Donny Wilson

I met Donny Wilson (not his real name) when I was in the second grade. He was a transfer student from a place I don’t remember; and when Mrs. Walters (her real name) introduced him to the class, he didn’t say a word, he just smiled. It was an odd sort of smile, barely perceptible and sort of slanted, with one eye nearly closed. I thought at the time that Donny might be retarded (intellectually challenged in today’s vernacular, but that’s another story), yet somehow not. He was dirty and disheveled and obviously from “the wrong side of the tracks.” Actually, in Essex Junction, Vermont, a town where four major railroad tracks came together, everybody lived on one side of the tracks or other, so I guess half the town lived on “the wrong side.” Any way, Donny had the look of someone who didn’t know very much. Or, just possibly, the look of someone who knew too much.

Mrs. Walters and Donny’s subsequent teachers assumed the former. He was relegated to the back of the classroom, given very little attention, and allowed to do pretty much what he pleased as long as he didn’t disrupt the class. Of course, disrupting the class was pretty much Donny’s entire agenda. Allowed access to the school supplies room (which seemed really odd to me), he was constantly creating some bizarre project or other. I remember one such project which involved copious amounts of mucilage (this was before Elmer’s Glue was invented) and carbon paper. The project culminated with Donny being paraded to the front of the classroom, purple from head to toe, and covered with carbon paper, for a “show and tell” of what should never happen in the classroom. Donnie was then soundly whacked with a ruler several times on the palm of his left hand (the preferred method of discipline at our school, at least by Mrs. Walters), and dispatched to the principal’s office. In truth, Donny spent much of the second, third, and fourth grades sitting in a chair outside that office.

By the fifth grade it was decided by the administration that Donny’s presence in the classroom was not in the best interest of Donny or his classmates. It should be noted that this was many years before concepts like “mainstreaming” or “no child left behind” were ever discussed in the halls of Congress or even in the conference rooms of school boards. Consequently, an alternative educational program was devised for Donny. I’m sure it was promulgated as an “alternative, trade-based curriculum.” What it really was, was Donny spending each and every school day helping out the janitor. Granted, he became fairly accomplished with a mop and floor polisher, and the floors of our school never looked better, but I doubt if anyone really expected Donny to graduate to the ranks of a respected “educational facility custodian.”

Nonetheless, Donny spent the rest of his elementary and secondary school years as a janitor’s assistant. He never attended classes, didn’t participate in any school sports or activities, and didn’t even eat in the cafeteria with the other students: not that it seemed to bother Donny. To my recollection, he seldom if ever got into trouble after signing on with the custodial staff. He seemed to be, at least as far as I could tell, reasonably happy. I remember seeing him on several occasions in the presence of a pleasant, if not pretty, young lady who seemed to adore him. I believe they were eventually married. Interestingly, after completing his “senior year,” Donny graduated with the Essex Junction High School Class of 1964. He wore a cap and gown like everyone else, and received a diploma. I don’t know what the diploma said. I suspect it doesn’t matter.

What does matter, and the point of this story is what I discovered several years later at my 15-year high school reunion. I was told, and later verified, that Danny Wilson had attended college. He had, in fact, received an undergraduate degree in Education and later a master’s degree in Special Education. He was, at that time, the president of a small college in the Midwest. Donny Wilson, “retarded” janitor’s assistant, had become the president of an institution of higher education. Go figure.

01/23/11