of local tradespeople and design professionals, pursuing projects that present unique challenges.”

I was curious who Mr. Osofisan was, so I went to the web, entered his name, and the first thing that popped up was from ZoomInfo.

“Isaiah Osofisan is a Principal at TI Partners based in London, Greater London. Previously, Isaiah was a Director, Business Development at Auto Raptor, (a web-based Customer Relations Management (CRM) company “that helps auto dealers manage their leads, communicate with customers through text, email or telephone, and automate the sales process”, as per their home page).

His profile on Linkedin includes,

“Principal at Terra Incognita Partners LLC · Self-employed Terra Incognita Partners LLC · Self-employed Feb 2020 – Present · 2 yrs 10 mos Feb 2020 – Present · 2 yrs 10 mos Newport, Rhode Island, United States. Developer of attainable and sustainable multi-family properties in Southeastern Massachusetts.”

TI Partners, mentioned in his bios and on all written documents and is included with any web search, is described as having a twenty-year track record of success in preparing and arranging business and public/private partnerships for its clients.

This company headquartered at 75 Sydenham Hl, London, Greater London, SE26 6TQ, United Kingdom, whose phone number is +44 2082994141, and their website http://www.ti-partners.com, explains itself as having a methodology that is a ““best practice” phased approach designed to maximise the likelihood of success, following and adapting the ISO standard 44001: 2017 (collaborative business relationship management).

The steps in this process involve:

•  Identifying potential partners compatible with our client’s requirements.
• Assisting our clients to become familiar rapidly with the current strategic priorities of prospective partners.
• Facilitating access to senior decision-makers.
• Enabling our client to understand the needs of its prospective partners and vice versa
• Assisting in the preparation and presentation of proposals and responding to requests for proposals.
• Driving forward the information-exchanging, negotiating and closing process.
• Keeping our client’s Investors on board and engaged.”

This enables their clients to “set and track deliverables, manage risk, and accelerate or exit programmes which exceed or fall short of target, as circumstances change, and for the client’s professional advisors and corporate PR agency to avail themselves of the TI Partners’ complementary strategic and operational resources.”

The spelling alone let’s you know this is not a local company and their self-description shows that while he may claim his involvement is as a mere Mom & Pop, one man business, there is a Walt Disney buying Orlando spirit to all this mystery as to who is buying up New Bedford.

The English came over and took their homes away from the people living here, displaced them, and claimed everything was theirs because of divine destiny a few centuries ago, and now they are back to do it again.

This

Although the new owners of 191-193 Elm Street have a perfect right to do with their new acquisition what is best for their investment, it is not the buying, renovation, and raising rents that is the problem. It is the way the present tenants have been treated with most of the treatment employing the sudden change to provisions given to the tenants in writing which instantly cancelled the previous notifications

Clarifications were not forthcoming and when offered, it was nebulous enough to foreshadow an upcoming modification to any previous written notifications.

The other problem is that the building manager is not too truthful when speaking to the press as he has often explained the wonderful and theoretical approaches to the building and its tenants that do not match the written reality.  

The dismissive attitude is that the tenants are not informed or are incapable of seeing the difference between the written and spoken word.

Recently in a newspaper article that speculated that those buying all the property in the city were from elsewhere with no connection to the people of the city but only to its buildings, the great unwashed be damned, the building manager attempted to present a softer, kinder image of the company for which he works.

Although the newspaper established,

“TI Partners V, LLC, was incorporated in March and is the fifth such company (after TI Partners I through IV) to come into existence since 2020 under the umbrella of Terra Incognita Partners, LLC, a Pittsfield-based real estate management firm incorporated in February 2021, according to the Corporations Database of the Secretary of State’s Office”,

Mr. Osofisan, the building manager explained,

“It’s important to mention that Terra Incognita Partners is not some shadowy investment firm operating from afar. It is a one-man company and everyone I work with is from New Bedford. I am in the city every day surrounded by a diverse team of local tradespeople and design professionals, pursuing projects that present unique challenges.”

I was curious who Mr. Osofisan was, so I went to the web, entered his name, and the first thing that popped up was from ZoomInfo.

“Isaiah Osofisan is a Principal at TI Partners based in London, Greater London. Previously, Isaiah was a Director, Business Development at Auto Raptor, (a web-based Customer Relations Management (CRM) company “that helps auto dealers manage their leads, communicate with customers through text, email or telephone, and automate the sales process”, as per their home page).

