I Was Sure This Was Going to Happen

I was sure this was going to happen eventually. Read enough obituaries and soon enough you're going to read one about someone you knew directly. And today's obituary in the NYT for Heyward Dotson, 71, a star Columbia basketball player and Rhodes Scholar might be the first one I've read of, someone I can actually see in my mind.

I remember a Bill Gallo cartoon once in the Daily News that noted the 1985 passing of a boxer, Tony Janiro, a pretty boy middleweight who got destroyed by Jake LaMotta in a June 6, 1947 10-round bout at Madison Square Garden. It was a unanimous 10-round decision. The title of Bill's tribute obit was, "They're Calling My Class."

The phrase has always stuck in my mind. And now it's true. Before Columbia and Oxford, Heyward went to the same high school I did. He was my gym "squad" leader, which meant nothing other than he was first in the column of boys seated on the gym floor who got to look special wearing a red Stuyvesant t-shirt.

There were no special duties of this "squad" leader other than to wear the red shirt and count how many of us were in the column for attendance. It was purely a do nothing appointment.

I cringe every time I hear of my high school described as an "elite school, "one of the city's elite public schools." In the '60s, Stuyvesant was never referred to as "elite." It was, and still is, just a school whose middle class students took a test to get into and passed. It's one of the several selective high schools in the city. It was as predominately Jewish then as it is Asian now. "Elite" my ass.

I don't remember which of my three years at the school I had Heyward as my red shirt. The obit for Heyward tells us he was 6'4". He must have continued growing, because he never struck me as being that tall when the rest of us weren't.

In that mid-'60s era, Lew Alcindor was the dominant NYC high school player, coming out of the Catholic high school Power Memorial on the West Side. The school is no long there, and Lew Alcindor of course became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and made college and pro history.

I remember one kid in the gym class who was crowing that he had stolen a pair of Lew Alcindor's sneakers somehow. I was never one for basketball, but I don't think the PSAL public schools played the Catholic schools in anything other perhaps a city championship. And I'm not sure of that.

Long after graduation I heard of Heyward becoming a Rhodes Scholar, but the rest of his life's summary I knew nothing of.

I didn't know he tried for the NBA,was even with the Knicks, but his basketball career didn't advance. He became a lawyer, then ran staffs for politicians, and even made some attempts to run himself, but didn't advance there either.

I know the next alumni newsletter will probably have a story about his passing. As an "elite" high school in the city, there have been quite a few distinguished graduates. Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder graduated from there.

If I live long enough, there will probably be a few more alumni I'll read about in these tribute obituaries. As for myself, there's nothing I've done in life that will ever get me a tribute notice. I've achieved no advanced educational, or notable career milestones.

I do however seem to be able to count myself as a graduate of an "elite" high school, even if I bristle at the word "elite."

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