Jesse Turner: Still Walking, Five Years Later
By Anthony Cody.
It is a bit hard to recall where we were five years ago, but this re-post might help jog your memory, as it did mine. At the time, my blog had been running for a little less than two years at Education Week, and I had started a project called “Teachers Letters to Obama.”
Here is what I posted, in March of 2010:
Regular readers may recall that back in November [of 2009] I expressed my frustrations with the direction Obama and Duncan have taken in education through an open letter to the President. I also began a Facebook group, Teachers’ Letters to Obama, and collected over 100 passionate and well-informed letters, which I sent to Obama and Duncan in December. One of those letters stuck with me. I wanted to share it with my readers, but the author asked me to wait — he had some plans in the works. Those plans are now in place, so today I share with you this letter from Jesse Turner:
Walking is an old story for me. As a child my mother, sisters, and I spent a winter without gas heat, (Father walked out on us–we could not pay the gas bill before the winter legal shut off date). We had a little kerosene heater for our only source of heat in our apartment. It was the coldest winter of our lives. My mother was a waitress working 10 hours a day six days a week. There was never enough of anything.
I guess you might call us the original latch key kids of the 1960’s. We stole electricity from a socket in the hallway. Only one appliance at a time could be put on, and only at night. We were afraid someone would find out what we were doing. Each evening as our mother climbed the three flights of stairs to our little apartment we were there at the door complaining, “we’re cold, mom, and tired of sandwiches.” We moaned and we moaned every night.
She would kick off her white shoes, take off the red apron, and sit
down, and say “how was school today?”
down, and say “how was school today?”
We would shut off the lamp, put on the candle, and turn on the electric kettle. We tell her school was warm. We tell her no one got in trouble. My sisters would say we went to the library. The library was warm, and the library ladies were nice. As soon as she took that first sip of tea almost on cue I would say, “I’m cold mom.”
It never ceases to amaze me how she held it all in. Always a brave smiling face saying “well, then, let’s all have some tea” to warm everyone up. We would sleep with blankets, coats and sweaters.
We woke up during each night with cold noses, and blew warm air into cupped hands to warm them. I love doing that to this very day on a cold day.
Mother came home from work one particularly bad snowy night to find us huddled together complaining about how cold it was in our little apartment. This night tea was not enough. So she says “let’s walk around. Let’s walk around the apartment. Let’s start in the kitchen, and move from room to room. Let’s keep walking. Don’t stop! Keep walking now. Let’s keep adding some more clothes. Put a pair of pants over your pajamas. Put an extra shirt on. Keep walking. Don’t stop. Put on an extra sweater. Put your coats on. Keep walking — don’t stop.”
“Hey little Jess, you look like you are sweating. You must be hot.” “Oh yes, momma, I’m hot. Let’s take off our coats.”
All warm and cozy we sat down, and mom told us the story of the Hebrews, and how they walked for 40 years in the desert. We grew up watching Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, walk all over this nation of ours on Jesse Turner: Still Walking, Five Years Later - Living in Dialogue:
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