Dov'è Lester? Ecco Lui!!

I really do not know how to start this post, but I guess I just will. Fran and I first came to Italy in 1999. We flew into Rome, where her niece Amanda met us at the airport, and she drove us through fires and smoke in 100 plus degree weather to a beautiful hotel she had found in Naples. After taking a ferry from there to Sicily, and touring, some of the time with Amanda, we returned to Naples and the same hotel. I had wanted to see Positano, where my grandmother, Irma Jonas, had run an art workshop. We hired a driver for the day, and after seeing the Pompei ruins, as well as we could with Fran's sciatica problems, we stopped in Sorrento for lunch. While Fran was in the bathroom, I looked up and saw one of the peripatetic African traders outside the restaurant selling drums. As the church bells announced noon, our eyes met, we smiled at each other, and when Fran came out, I wanted her to look at the man, because he looked exactly like Lester. Of course, he had walked off by that time, and I could not find him on any of the other streets.

Who is Lester? This is the other start to this story. For years, and it felt like a wonderful lifetime, Lester worked with me in my classroom with behaviorally different junior high school, and later, high school students. In our case, the students were acting out, junior criminals. We worked well together. It was as if both of us were born for the work, and born to be partners. When a student decided to act out, we each knew what we would do, and how we would back each other up, without saying a word. When it came to the kids, our minds were one. When a white student used racial epithets, I would not talk to the student, only Lester could give him his work, correct his papers, or do whatever needed being done. When one of the black students used racial epithets, they were mine to deal with.

Lester was a large man. He was about six and a half feet tall, dark skinned, and weighed about 300 pounds, or a little more. He was a gentle man, and cared about the kids in a truly marvelous and loving way. I had visited him about a week before leaving for Italy. He and I had gotten out of the teaching game, and he was a much better paid reservation clerk with USAirways, and I was an administrator in Fulton. He would come to the graduate classes I taught at Oswego State to give guest lectures about dealing with behaviorally disordered children.

Now back to the main thread. I could not find this wonderful drum seller who looked like Lester. When I got home to the states, there were five phone messages for me. Four of them were from friends in Syracuse. Lester had died at six o'clock in the morning on the day I saw the drum seller in Sorrento. It was as if his spirit had visited me. Six in the morning in Syracuse is noon in Sorrento. It gave me chills, but I refused to belief in such stuff.

Now, I am just back from a trip to Florence, Rome, and Sorrento with some friends from the states. Of course there was no sign of the drum seller in Sorrento when I looked for him the first two days. On our third and last day, I saw him sitting in the main square, without any drums. I asked him if he sold drums. He did. I went to the place where he stored his wares, and bought a drum from him. I told him about Lester, and told him how I had kept my memory of the drum seller alive, and that I was so glad to see him again. He is from Senegal, and has a wonderful warmth and gentleness about him, just like Lester.

He gave me a Lester like smile. Now I have to learn to play his drum.