There Went The Neighborhood - Audio Interview: Harold Simons

Sat, 08/10/2024 - 5:57pm

When: June 20, 2022

Harold Simons attended Jones School in the 1950s, and he remembers his sixth grade teacher Harry Mial as an important role model. He went on to teach physical education and coach varsity basketball and golf at Huron High School from 1980 to 2007.

More interviews are available in the There Went The Neighborhood Interview Archive.

Transcript

• [00:00:02] HEIDI MORSE: Today is June 20th, 2022. I'm Heidi Morse, an archivist at the Ann Arbor District Library, and I'm speaking with Harold Simons about Jones School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Could you please say and spell your name for us please?
• [00:00:19] HAROLD SIMONS: Harold Simons. Harold, H-A-R-O-L-D, Simons, S-I-M-O-N-S.
• [00:00:34] HEIDI MORSE: Great. When and where did you grow up? Could you tell us a bit about that?
• [00:00:39] HAROLD SIMONS: Grew up on Fuller Street between State Street and Glen Ave along the railroad tracks on the southern side, that's the Old Neighborhood for us. We grew up there and lived in Ann Arbor all my life with the exception of one year in Ypsilanti.
• [00:01:08] HEIDI MORSE: Did your parents move here or had they lived here for a long time as well?
• [00:01:12] HAROLD SIMONS: Yeah, our parents were born here in Ann Arbor, and so they lived here all their life also.
• [00:01:22] HEIDI MORSE: This interview also in large part is to ask about your memories about Jones School in Ann Arbor. Could you tell us what grades did you attend Jones School, and around what year or decade was that?
• [00:01:40] HAROLD SIMONS: You want to date me, going back. I'll say roughly 1951 to I guess 1957 is when I attended Jones School.
• [00:02:02] HEIDI MORSE: What do you remember about the school? Does anything stand out to you? Just about the building or your educational experience there?
• [00:02:12] HAROLD SIMONS: Had a lot of fun being that age and basically the neighborhood kids were in attendance where I was at. We joined up, of course, with other neighborhoods but it was primarily a minority-attended school. As I said, it was an activity there that it was a continuation of our neighborhood fun, especially at recess time or gym time.
• [00:02:49] HEIDI MORSE: Do you have any specific memories or stories about Harry Mial or other teachers or staff members that stand out to you?
• [00:03:03] HAROLD SIMONS: Harry Mial was my sixth grade teacher, my first minority teacher, and quite frankly, my only minority teacher through my entire student career in Ann Arbor public schools. It was impressionable, of course, being a sixth grader. First of all, there was only one other male teacher that I had as a classroom teacher there. Another gentleman by the name of Andy Anderson, who was the gym teacher that got me started learning how to play basketball. But Harry was my classroom teacher that I had throughout the course of a day. Remembering back, he was stern, he definitely had control of the class. But at the same time, he appeared to be fair and patient. Where some other teachers throughout my elementary, as I remember, [NOISE] had a quick yell on when there was a little misbehavior in your class, but he somewhere or another was able to contain that and had a lot of patience. On one occasion, there was a student that he and I had gotten into a fight in the classroom. And Mr. Mial took me aside after the incident and I'm sure he took the other student aside too. Not both of us at the same time though. He sat down with me and he talked to me as if he was my dad. He explained to me the situation after I told him what had happened and he was definitely encouraging, pointed out to me that those things are going to happen, unfortunately, and to do my best as I tried that day to avoid it. Like I said, he showed a great deal of patience and he was a wonderful teacher.
• [00:05:23] HEIDI MORSE: Thank you. That's a great detailed memory. [NOISE] Now you may have been older by this point, or about to graduate, or maybe already graduated. Do you remember when Jones School was shut down?
• [00:05:43] HAROLD SIMONS: No, I don't remember the year when it was shut down, and I can't remember if it went immediately to Community High School at the time that it shut down. But it was well after I had left it.
• [00:06:01] HEIDI MORSE: I understand that you taught and coached at Ann Arbor Public Schools. Could you briefly tell us when you started teaching or what positions you held?
• [00:06:14] HAROLD SIMONS: I came back to Ann Arbor after graduating from Eastern Michigan University and got into physical education at Huron High School. I was hired in as the head basketball coach and a couple of years after being there, the head golf coach. We're talking roughly 1980 is when I left Eastern Michigan University as a teacher and a coach and came over to the Ann Arbor Public Schools. As I said, I was at Huron High School from '80 to 2007, and I taught physical education and coached basketball for 20 years and golf for 22 years at the varsity level as the head coach over at Huron High School. I felt good about it, I tried the college-level. It was unusual. I was hired in right after competing in basketball at Eastern Michigan University and I was hired in as a freshman basketball coach over there and an instructor and a golf coach for a few years. But when that didn't pan out, I was able to come back and replace my high school basketball coach, Ed Klum, and he assisted me and I had Bill Harris as an assistant and things went very well there in both basketball and golf. Not to mention hundreds and hundreds of students that I had in physical education throughout that career.
