July Newspaper Article

Here's what I wrote for the local newspaper this month about the temptation teacher's often feel to gripe about their pay levels:

My gut tightens a bit each time I hear a politician pander to teachers, telling us how very important our jobs are and how we deserve better pay. 

Now don’t misunderstand; I would gladly accept a raise in salary.  But I don’t feel entitled to one.

This attitude, admittedly rare among teachers, was undoubtedly shaped by my upbringing and lessons I learned from my parents. 

As a young man, my father was employed by Woolworth’s.  By the time I was born, dad had struck out on his own with a “Five and Dime” department store.   Dad and mom worked side by side to make a success out of that enterprise.  Among the numerous challenges over the years were shoplifters, an occasional crooked employee, persnickety customers, poor parking, competition, long hours on weekdays, weekends and holidays, and making payroll week after week, even during times of recession.  Through it all, dad’s main complaint seemed to be that all those hours standing on the store’s concrete floor left his feet with a perpetual ache.

Nowadays I know that dad had many restless nights, anxious over financial matters of all sorts, but he never let on to us kids at the time.  We felt fortunate to get a solid week’s worth of vacation time in the summer and, during years when we could afford to travel, we used that precious week to visit Dad’s relatives in South Dakota.

Mom and dad built the quintessential small business, morphed ultimately into a hardware store, through many years of hard work.  Over those years they provided numerous jobs in our community, trained dozens of teenagers in the importance of a solid work ethic, and extended to their customers free advice on everything from how to install a hot water heater to what color of paint to choose for a house.

They never ended up with a mansion or a fancy car, though they deserved at least as much.

One memory stands out in my mind:  how flabbergasted my dad was after a conversation with a local public school teacher.  Keep in mind, this was thirty years ago.  The man in question and his wife were both excellent teachers and roughly the same age as my parents. On that particular day, the teacher turned the conversation into an extended gripe about the smallness of teachers’ salaries.

When he found my father demonstrating insufficient sympathy to the sad plight of public school teachers and their pay, this man eventually blustered, “My wife and I each make only $25,000 a year.  How would your family like to try to survive on $50,000?”

Dad’s reply: “My wife and I would love to be making that much money.” 

That statement successfully ended the government employee’s complaint to that particular taxpayer and it’s what holds my tongue whenever I find myself tempted to grumble.