<Begin Segment 29>

AI: Well, speaking of a change, in the thirty-three years that you taught and counseled at Sutter Junior High School, you then saw several, three decades of social change happening. And I'm wondering if you could just comment a little bit on that. Because from the time, so much change, from the time that you had been a child to then, now the '40s, '50s, '60s, into the '70s. What --

RC: I think the worst time was the Vietnamese situation. (...) The young people (...) just had attitudes that were not healthy for them.

AI: In what sense?

RC: Drugs. Liquor. Anger. These were Caucasian children that I'm speaking of. And a different attitude towards life. Apparently, their older siblings were experimenting with all kinds of things. And it affected them and they picked some of the habits up. It was a very difficult time. And it was answered by the Sacramento Police Department with a program that was very, very wonderful. They called it Youth Service Officers. And most junior highs had two Youth Service Officers on campuses throughout the city until that situation was resolved and the war was over. But you see how strange things work on people at certain times? These were Caucasian young people that were just blown away by that war. And some of the things that they did were, I'm sure they look back as -- they were dangerous things. And yet that was, seemed to be the thing that, that their older siblings were doing to take their minds off that war that they were going to have to go and fight. So, that was a very difficult time. I would have angry parents coming in. (...) They were angry because the vice-principal would be dealing with drunken girls, marijuana, boys smoking marijuana, carrying marijuana in their pockets and so on. And parents were angry at the teachers in the schools for saying, "You can't do that. We can't tolerate that." So we were, we were being bad parents to them. They were being good parents, or so they thought. And it was nice when that war ended, because we gradually got a change of attitude and could get back to the business at hand.

AI: It sounds like the young people were -- that you worked with were, some of them quite disturbed.

RC: Very, very disturbed. I also had deaf and hard of hearing children in my counseling situation. And it was, it was a good experience for me because I lost the hearing in both ears overnight. And the right ear came back. And it's, it's... I still have half an ear there, hearing-wise. Otherwise, I would be totally deaf. And it gave me an opportunity to deal with deaf children and know what they go through. And I tried to learn sign language, but it didn't work. [Laughs] Because their, the teacher of the deaf wanted them to learn to read lips and...

AI: Ah, I see.

RC: So they wanted me to talk.

AI: Right. [Laughs]

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.