His profile on Linkedin includes,

“Principal at Terra Incognita Partners LLC · Self-employed Terra Incognita Partners LLC · Self-employed Feb 2020 – Present · 2 yrs 10 mos Feb 2020 – Present · 2 yrs 10 mos Newport, Rhode Island, United States. Developer of attainable and sustainable multi-family properties in Southeastern Massachusetts.”

TI Partners, mentioned in his bios and on all written documents and is included with any web search, is described as having a twenty-year track record of success in preparing and arranging business and public/private partnerships for its clients.

This company headquartered at 75 Sydenham Hl, London, Greater London, SE26 6TQ, United Kingdom, whose phone number is +44 2082994141, and their website http://www.ti-partners.com, explains itself as having a methodology that is a ““best practice” phased approach designed to maximise the likelihood of success, following and adapting the ISO standard 44001: 2017 (collaborative business relationship management).

The steps in this process involve:

•  Identifying potential partners compatible with our client’s requirements.
• Assisting our clients to become familiar rapidly with the current strategic priorities of prospective partners.
• Facilitating access to senior decision-makers.
• Enabling our client to understand the needs of its prospective partners and vice versa
• Assisting in the preparation and presentation of proposals and responding to requests for proposals.
• Driving forward the information-exchanging, negotiating and closing process.
• Keeping our client’s Investors on board and engaged.”

This enables their clients to “set and track deliverables, manage risk, and accelerate or exit programmes which exceed or fall short of target, as circumstances change, and for the client’s professional advisors and corporate PR agency to avail themselves of the TI Partners’ complementary strategic and operational resources.”

The spelling alone let’s you know this is not a local company and their self-description shows that while he may claim his involvement is as a mere Mom & Pop, one man business, there is a Walt Disney buying Orlando spirit to all this mystery as to who is buying up New Bedford.

The English came over and took their homes away from the people living here, displaced them, and claimed everything was theirs because of divine destiny a few centuries ago, and now they are back to do it again.

This time not so overtly, but with the same forked tongue.

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One of the most frustrating things during 12 years of advocacy for Gay kids in a public school district was that, regardless what progress had been made, with every administrative change, with little chance of just moving on from the point reached, I would have to repeat some previous work to get them up to speed so at least their obstruction would be current, or would have to deal with an old argument or objection long since dealt with and, being new and unaware of the past, they attempt to use a certain tactic as if it is new and had never before employed in the many years preceding its latest use, meaning I had to take the time, even if a little, to brush that crumb off the table.

Those doing negotiations in a Union setting or representing a member during the grievance procedure have had that eye-rolling moment when they have to deal with a manager’s using some newly discovered loophole to get around the contract whose previous usage makes this discovery as valid as that of Columbus.

But you deal with it.

I am a retired teacher who had been and to a retiree’s degree remains very active in my Union and the Labor movement in general, so when the new owner, a young man, tries what to him might be a new and clever way to defend his ill treatment of the tenants he is displacing, and it is just a redoing of past excuses, one takes notice.

In past blogs I have written about those tenuous, coincidental, and direct connections between people and events that might only consist of names showing up in multiple tales of disparate people, that background movie extra you see in movies and begin to notice in other movies where he is just a member of a crowd, a person walking by, or some person just there as a piece of the scenery.

Not connected in any way to the plot, but necessary for the movie.

With no real, straight-line connections, there is that line from the Gorey House in Yarmouthport to the whale ship Milo in the Civil War and the destruction of the North Pacific whaling fleet in 1871 when arctic ice crushed it. Although none of these and many other connections have any direct relationship, the people and ships in these disconnected events intermingled so they were connected tenuously like Third-Class relics to the First-Class ones for those familiar with this idea, or like we would be in that kids’ game, Electricity.

I have written about these connections in past blogs when enough dots have been connected. I had grown used to this finding of dots because of my volunteer work at the Whaling Museum, past Union work where my job was to connect what seemed disconnected to win a grievance or get a provision in a contract, and, as a cartoonist, just observing.

As a volunteer I produce work for the museum without their having to expend salary and benefits, and as a volunteer who provides free labor, there is a certain degree of job security. While salaried employees may have to adhere to schedules and projects, my transcription duties allow me to go deeper to investigate some stumbled upon interesting detail, hopefully uncovering some, as yet undiscovered factoid.

