NYC Educator: The Good, the Bad and the Really Ugly

NYC Educator: The Good, the Bad and the Really Ugly:

The Good, the Bad and the Really Ugly

I learned of the death of Eli Wallach on the way to grade Regents last week in someone else's school.  The star of stage and screen had died at the age of 98.  I will always best remember him as Tuco, "the Ugly," part-time sidekick to Blondie, in Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

Eli Wallach was a New Yorker; while Wallach was building a career in film, his brother, Sam, faced some pretty big challenges of his own.  He served as president of the Teachers Union, 1945-1948, a more radical precursor of the UFT.  He was instrumental in pushing the Teachers Union to include substitutes.  He, ultimately, suffered in 1948 under the post-WWII anti-communist hysteria that led to the passage of the Feinberg Law, requiring the firing of anyone advocating the overthrow of government, and the imposition of loyalty oaths.  Teachers were asked to renounce all past associations with Communists as well as to inform upon other teachers.   There were even undercover informants, including one "Blondie" or "Operator 51."  Wallach penned a statement published in The New York Times, co-signed by sixty others, including Albert Einstein, arguing for a teacher's right to his or her own personal and political beliefs.

This period was documented in a film entitled, "Dreamers and Fighters:  The NYC Teacher Pages," narrated by Eli Wallach.  Although in 1967 the Supreme Court found the firing of teachers amid this Red-Scare hysteria unconstitutional, Sam Wallach never taught again. He went on to help mentally-retarded children at Maimonides Developmental Center.  As he was about to retire in December 1976, the NYC Board of Education reinstated him with nine others.  They regained their pensions.  Sam Wallach died in February of 2001.

In retrospect, Sam Wallach stated that the radical Teachers Union (replaced by the UFT in 1964), NYC Educator: The Good, the Bad and the Really Ugly: