W T Woodson High School - Cavalier Yearbook (Fairfax, VA)

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faculty and administration

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william p. ladson, principal I was doing my best to keep from getting frustrated, but I was not succeeding. My hands kept balling up into fists, and I would carefully unknot them, finger by finger. “Yes, Mr. Ladson, I see your point, but re¬ ally, why can ' t we have the Prom out of school?” He was sitting there, in that brown leather chair, giving me his reasonable look — politique — and he said, “Look, Jim, you will have all your life to go . . .” and 1 closed my eyes and just shut him out. I was feeling persecuted, and the words were the same, never changing: “It’s not time to make a change, just relax, take it slowly you’re still young, that’s your fault there’s so much you have to go through • • • The secretary came to the door. “Call for you on line 31, Mr. Ladson. It’s the Area Four Office.” I watched him on the phone, thinking, I’ve known him for more than three years, I really ought to know what to expect. Yet as I watched him on the phone, getting red in the face, telling whoever was on the other end of the line that high school students have the ca¬ pability to do some things on their own. And I got to thinking about how he had spent the day, mining through a two-foot stack of paper on his desk, informing a new teacher that we hadn’t the money to rehire her, talking to an irate mother, listening to the hassles of old men who could not decide whether it is the school’s purpose to educate or to give grades. And I began to feel something vaguely akin to pride for this man, this man who had frequently left his career in the balance to let young people do what they must. It amounts to so much more than the rhetoric, the politi¬ cian’s attitude. The rest can be forgiven. It was late when I went into the office, and later when we went out. I was looking into a tired, haggard face when I asked, “Is it worth it?” “I don’t know, Jim. I think so.” So I stood there leaning on a locker, with that quiet but kind of clamorous feeling some folks get when the school is completely empty, devoid of life, watching him walk down the corridor by the auditorium. He walked past the band room, dark with the hall lights out, and he stopped at the door. He looked out the window, like a guy in the 1890’s, maybe, who was leaving the factory for the last time to go God knows where, the factory where he worked like hell but which offered the only real security he ever knew. He stood looking out into the blackness, saying, maybe, “It’s awful cold out there,” then he turned and looked back up the empty hallway, and I thought maybe he was going to cry. Then he pushed the door open, and walked out into the cold of a January evening.. “Blossom, smile some, sun shine down my way, lately I’ve been lonesome . . .