This, combined with the interest in history of the city this involvement engendered, had me joining local groups that dealt with the city’s history, and occasionally, when just looking into some mention of a person place or thing I come across something unknown to most people, even the city history buffs.

I have written about some.

During all this business about gentrification and my apartment, one thing is certain. Truth is not a requirement when the new owners deal with the tenants they want out. While some tenants panicked and grasped in desperation at the first straw, and one had to leave in an emergency situation since losing his non-union job after anxiety had him careless at work and he injured himself, there are those tenants a little slower to jump but faster to collect information that reveals in letters sent by the new owners, each of which was assumed headed for the trash can upon receipt, the inconsistency of the new owner and the arbitrary way the tenants are being treated.

In defending the treatment of tenants, the owners want to promote the impression that regardless how bad this looks they are doing what is best for the city.

There are working people in the building along with people on Section 8, a retiree or two, and people employed in various occupations. In my time in the building, others have come and gone for various reasons, at one point mainly because people who had been there for years and had grown too old to live alone and went to senior housing. Some moved for work or love. Also, during my time there was a fire in one apartment that had nothing to do with the tenant, EMT’s have had to come for medical reasons, a death or two, and a single woman who along with her baby lived upstairs and allowed her boyfriend to use her place from which to deal crack during “regular business hours”. This last was unacceptable to the tenants as the customers did not got off to smoke and then return to re-up, but hung around the back landings of the apartment on the floors below hers so they could get another rock quickly after finishing the one in the glass.

Tenants were the ones reporting this.

When describing the building, the owner’s agent ignored the reality of the building and implied that the tenants were not contributors to the city or just not the right people, the takers not the givers.

According to the local newspaper Mr. Osofsion, described the building as

“meant to be workforce housing for the people who live and work in New Bedford. 95% of the tenants who live at our other properties work within 20 miles of the city and we expect that trend to continue with Elm St.”

Apparently, the retirees and those unable to continue working, as in the one case where a passed problem has affected one tenant’s ability to be employed so he gets assistance, and the working people on site should not remain in “the workforce housing for people who live and work” in the city.

Of course, he also tells the tenants who he is putting down as he is displacing them that he owns other properties not too far away, but hasn’t bothered to offer them to the tenants as they are “for the people who live and work in the city”.

He also said that the property has a checkered past and has been labeled a “nuisance property” by the City of New Bedford since 2017, the year of the crack dealer whose girlfriend supplied him the retail space in the apartment she got because she was related to someone who worked for the previous owner and who has been gone for four years, unless people being sick and an apartment fire are deemed a nuisance.

But, there seemed something familiar in this- the wrong people living where the right people should be and labeling the place as “nuisance “property”, when the idea to sell the building may have first been considered at the beginning of the gentrification boom.

And I remembered a connection.

Long after the original Quaker core belief in the equality and dignity of all people and its not being correct to flaunt your wealth in front of the poor and advertising your better station, lost out to extravagance and wealth flaunting, the equality of man began to take a back seat to the “us, the right people, vs “them”, the wrong people, and city leadership took advantage of this, if not outright promoting class differences to their benefit.

I was looking up some obscure reference to something I had read about a whaling captain that had caught my interest when, jumping from link to link, sometimes finding relevant items, sometimes hitting a blank, uninteresting wall, I happened upon a proposal from just after World War I to repurpose a section of the city by the waterfront where a large number of Cape Verdeans who worked on the docks lived for a more restricted use.

They were accidentally on desired real estate, living in the housing the waterfront afforded and close to where they worked. This had become desired property but the convenience to the cape Verdeans living and working there would make purchasing the land and buildings from them difficult.

They had to be moved but the move had to be justified to the general public as quite a few people in the city fell on the “Them” side.

So it was that within the proposal was a description of the area that would justify why it would be better for the city if this group of homes and those they housed were torn down and the residents displaced.

One hundred years ago the area was described as having prominent buildings that presented “a neat and attractive appearance” on its West side, a dwelling and a shop on the North side “which were not seriously detrimental to the neighborhood”, and to the South was a similar house and building block. To the East were the undesirable conditions produced by a cheap restaurant and “seven houses closely crowded together, occupied largely by slacker Cape Verde Portuguese, continually under police inspection. The owners required revenue and no other people desired to be tenants.”

