I Thought I Knew the Story

I went back to Leavenworth, Kansas, for my 55th high school reunion thinking I knew the story. After all, I'd been carrying it around for more than half a century. What I didn't know was that before the weekend was over, one of my classmates was going to give me a piece of my own story that I never knew was missing.

There were about 385 of us in the Leavenworth High School Class of 1971, and maybe sixty or so showed up for the reunion. Some of our classmates have passed away, some couldn't come because of health or circumstances, and some simply don't do reunions. But those of us who came had traveled fifty-five years of life to get there, and I had a ball seeing people I'd known since grade school, junior high, and high school.

Friday night was our meet-and-greet, and I had been asked to speak. The place was crowded and loud, and another classmate spoke before me about 9/11, which was especially meaningful in a military town like Leavenworth. Between the restaurant noise and people talking, however, hearing a speaker wasn't easy.

Then they handed me the microphone. I've been speaking for a long time, so I did what speakers sometimes have to do and basically told everybody, "If you want to hear me, you're going to have to quiet down." And they got quiet and listened.

My talk was called "Keep Showing Up." I talked about the fact that after fifty-five years of marriages and careers, children and grandchildren, victories and disappointments, laughter and grief, every person in that room had traveled a long way to get there. Not just miles, but life.

I also talked about the empty chairs. Some classmates weren't there because of health, some had passed away, some had lost touch, and some might carry memories of high school—or even previous reunions—that were different from ours. That was when I decided to tell a story that wasn't quite as comfortable.

Years ago, one of our reunions had been held at the Eagles Club. For some classmates, it was simply the place where the reunion was held, but when I came home, members of my family reminded me that there had been a time when Black people weren't welcome there. I didn't tell my classmates that to make anybody feel guilty, and I don't believe the people planning that reunion deliberately intended to exclude anybody.

That wasn't the point. The point was that two people can grow up in the same town, attend the same school, sit in the same classroom, and still experience the world differently. At our age, I figured we were finally old enough—and hopefully wise enough—to understand that.

Same building. Different memory.

I had almost talked myself into not saying any of that. A few days before the reunion, I had attended a storytelling workshop where we talked about physical courage, emotional courage, and something called moral courage. When I mentioned my reunion and some of the history surrounding it, a couple of older, experienced storytellers challenged me to consider whether this was my opportunity to demonstrate some of that moral courage.

In other words, was I going to tell my classmates what really happened, or was I going to tell them only what was comfortable? I don't particularly like backing away from a challenge, so Friday night I told the story. Nobody got angry, nobody walked out, and people listened.

Then I challenged my classmates to do something in return. I asked them to listen to stories that might be different from their own, because stories allow us to hear what we may not have seen. I walked away from the microphone feeling pretty good about what I had done.

I thought that was my moment of moral courage. Turns out, the reunion wasn't finished with me yet.

For most of my life, I have carried another story about growing up in Leavenworth. When I was in fourth grade, I left Lincoln School, which had been an all-Black school, and went to Third Avenue School, which had been an all-white school. I remembered what it felt like to be that little Black boy walking into a school where suddenly almost everybody looked different from me.

That was my integration story. At least, I thought it was. Then one of my white classmates told me something I had either forgotten, never known, or simply never stopped to consider.

When integration came to Leavenworth, it wasn't just Black children moving into previously white schools. White children were moving, too. And this classmate looked at me and jokingly thanked me for making room for him, because when I left Lincoln School for Third Avenue, he left North Broadway School and went to Lincoln.

I laughed when he said it. Then I thought, Well, I'll be damned. For more than sixty years, I had carried that memory as the story of what happened to me, and suddenly I could see another fourth-grader standing on the other side of it.

I was the little Black boy leaving the Black school and walking into a white school. But while I was walking through one door, another little boy was walking through another. While I was learning what it felt like to enter his world, he was learning what it felt like to enter mine.

Same city. Same school system. Same moment in history. Different doors. Different stories.

Nothing about his story changed what had happened to me. My experience was still real, and my memories were still mine. But for the first time, I understood that my experience wasn't the whole story.

Maybe that's one of the greatest gifts another person's story can give us. We don't have to surrender our own truth to make room for somebody else's. Sometimes hearing another person's story doesn't change what happened; it changes how much of what happened we are able to see.

Saturday night, I was asked to give the toast. I looked around at those classmates and said the evening wasn't about comparing résumés; it was about celebrating stories. Doctors, accountants, teachers, businesspeople, parents, grandparents, people who had experienced great victories, and people who had survived things the rest of us knew nothing about—they had all lived fifty-five years of story since the last bell rang at Leavenworth High School.

We even filled out story cards telling what had happened in our lives, and I'm still reading them. I'm still learning and still being surprised by people I've known for more than half a century. It turns out you can know someone for fifty-five years and still not know their story.

When I got home from Leavenworth, another surprise was waiting for me. There was a handwritten letter from one of the women who had been at that storytelling workshop. She remembered our conversation about moral courage, wrote that she was sorry I had experienced some of the things I'd talked about, and said she would be praying for me while I was at the reunion.

I need to write her back and tell her that her prayers worked. I stood up, said what I believed needed to be said, and didn't hide the uncomfortable part of my story just to make the room comfortable. My classmates listened, and for that I am grateful.

But I also need to tell her something I didn't know when I left for Leavenworth. I thought moral courage was going to be the courage I needed to tell my classmates my story. I came home understanding that courage had one more lesson waiting for me.

For fifty-five years, I thought going back to a reunion was mostly about remembering. Remembering the people, the places, the music, the teachers, the foolish things we did, and the people we used to be. Now I think there may be another reason to go back.

Sometimes we go back because there are pieces of our own story that somebody else has been carrying for us.

I went to Leavenworth believing moral courage meant being willing to stand up and tell the truth about what I had experienced. And I'm glad I stood up. I'm glad I told it.

But an old classmate reminded me of a little white boy walking through the door of Lincoln School just as a little Black boy was walking out. After more than sixty years, I finally saw both children.

Courage got me on my feet to tell my story.

Wisdom put me back in my chair to hear his.

And after fifty-five years, I discovered something I should have known all along:

Sometimes the story that changes your life isn't the one you finally have the courage to tell.

It's the one you finally have the courage to hear.