Glencoe Elementary School in Portland, Oregon[1] was a super place for me to get started being educated. My mom and aunts and uncle went to Glencoe, and now my grandchildren are learning about their world in the same classrooms and hallways and on the same black-topped playgrounds.

The school wasn’t perfect during my years there, not that any school is. For example, throughout my early years in the 1950s, Glencoe was a segregated school. Children of diverse heritages were not to be found among our classmates. This sad separation of people was common in our country and in our city and in our neighborhoods. In the southern states, all-white schools barred the doors to students simply because they were born with complexions that people in power deemed unwelcome. In Portland and in many other cities, the schools and the neighborhoods were segregated by an insidious business practice call “red-lining.”[2]

Thankfully, and I’m proud for these families to say it, by the time I graduated from Glencoe, at least two African-American families (the Gastons and the Hefners) had enrolled their children in our good-old neighborhood school. We are all enriched by the brave steps they took. Some years later, students were bused to schools all-over town in the federally mandated program to integrate public schools. Slowly, our country’s culture began to change. Now, the wonderfully diverse student body of good-old Glencoe is living proof of the strides we have taken together as a People to live in a more just and open society.

Though it is not a reflection of the school’s character, the very name Glencoe hearkens to a dark time in human history. As outlined on the website (below), the idyllic dale in Scotland where the town Glencoe lies was the scene of a bloody massacre. Now, sadly, we have seen schools in our land that share a bad chapter of their history with that town in Scotland. Happily, our Glencoe does not. It is up to us to ensure that the only blood spilled here at Portland’s Glencoe is from knees scraped on the black-top and noses bumped on the monkey-bars.

When I was a 3rd grader at Glencoe (in 1957), Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr starred in the movie “An Affair to Remember.”[3]This wonderful film is still a popular love story. It concludes when a sad misunderstanding between two people is finally cleared up. Happy ending accomplished.

In the movie, some kids serenade their teacher with a song she taught them.

The song begins:

“There’s a wonderful place called Tomorrowland
And it’s only a dream away….”

In Bentari, a little boy tries to figure out some of humanity’s biggest misunderstandings. These are the misunderstandings that separate people, that keep them apart and that lead too often to bloody massacres and all-out war.

I’m hoping that many Bentari readers, especially young readers, will follow Bentari’s path and try to straighten out these misunderstandings.

For we all are bound for that place, Tomorrowland. But only children like Bentari can make Tomorrowland into a better place, a more peaceful place.

The movie song that the children sing to their teacher ends this way:

“Close your eyes, make a wish, and you’re there.”

Let us all be children in our hearts. Let us all keep trying. Let us all climb together to that peaceful place, Tomorrowland.

Happy beginning accomplished.

And, speaking of beginnings, please enjoy Chapter 1 of Bentari in its entirety as a free sample below. I hope this is a happy beginning for you, too!

Images: The original Glencoe School that burned down in 1923 (from the website) and the movie poster (from the IMDb website)

[1] For a wonderful history of Glencoe Elementary, see: http://www.pps.k12.or.us/schools/glencoe/206.htm

[2] Read more about Glencoe, Portland and racism: http://bentari.com/Blog/Entry.aspx?pid=276&bid=51&beid=811

[3] For IMDb information about this movie, see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050105/