Their words not mine.

The Cape Verdeans living in the city then and now are hard-working people.

Those making the proposal 100 years ago were city leaders who may or may not have been the people calling the police who, actually, may not have ever been called.

No one ever told me I was living in a “nuisance building”, and when I tell locals where I live, they recognize the building and know its original name, and some have told me of their time living there. No one has ever cautioned me about living there.

But the building had to be sold to make the city a better place and provide housing for the right people like was done with the Cape Verdeans and assigning the present residents an undeserved and false reputation so that people, not knowing the facts, will be glad they have been moved out.

The new owner’s rationale is faulty and has been used before.

The opposite of a building “occupied largely by slacker[s]” is one “meant to be workforce housing for the people who live and work in New Bedford.”

This excuse is 100 years old, not new, and not based on the reality on the ground, and I found this relevant connection and similarity of approach quite by accident.

My first transcription assignment at the New Bedford Whaling Museum was the logbook of the whale ship Catalpa and its expedition to make the escape of the six Fenian prisoners from the prison in Freemantle Australia happen and bring them to the United States. This was a shot in the arm for Irish Independence and certain people have been touted as the heroes and got all the accolades then and continue to do so today.

However, at two of the most pivotal, make or break moments in the escape by whale boat, it was the first mate’s quick thinking that made it all work.

He is hardly mentioned.

There are always those in an activity who are obvious, but there are those who, just by doing their jobs, play pivotal roles of which no one, including themselves, gives much note.

There are also those who make a major but overlooked move that makes a difference because they know it is the right thing to do, and, being there at that moment, did what was needed.  

Kudos was not the goal.

I was teaching at Taft Middle School in Oklahoma City in the 90s. One year for some reason I was assigned to teach a speech class. Teaching Regular Education English and various subjects to Special Needs kids in no way prepared me to teach a speech class or, let’s be honest, knowing I would be spending a lot of time first cajoling them to write and deliver their speeches and then would have to listen to student after student speak at me for their final grade, I took the alternate route of using video to get the kids to become public speakers in a way that I could do it as I had in my time teaching in Los Angeles, and they would see it less of a typical school class but something better.

Among the Regular Education kids I had, there was one class filled with a mixed bag of Special Ed kids with their individual  needs and presenting difficulties and doing videos actually turned out to have been the best approach as traditionally shy kids somewhat written off as people to feel bad for but nothing much beyond that, were appearing in school-wide and district-wide videos in which they acted after having worked on creating the video itself from planning to editing.

I always kept a good relationship with custodians and school secretaries of every type, first because they were as important as the teachers in their own ways and they were the people with the power and knowledge and could control a school as one secretary had during my career by basing the school’s main filing system on a formula she had devised that could get her right to a needed file while others would have searched until they called for help.

They could not get rid of her until she trained her replacement which she did at her retirement.

During my time teaching the speech/video class we often asked the custodians for help, and they were more than happy to supply props and do the occasional cameo in a video. During the taping of a video about the architecture of the school we were approached by a custodian who thought we might be interested in a closet that had been closed off when new lockers had been put in the school years before.

Unable to turn down the treasure hunt, the students were eager to find what was in the closet  behind the wall of  lockers and came across a treasure trove of items from the school’s past, long hidden and forgotten.

There were trophies and pictures going back to the 50s and 60s before the baseball teams’ name was changed to the Royals and were no longer named after the sound of the bat when hitting a home run, The Crackers.

As a segregated, all white school at that time, being called a Cracker was more acceptable than when schools became integrated.

My Special Needs class saw this as archeology, and they wanted to learn more about the school’s history and the building itself. They started doing research and asking a lot of questions of a lot of people who up to this point they would never have approached. In the process, the school secretary presented them with a file that the school’s secretaries had been keeping since the school opened in 1931 until the present which contained relevant news articles and other writings of interest.

As a young city, even up to the 1930s there was no real city development north of 10th Street in the NorthWest quadrant and as part of the real estate plan of those who knew the land speculation game, that section of the city would be the high end, expensive area. To seed that idea, a school up to the task of attracting families with money to that area was planned and Solomon Layton, the designer of many prominent buildings in the city, including the state capitol building, was hired to design it.

