ZAROIAN AND THE GENTRY BRIDGE
By Ken Hamilton
Niagara Gazette
5286/HAMILTON-Zaroian-and-the-Gentry-Bridge
May 6 2010
NIAGARA FALLS — There are those who lay themselves down over our
troubles and act as not only a narrow bridge between where we once
were and where we are now, but also whose influence spans the inclusive
breadth of our many other relationships and interests along the way.
>>From time to time I will write a column for which I get e-mails
from readers that tell me how much I had touched them. Sometimes I
get an e-mail from a reader that touches me in the same way that my
column touched them. I received such an e-mail from an old friend,
John Zaroian. We met when we worked together in the early 1980s at
the Robert Moses Power Plant.
Last week I wrote about the futility of merely holding a sign, signing
a petition, or some other symbolic act in curing the sickness of racism
that so often plagues our society unless by our private behavior we
are willing to make a personal commitment to influence someone that
is unlike ourselves.
Also in that column was how I had set aside the already written
column about three wonderful women that included an associate of mine,
Mariella Gentry. In Zaroian’s e-mail, he wrote about his relationship
with his schoolteacher, Ms. Gentry and the profound effect that she
had upon him that still echoes off even the softest spots in his
heart. Those echoes shake the dark clouds of his mind in such a way
that it causes them to rain down tears even today.
Zaroian’s e-mail not only improved the one story, but also merged
the one with the other.
Zaroian wrote that he had begun attending third grade at 24th Street
School after living in Canada for nearly three years. Gentry was his
teacher. Aside from his parents, she was one of the first persons of
authority in his troubled life. I will not disclose those troubles
except that of his hyperactivity.
"Miss Gentry," he says, "was the kindest, most caring and most
influential teacher in my entire life." He started school immediately
upon moving into his new neighborhood, and, as kids often are, they
weren’t eager to make friends with the stranger.
Of Ms. Gentry, Zaroian says, "… she stood in the gap. That’s not to
say discipline was not doled out my way. She smacked my hands with the
ruler countless times, but she also made sure I understood what she was
doing it for. She was determined to teach me. She never quit on me."
Here is how it all ties in with last week’s column. Zaroian was a
little, skinny, 9-year-old Italian-Armenian kid. On the other hand,
Gentry was a plus-sized African American woman. Yet each, though very
different, were dedicated to the other.
"She shoehorned her large body into a school desk next to me after
school time and again, wiped my sobbing eyes and hugged me, read me
stories to calm me down," Zaroian wrote. "… then (she) went the
extra mile to get me to learn the lessons."
"She cared, I guess is what I mean," he goes on to say. "I had no
concept of racism, but I remember her telling something about her
family’s troubles with it down south. Through the years, I would
go visit her. I have her obituary in my scrapbook. I say from the
bottom of my heart, Kenny, I loved her and miss her today. Forty
five years later, I’m crying now because of you. I miss her. I truly
believe that even as life got tougher further on, the attention she
directed my way gave me the power not to be a quitter. I was worth
something, and that better days were just around the corner. She made
the difference in my life at a critical time. God put her in my life
then. She is still in my life now."
Gentry went on to teach at Harry F. Abate School. She symbolically
handed the keys to her classroom to Catherine Byrd-Sitarski and
started an organization called the Black Cultural Committee. It was
on that bridge that I joined Gentry, Reverend Chuck Boyer, Michael
Brundidge, Gerald Barksdale and others and her, to work on community
issues when I was in my 20s. She thought it important that African
American youth know and understand who and what we are. Apparently,
through Zaroian’s reckoning, she thought the same for every child.
>>From her organization sprang the annual African American festivals
of today.
Zaroian often thinks about Gentry, and he can turn the pages of his
scrapbook and ponder his relationship with that friend and teacher
that did far more than just some symbolic act of curing.
But, for me, in many of the things that I do for others, I hear the
echoes of Gentry’s footstep, and many others like her, behind me; and
I see her face each time I pass Niagara Presbyterian Church on Military
and Lockport roads: it was there that I attended her memorial service.
And though we may be turned about while we walk upon those "Gentry"
bridges of our lives, regardless of which way we go thereafter,
even if it is in the same direction from which we just came, we
arrive at our destinations much better off than when we started:
This, for having even just once being upon those bridges.
Ken Hamilton is a Niagara Falls resident. Contact him at
[email protected].