• [00:07:58] HEIDI MORSE: What was your impression of how the Ann Arbor school system served Black students? Did you notice any differences in educational outcomes for white students versus Black students?
• [00:08:11] HAROLD SIMONS: [OVERLAPPING] Are you referring to the time as I was a student that I could pick up on it, because if that was that I could not really tell because of course I'm engrossed in everything and didn't pay attention unless it was one of my friends that happened to get suspended for whatever they might have done. So as a student, I didn't pick up on it that much. I kept my head to the grindstone and worked on my academics so I could get into college. I was that kind of a student, so I didn't notice much as a student. As a faculty member and as a coach, there were times when I felt that perhaps a minority student got the raw end of a deal. But again, that was only on a few occasions. In a lot of instances, those that got in trouble were those that got in trouble continuously. It was a situation where we can't say that it was the administration, we can't say it was a particular teacher, if the student in fact had a history throughout their career of having things along that line happen to them. All outward appearance as a teacher, as a coach, if you paid attention, if you listened, if you followed instructions, as in most things, then nothing was going to happen to you. If you were a troublemaker, then something would happen. I did have, fortunately, a great leader in Dr. Joetta Mial, who was Harry Mial's wife, and she was a principal over at Huron High School for part of the time, as I was over there and showed great leadership and kept the ship sailing in the right direction.
• [00:10:27] HEIDI MORSE: Did you participate in any organization for teachers or coaches during your time at the Ann Arbor Public Schools?
• [00:10:36] HAROLD SIMONS: Of course, we couldn't help but participate in faculty meetings and different committees and groups that they form right there at Huron High School. Of course, I belong to both coaching situations and I'm a lifetime member of the Golf Coaches Association of the State of Michigan, a lifetime member of the Basketball Coaching Association in the state of Michigan.
• [00:11:17] HEIDI MORSE: This is maybe one of the last questions. Were there ever any more substantial altercations between students that seemed to be racially motivated and/or were there any student protests that you recall during your time there? I know there were some, I think in the '70s. That may have preceded you.
• [00:11:52] HAROLD SIMONS: No, right. Nothing of that nature, of the scale that they were after I graduated from high school and got into college and started my teaching career at the university level. There wasn't anything to speak of. You know, an occasional fight between a white and a brown person. Was it racially motivated? We don't know. But other than an occasional fight, there was nothing like it was primarily during the '70s.
• [00:12:30] HEIDI MORSE: Okay. I'd like to ask one more question. You said your parents lived in Ann Arbor their whole lives. Do you know whether they attended Jones School?
• [00:12:49] HAROLD SIMONS: I can only assume because my mom and dad both lived over pretty much in the neighborhood that we lived in, or the Summit / Beakes Street area, that they would have attended that school, but I can't say for sure.
• [00:13:11] HEIDI MORSE: Alright. I'll ask my final question whether you have anything that came to mind as you were preparing for this interview about Jones School or your teaching career that you'd like to share?
• [00:13:27] HAROLD SIMONS: Only that the neighborhood in which we grew up, along with other neighborhoods back in those days, had their own little environment, had their own little communion and it was fantastic. Unfortunately, we've lost that over the years. But what we didn't have in gain, perhaps, at the school level, we certainly had it in our neighborhoods, with our neighborhood joining in and participating in daily activities whether it was wintertime or summertime. I think that helped many of us get over the hump if we were in a marginal area, because we could depend upon our neighbor two houses up or around the corner, and I just don't see that today, unfortunately.
• [00:14:35] HEIDI MORSE: Thank you. That really resonates with what others we've spoken to recall about the neighborhood as well. Well, thank you very much, Harold, for sharing your memories with us today.