my piece about mr. haight

I was in the orthopedic handicapped class [to use the language they used back then] when they moved us high school aged disabled students from an elementary school campus to Redlands High School campus so that we could take regular classes. This was in 1964. So for two years I had Mr. Haight as my teacher. I have always been that lucky!

I probably had a history class with him. But what is stuck in my mind is his World Cultures class. We sat in a circle so we all could see one another, talk directly to one another on an equal basis … not like in the regular row seating. We did learn about the World Cultures, and therefore diversity. But there was much more going on in the class. Mr. Haight got us to listen to one another, to reveal what we really felt and thought … not in a debating environment where you had to defend yourself … but in an environment of exploring. So the shy kids had the same access as the whiz kids. Mr. Haight created this environment with a warm chuckling humor and high expectations. I probably ripped off a lot of his style. I hope I did!

I wasn’t one of the shy kids. I was an opinionated big mouth. But I communicated by a head pointer and letter board. [I also typed with the pointer.] I only invented the head pointer a few months before I entered the class. But because of the environment, I could fully engage in the discussions.

When Ruth, John and I with a couple of other weird kids started a political club, Mr. Haight was our adviser. And when we wanted to print our own underground paper, he printed it on the school’s mimeograph machine. He talked in my defense when my radical political opinions in my column in the school paper got me in to hot water. Back then the disabled weren’t supposed to be radical or even political, just religious! But Mr. Haight didn’t see me as a disabled student, but as a passionate kid with something to contribute.

Really it was the two years that what was the Fifties transformed into what was the Sixties. And I think Mr. Haight did a lot of that transforming! This is obvious within his classroom. But I remember my mother and I going to his house for a study group about Vietnam. I also remember us and him on the picket line about the Vietnam War in Redlands! This was before it was fashionable anywhere … but in Redlands of all places!

Now fast forward to the early eighties … I ran into him in San Francisco. He was tickled at how my life had turned out, how I was a director, how I had relationships, etc. For awhile he was thinking of “investing” in my first film. But in the end he decided to use his money to take a bike tour around Europe with his wife. This made perfect sense to me. I learned how to make love with life from Mr. Haight!

Frank Moore
1/7/2010