Before he could remember my name, Griff was wary of my height. Not to attribute it to some source or complex or whatever, but I had a good foot-and-a-half on him and he’d tell me to sit down when I’d stand before his desk in that cramped office or we’d have some meeting in the Student Life Center (née cafeteria). My height would come up in reference from time-to-time like when some student (in this instance, S.A.) would misbehave and he’d wonder how someone could ever act a fool or wile’ out in front of such an if-only-in-the-literal-sense “large” authority figure. As in when he asked S.A., “how can you do this in front of such a -” he struggled with the word here - “huge man?!”
Because I wasn’t as big as you, Griff. Never will be.
It’s hard to believe he’s not still charging into the cafeteria in a suit three-sizes-too-large with his head rolling figure eights on his thin neck, eyes wide and popping, a large styrofoam cup of awful chain coffee in his hand and moving one hundred-plus Bronx teenagers down to the proverbial pin-drop decibel from a symphony of shouts. Not by saying anything, mind you. Just by being there. Ever met someone with presence? Preeeeeeeeee-zzzzzzzzence? That was Griff.
He would do the syncopated clapping thing to get their attention, walk over to a student speaking out of turn, put a hand on their shoulder, all the typical teacher tricks executed with an inimitable touch of grace. I loved watching him dart a look back over his shoulder from the marker board as if some small conversation in the far corner could sink the Lusitania. He’d shut down anyone who dare challenge his complete command and control of that cramped and stuffy cafeteria with even a furtive whisper. The best part of it all was that in most if not all of these particular moments those students were imperceptibly disrupting a lesson where Griff was totally wingin’ it.
Griff had the presence to keep more than one hundred Bronx teenagers who departed traditional school attending CUNY Prep. He could keep them coming, keep them in line, keep them going. He inspired those who passed the GED to go on to college. He kept those who did not pass to come back for another cycle, try it again. These are young people, many from the Bronx’s toughest neighborhoods, who had no respect for authority. And with good reason. Many never had an authority figure worth respecting. These teenagers had been told and shown through all their young, tough lives they weren’t good enough and far too many of them believed it. Griff was the first and often only one to tell them not that they could- but that they damn better go on to college. As a teacher at CUNY Prep for two years I drank the Kool-Aid. I left CUNY Prep resembling more one of Griff’s countless disciples than his peer.
I remember K, having a terrible day (the good ones typically weren’t that good, either) and screaming at the top of her lungs in my classroom while Griff was leading an assembly across the hall. He stopped speaking and made a beeline for my classroom where he gave her the biggest hug I’ve ever seen. She went from scream to full-body sobbing as he held and swayed her. He just knew that’s what she needed immediately. Never mind I’d been trying to calm that situation for several minutes, he could do it on the fly.
It didn’t matter if you were a Blood, Crip, Latin King, a teen mother or gay in a culture with little sympathy for those on the outside. You had a place at CUNY Prep. I remember watching D.J., whose previous enrollment was at Rikers, playing chess against B.N., a chubby cheeked innocent who had hitherto been home-schooled. That interaction only happened at CUNY Prep, which only happened because of Griff. One moment Griff could shake hands with the wealthy white folk looking to pour some Foundation Money into a Good Cause, the next counsel a teen’s broken heart, the next talk some staff member off the ledge. He could see into people, through them, find what they sought and provide it. And it was always the good things he found.
We can be forgiven our sentimentality in the grieving process, perhaps also our tendency to cope selfishly. At least I hope so. We tell ourselves the world wasn’t ready for a star so bright or only the good die young or some other trope to soothe ourselves. Me? I’m just trying to appreciate how no one else who could meet their demise in a national-news-making train wreck and we’d all come away like, “well isn’t that just soooooooooooo Griff?”
Because it’s kind of appropriate for someone with such a flair for the dramatic. I never figured him for an old man making a dying wish on a comfortable bed, close family huddled around. He deserved it, certainly, as did all around him, but that just wasn’t him. Had I thought about it, I’d have pictured him speaking up to the wrong misbehaving teenager on the 5 train on the wrong night. Griff was the type to fight the fire; fuck calling 9-1-1.
If any man represented something far larger than himself, that was Griff. Maybe he was always too accessible, always too present, always too giving, always too there. And because he wanted anyone who touched his grace to go so much farther, be the best they could, climb higher, he had to remove his own incandescence and set it back further into the distance. Every miracle accomplished by the myriad he touched was simply too easy, not enough. Keep going, he’s saying. Keep going, we must.
