Rosemary Roberts: Aycock teacher was a hit
Think back for a minute to your own school days. Do you remember that special teacher who exposed you to bold ideas and a bigger world? Somebody whose standards were exceedingly high and expected nothing less from your own?
Meet Johnson Harriss, a beloved teacher at Aycock Junior High School (now Aycock Middle School), who later taught at Page High School until he retired in 2002.
Last Sunday afternoon, former students, now in their 40s, came from Ohio, Washington, Virginia, South Carolina and towns and cities across North Carolina to gather at downtown’s Kress Terrace to honor Harriss. They were alums of the Aycock Drama Department, even though there wasn’t exactly a drama department but rather a yen to put on plays.
“Today we’re celebrating everything that’s good about education,” said Jay Harris, a local banker who emceed the tributes, summing them up perfectly.
Back in the 1970s, Harriss had taught him and hundreds of other students at Aycock. Harriss taught English, history and drama, but most important, he taught kids to think big, dream big, and believe in themselves. And when you think about it, those are life’s best lessons.
There were dozens of tributes Sunday afternoon.
Jim McCleskey, known as “Jamey” at Aycock, lives in Washington, where he is director of the Office of the Governor of North Carolina. He remembered first hearing about Bertoldt Brecht, the German playwright, in Harriss’ junior high class. “I didn’t hear about Brecht again until years later as a student at Duke University,’’ he said.
Harriss introduced students to authors, playwrights and scholars who today, might seem “over their heads.”
Harriss didn’t just teach drama, he staged lavish, ambitious, Broadway musicals performed by kids who’d never set eyes on Broadway and didn’t know they could sing or act.
Months later (rehearsals often lasted three months), these same kids found themselves standing on Aycock’s stage, their knees wobbly from nerves, performing in such Broadway classics as “My Fair Lady,” “Auntie Mame,” “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “The King and I,” “Oliver,” “Man of La Mancha” and “Camelot.” Altogether, 10 plays were produced in five years. How many Broadway directors could pull off that feat?
Harriss was producer, director, gadfly, comforter and worrier. He mixed praise with criticism. He once stormed out of rehearsal because the students weren’t giving it their best. They did the next time.
He once sent the cast a stern memo (copied on a mimeograph machine) saying he was “disgusted” by their rehearsal performance. They im-proved.
In today’s politically correct world where kids are too often coddled for fears their egos will be bruised, he might regrettably have to make adjustments.
None of these musicals could have been staged, of course, without stage managers, costume designers (often mothers of students), and musicians.
A few days before “Charlie Brown,” his first play, the pianist fell through. When Doris Bernhardt, a gifted pianist and parent, was asked to rescue the production, she went to Aycock where “I heard those kids singing their hearts out. I couldn’t say no.” With only two days to practice, Bernhardt mastered the score. She also got hooked and continued as pianist until the last play, “Camelot,” was performed in 1979.
Harriss, a native of Wilmington and a Morehead Scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he also received a graduate degree, arrived at Aycock in 1971, the first year of school desegregation and cross-town busing.
Donna Peruse Pruitt, who is African American, said Harriss taught her that race didn’t matter.
“He loved you and treated you the same no matter what color you are,” she said in a touching tribute.
Tyrone “Tiger” Butler, another African American, said something similar when he sang a song from “Man of La Mancha.”
When Harriss got his turn at the microphone, he reminisced, handed out roses and explained that “one reason I love musicals is because they have lessons of life in them.”
And that, of course, is what all fine teachers hope to achieve. After hearing Sunday’s tributes from former students, Harriss will surely know he’s had a powerful influence on students and, as they say on Broadway, been “a big hit.”
Rosemary Roberts writes a column on alternate Fridays. E-mail: rmroberts@triad.rr.com.
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