Sitting at an angle on the corner lot, the building’s façade features yellow bricks arranged in intricate patterns with both sections that spread out from either side of the Art Deco front door having white-faced terra cotta friezes representing the four disciplines, Math, Science, History and English.

It’s library, with parquet floors and a reading area with a fireplace, was designated the most beautiful school library in the country at the time which added to the whole school having also been designated the most beautiful junior high as they were called in those days.

Hallway ceilings were completely covered in frescos deigned to appear from ancient Egypt. The transoms above each door were of stained glass. The theater was designed not only for school use but for community as well, so it was top of the line. The gym had a swimming pool.

The whole school, as my students saw when a custodian snuck us up to the roof to see it, had a commanding view for quite a few years of the city and the developing housing that lie at its feet.

My getting a job there was a matter of chance as, applying for a job in the district I was sent to Taft because they needed another Special Ed teacher to address a need and, as I walked in, I fell in love with the building just walking up to it and was completely sold on wanting to teach there when I saw the huge, Art Deco 6-8 foot tall tower light on an outcropping by the main entrance.

All that happened with me and the school district after that fateful day in January 1994 until I left the City in 2011 was because of that light fixture.

My students fell in love with the building and gathered materials that could be used to get the building on state and national historic registries, and this was going to be a project over time until the day the doors showed up.

All the external doors of the building, even those to the gym were of heavy oak with beveled glass. They had been there since Taft was built, but apparently some pencil pusher who could most likely have never walked through the building or actually  looked closely at it decided that, because of the Murrah Building bombing in 1995, these doors should be replaced with those horrible, generic, windowless, orange metal fire/security doors that blemish too many schools making them look like prisons.

I, along with my students, was aghast as were, it surprisingly turned out, the crew the district had assigned to replace the doors. They knew the value of the school’s history and having worked on various projects throughout the years, came to appreciate the building.

And so it was that on the day the metal door jambs were dropped off in the courtyard/teacher parking lot behind the building to be installed as the first step in door replacement beginning the following Monday, the men placed a few door jambs on the ground, ran over them slowly with their truck so as to misshape them but not ruin them, and then called their boss to report that some of the door jambs seemed a little off and they would all have to be inspected before installation.

Part of the motivation for this was that I had expressed my horror at the door replacement to the installers and how this would ruin the historical designation of the building showing them the information we had collected and the, as yet to be submitted, paperwork for at least state historical designation.

Their decision delayed the beginning of the project until such time as the jambs could be inspected. It also gave me the opportunity to go to the state’s history department to submit the papers and, perhaps, have things expedited to save the door on the Friday before work was to commence. The head of the department, who had to drive by the school every day on the way to work, was well aware of the history and the value that would be lost and worked that weekend to at least get the process going far enough along to halt any work on the building.

The doors were not replaced, and I am sure those 10-12 kids in that class have no idea what the result of their interest produced.

I transferred to the high school across the street where I was to have quite the adventure, so I never knew if the principal or the people in the state history department had followed through with pursuing full historic designation. I had no reason to consider either would not as the latter loved the building while the former was a stickler for paperwork and loved every chance to get involved in it in any form or for any reason. Everything in his sparsely furnished office was perfectly and purposely placed, not to be moved.

23 years later in 2022, the Oklahoma City Public schools proposed a bond be placed on the ballot that would allow the district to repair and rebuild schools that needed improvement and new ones where needed. Present school boundaries would be redrawn, and separate schools might have to be combined.

Taft, one of the oldest schools in the city, was on the list to be modified, and as remodeling, rebuilding, renovating, and combining also means some buildings get torn down or sold to become something that masks their history, not build on it, the fate of Taft had to be clear from the get-go.

Although the students of Taft will be combined with students from a soon to be closed middle school nearby and news of a need for an appropriate facility might have implied the removal or modifications to the structure rendering it an oddly out of date section of a new, modern school building, the final outcome of ongoing discussions has the original structure safe.

Modifications may be made as additions might be added, but the original building stays as is.

It has, after all, designation as an historic building.

It had apparently gone through.

Although I and the principal at the time are connected in people’s minds with the whole historic designation business, it was 10-12 Special needs kids who got the whole ball rolling and two maintenance men who bought the time to get the papers processed as, once the papers were turned in and accepted, the process began and the recommended structure must remain intact pending the decision of the people who make those decisions.

History wins out and it is because of the quiet and necessary contributions of the unmentioned First Mates.

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