A Gaze From the Past Conjures Fear--and Hope--for the Future

His eyes still sparkle through the photograph’s faded sepia tone:

my great-grandfather, dapper in his straw hat, ice-cream suit and handlebar mustache. A stowaway on a steamer bound for America--land of infinite possibilities to a poor Swedish boy of 19.

My great-grandfather, trying his best to look austere for a photograph taken with future generations in mind. A vagabond with P.T. Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth, until settling down in bustling young Reno, Nev., the Silver City frontier.

My great-grandfather, a Gay ‘90s dandy, ready to capture the promise of the next century.

My century.

Oxnard High School opened its gates to more than 3,000 students this school year. There is very little gaiety to accompany the last school year of this century, of this millennium. Our focus seems less to do with promise and potential and more to do with security and control.

Our first schoolwide assembly packed students into the gym not to root for the home team or to dance their teen jitters away but to hear how canine detection units will be implemented on our high-security campus.

Watching my class of seniors dutifully sitting through this disturbing assembly, I thought of my great-grandfather who was about their age when he embarked on his American adventure.

I wondered if he would recognize our barricaded campus--fortified with surveillance cameras, metal detectors and armed police--as a place of learning. I wondered what his keen eyes would make of Pounce, a gregarious Labrador retriever trained to sniff out illegal substances and firearms hidden in backpacks, lockers and other personal belongings. I wondered what he’d think of Pounce’s eager enthusiasm to root out our worst vices.

*

I sat there with my seniors in restless silence as Pounce demonstrated his prowess at detecting what his animal innocence could never experience: our fall from grace. I sat there in silence, and realized that we have made our children the repository of all we dread in ourselves.

Half of all children in America are raised in single-parent homes, most of which fall below the poverty line. Entertainment is permeated with gratuitous violence and sexual sensationalism; overseas drug cartels flourish on U.S. dollars; and arms dealers turn high profits on the proliferation of lethal weapons.

Meanwhile, I sit behind my security doors at home watching the horrors of the evening news, and wonder what in my heart has contributed to the madness.

Grandpa Berquest, is this what you had in mind when you posed for us all those years ago?

How could he? When he was a boy, adolescence was the luxury of the rich. In his lifetime most of his friends, if they survived the ravages of disease and poverty, by age 16 were married and supporting a family, or marching off to war. His Gay ‘90s were not so sweet, and the century his generation ushered in saw the devastation of two world wars.

Clearly, the promise captured in his faded photograph is still waiting to be realized.

At the close of this century, I pause to look at my students. And if I can resist the temptation to turn them into a mirror of my worst fears, I see the potential of what my great-grandfather undoubtedly hoped for: a brighter future.

*

Current paranoia aside, the truth is, I’m more likely to be struck by lightning than to be involved in a life-threatening situation on a public school campus. As statistics go, my students are still the best bet when it comes to banking on the future.

A hundred years from now, when my great-grandchildren behold my photographed gaze, may the hope my eyes hold be the life they live.