Former SMAS Director Tim Doyle Remembers Larry "Mr. T" Teshara

He was larger than life in many ways and even after knowing for some time of the seriousness of his illness, I find it hard to imagine that he is not still a phone call away.  Different phone now perhaps,

Larry liked to tell the story about how he and I first met, In fact we talked about it in our last conversation about a week or so ago.  It was quite a few years ago when I was a negotiator for the Adult School teachers' union.  The Union had just finished a torturous and testy 3 year negotiation to get our first contract.  The District organized a meeting for all administrators and interested union members to come to hear about a new method of negotiating contracts called Interest Based Bargaining where both administrators and negotiators start their negotiation sessions by talking about all the values they shared in common in order to build trust between the two sides.  I wasn't impressed and my question to the group was "How does this work if you don't trust any of them?"

Unbeknownst to me, Larry was sitting behind me.  His reaction was, Who is that guy? I wouldn't want to work with him.  A few years later he became my boss at the Adult School.  I think he took me on as one of his projects, to show this guy who never respected anyone in authority positions that there might be some good in those people.  And eventually he persuaded me to become an administrator if I felt so strongly about Adult Education as I did.  And he was my number one fan and promoter in the Adult Education world.

So thanks Mr. T. for not giving on me as you didn't in so many others.  Have a safe journey to the other side and I hope for you that they have potlucks there.