Dad

Dad’s name was Frank Louis Alciere, but when he was baptized in the North End of Boston in 1897 the priest was almost certainly speaking Italian, so his name really was Francesco Luigi Alciere. The church records, of course, were in Latin, so his official name was Franciscus Ludovicus Alciere. His mother put him in the sister school, but he was afraid of the nuns and ran away and tried to hide in a small space between two buildings, where he got stuck and had to be rescued. He went to public school until he got a scholarship to Boston College High School. He dropped out of B. C. during World War I and worked at the Boston Navy Yard as a metallurgist. The Draft Board sent him a notice to report for duty in the Army on November 21^st, 1918. The Armistice was signed on November 11^th, so he didn’t have to go. After the war he went to Tufts, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude.

He taught for a while at Somerville High School, then got a job teaching in Boston.

Dad at Somerville High

He married my mother, Gertrude Frances Moakley Alciere on April 28^th, 1929. He taught science at Roxbury Memorial High School (Boys), later known as Boston Technical High School, until the compulsory retirement age, 62, then he worked as a substitute teacher for several more years. Teaching was his life. He took great satisfaction in motivating the problem students to study and make something of themselves.

There were a lot of African American, or “colored”, as the term was in those days, students in Roxbury, and the press was in the habit of exaggerating the tension between the races. Dad used to say, “We don’t want the press to say we have race riots. If you are White, and you have something against a Colored kid, get one of your Colored friends to beat him up. If you are Colored and you have a problem with a White kid, get one of your White friends to beat him up. That way the press won’t say we had a race riot.”

One day the Colored students were having a special meeting in the assembly hall, with a Colored School Committeeman, and they posted kids at the doors leading into the assembly hall, so no outsiders would be able to eavesdrop. Dad found a bunch of White kids with sticks and pipes and iron bars getting ready for a fight. They said “The Colored kids are blocking the corridor. They have no right to do that. Dad explained what was going on, and they said, “Oh, that’s OK. They have a right to do that”, and put their weapons back in their lockers.

Another time, when he was retired and working as a substitute, he was in the car with a friend who was giving him a ride home, and he saw a crowd of kids in front of the school. There was a White and a Colored kid fighting, and a semicircle of White kids on one side of the fight, and a semicircle of Colored on the other side. Dad insisted on getting out of the car and pushing his way through the crowd. He watched for a while and then said, “I’m appointing myself referee of this fight. I’m qualified to do that. I’ve refereed a lot of fights in my day.” He then described, in good boxing jargon, some good punches that each kid had landed, and said, “I’m declaring this fight a draw. I want you to shake hands and everybody go home. We don’t want our school’s reputation spoiled by a race riot.” They shook hands and everybody went home amicably.

Dad had been very proud of the public schools at first, and insisted on sending me to public school when Mother wanted to send me to the Sister School, but before he finally retired he said, “The public schools have an impossible task.. They cannot succeed. The children’s needs are too varied, and there is no public consensus on what should be taught, or how.” He was right. More and more people are home schooling their children, and getting far better results than the public schools can hope to get.