This one is for Jerry Levin, who long ago introduced a generation of kids to J.D. Salinger and George Orwell and William Shakespeare, and somehow turned even the dreariest of grammar lessons into mornings of laughter and insight.
He taught 10th-grade English at Baltimore City College from the conformist Eisenhower era into the volcanic years of Richard Nixon, a time when thousands of Northwest Baltimore boys schlepped all the way across town to City if they didn’t walk to nearby Forest Park. He was the hippest, wittiest teacher I ever had, and maybe the best.
And I hope it pleased him when I told him so a few weeks back, when the doctors at Gilchrist Hospice were giving him only a little while left to live.
Here’s a snapshot to let you know how the kids at City felt about Levin. It’s 1967, and the public school teachers in Baltimore have decided to go on strike. What the hell, they’re citizens. They’re entitled, right?
The city says no. At City College, the teachers have marched straight from their classrooms to the sidewalks, where they’re marching around in a peaceful picket line. At City Hall, meanwhile, they’ve sent out the police cruisers. They’re arresting teachers all over town.
Out there on 33rd Street, they grab Levin. Then they grab Charlie Cherubin and Sam Banks and a bunch of others. And now come legions of City kids, massing alongside the cruisers where the cops are trying to shove these teachers.
The City kids start rocking the cruisers. Forget arrests, they’re telling the cops, we’re gonna flip these vans onto their sides. The only thing that stops them are the imploring voices of Levin and Cherubin and Banks, telling them, “We love you for this, but please don’t do it or they’ll arrest you, too.”
And as the cruisers race off, with the arrested teachers inside, the City kids stand there on the sidewalk, and what are they doing? They’re singing “City Forever,” the school anthem.
You want another testimonial? One of Levin’s students was Michael Tucker, who starred on TV’s “L.A. Law.” He was back in Baltimore one time, happily reminiscing.
“Oh, I was a terrible student,” he said. “But one teacher, Jerry Levin, turned it around for me. He changed my whole life. He got me into literature and poetry. He taught me to appreciate Shakespeare. That’s what started me in acting.”
Levin was part of a marvelous young English faculty at City in those days, including Bob Moskowitz and Joe Brune, Harold Levin and Joel Glasser, and Cherubin.
They thought nothing of defying those uptight education authorities around the country who tried to ban certain books from classrooms, including Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.”
Jerry Levin and his colleagues embraced the books. They understood the need for their kids to connect with a modern character. And here was a scarred, confused adolescent voice so familiar that it mirrored our own. Reading was no longer a chore, but a passion.
Levin also coached one of City’s debate clubs, and headed the folk singing club. Many of these great teachers reached beyond the classroom. Brune coached football. Cherubin was adviser to the school paper, The Collegian.
Cherubin knew we all wanted to go to college. He’d sit us down in that little newspaper office and say, “You all want to get into a good college. Well, I have letters of recommendation that could get Hitler into Hadassah.”
We were remembering some of these old stories as Levin lay in bed at Gilchrist a few weeks back. Jerry’s wife, Effie, was there. So were Bob Moskowitz and his wife and son, and a few others.
The end comes to each of us, eventually, and if we live long enough we find ourselves asking: Did I make the journey worthwhile? Did I help anybody besides myself?
Teachers like Jerry Levin hopefully know the answer to such questions. He helped a lot of boys become men. He helped us get over the rough spots. And that’s a pretty good epitaph for anyone.
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