Citizen Akoy Page 5

  A month into his freshman year Akoy received a letter that he posted about with glee: “FINALLY GOT MY FIRST LETTER 2 COLLEGE! ITS FROM RICE UNIVERSITY. YEA BABY!!! At this point he had not played a single minute of high school basketball. Rice had heard of him through a Houston-based grassroots coach who had seen him on the summer circuit. The letter, only an expression of interest, harkened a future of possibility. Two months into his freshman year Akoy put up a post that had nothing to do with basketball and everything to do with being a high school freshman: “MAN IM LONELY I NEED ME A GIRL. ANY OFFERS OR TAKERS?”

  This post provoked a flurry of wisecracks from male friends, as well as one from Scott Hammer that touched a nerve: “You dont need anyone but your books!!!! go to bed!!! ps. I dare you to say something!” Akoy fired back, in full street mode: “shut up. damn Scott what ever. tarir fuck you. and quinn u funny. but i didnt want niggaz commetin on diz shit. i wanted girls not men!!” To which Hammer replied: “if he dont take care of business with the books all you will see him doing is handing out water to the freshman ‘b’ team. HEY WATERBOY! get me some fresh water.”

  5

  Central

  Akoy set out to make history, though he did not yet know it, at a school that dripped with history. Central was Omaha’s first and oldest high school, founded in 1859, eight years before Nebraska became a state. Its impeccable French Renaissance Revival building went up between 1900 and 1912, on a hill above downtown and the Missouri River, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Its student newspaper, The Register, founded in 1886, had as its first assistant editor Victor Rosewater, whose father, Edward Rosewater, had telegraphed President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation to the nation in 1863. Victor later ran the Omaha Bee, a daily newspaper founded by his father that became notorious for yellow journalism.

  Central was Omaha’s “melting pot” school, acclaimed for diversity and academics. It graduated its first African American, Henry C. Curry, in 1876, or eighty-one years before another Central High, in Little Rock, Arkansas, integrated with the protection of federal troops. When Central’s African-American Alumni Association formed in 1912, it counted forty-three black graduates and believed itself to be the only such organization in the country. Notable principals were J. G. Masters, who helped establish the National Honor Society in 1921; J. Arthur Nelson, who helped pioneer advanced placement for college credit in the 1950s; and Gaylord “Doc” Moller, who steadied the school through urban upheaval from 1968 to 1995.

  A short list of accomplished alumni includes Nobel Prize winners Lawrence Klein and Alan Heeger, actor Henry Fonda and actress Dorothy McGuire, NFL running backs Gayle Sayers and Ahman Green, builder Peter Kiewit, publisher and civil rights activist Carlton Goodlett, educators Virginia Lee Pratt and W. Edward Clark, Medal of Honor recipient James Fous, and advocate-for-the-disabled Jordan Somer. Five generations of Warren Buffett’s family attended Central, though the “Oracle of Omaha” did not. His children, philanthropists and social activists Susie, Howard, and Peter Buffett, were alumni, as was their mother, the late Susan Thompson Buffett. Charles Munger, longtime business partner of Buffett, was an alumnus. High-achieving alumni dotted all walks of life. The nonprofit Central High Foundation, founded in 1997, had, in the idiom of basketball, a deep bench.

  I was a 1969 graduate. In my time African American enrollment was 17 percent; it had run closer to 10 percent from the 1940s to the early 1960s. The majority was a mix of whites with pan-European roots, Catholic and Protestant. I was among the 20–25 percent who were Jewish. In the 1970s white enrollment began a slow decline while African American enrollment had risen to 30 percent by 1984. Latino enrollment began to rise in the 1970s and climbed above 10 percent in the new millennium. Asian Americans and Native Americans accounted for about 3 percent of 2,353 students in 2000.

  Central’s first south Sudanese refugees arrived in the late 1990s, with names that challenged teachers and classmates: Tut Chuol, Gatlunk Nyak, Sara Nyambok, Gatluak Nyak, Gatwech Tut, Nyaduer Jock, Nyanchiew Kuek, Dobuol Kueth, Gatong Gatluak and Lol Kuek. Most south Sudanese attended Bryan High and avoided Central due to the latter’s sizeable African American cohort: relations between African immigrants and African Americans were strained for reasons rooted in culture and economics. “If you’re new to a community with a high level of violence and I’m at the bottom of the ladder, my attitude is, ‘You’re coming to take my stuff,’” explained A’Jamal Byndon, a 1973 Central graduate and an instructor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of Nebraska–Omaha (UNO).

  About twenty south Sudanese were counted at Central at the new millennium. Several had come over without parents or relatives. “The experiences they had in Sudan were atrocious; the things they had survived, they never forgot,” recalled Linda Ganzel, who ran the ESL program. “Something would trigger their memory, and they would go back to that dark place. Some never talked about it; some did.”

  South Sudanese translators and liaisons were not provided in the first few years, so the teachers made do, often with the help of a semi-proficient student or two. The south Sudanese spoke Arabic and tribal languages. The boys had had some education in south Sudan, and their multilingual ability helped them learn English quickly. They also caught on to Spanish with their exposure to Latino students. But the girls had been kept at home in south Sudan and tended to have no reading or writing skills. “The girls were so eager to learn; they had an incredible thirst for knowledge,” Ganzel said. “But you know you’re in trouble when eighteen-year-old girls are holding a picture book upside down.”

  Four south Sudanese boys shared a one-bedroom apartment a couple of miles from Central at Thirty-Third and Burt. They held part-time jobs in the late afternoons, evenings, and sometimes overnight. They pooled their resources to meet expenses and came to Central each morning, sleep-deprived but determined to learn. One of those boys, Lol Kuek, made an impression on Ganzel on a frigid winter day. A new south Sudanese boy had come to school without a coat, boots, hat, gloves, or winter clothes. As the boy was about to leave, Lol took off his hat and coat and gave them to him. After the boy left, Ganzel tapped Lol on the shoulder.

  “Do you have another hat and coat?” she asked.

  “No, but it’s okay,” said Lol. “I remember my first year here, and I thought I would die.”

  Although faculty held a coat drive in the fall for refugee students, Ganzel had nothing at hand. She watched Lol walk out the door into an icy wind and was moved by his generosity. A friendship sprang up over time in which Ganzel, who had grown up on a dairy farm near Nebraska City, marveled at Lol’s upbeat disposition.

  “How come you’re always so happy?” she finally asked him.

  “Miss, you have no idea,” Lol said. “It’s safe here. Nobody is shooting at us, no bombs exploding. We have free education; I just have to get here. This is what my dad wanted me to do.”

  Lol, she would learn, had lived in a refugee camp in Ethiopia before he came to Omaha in June 1998. His parents had stayed behind. Lol’s father was a farmer and a Presbyterian minister in the Upper Nile region near the border with Ethiopia. One day Lol came to school sad and subdued and read to Ganzel a letter from home. His father had boarded a bus for a town in Ethiopia where he could use a telephone to speak to Lol in Omaha. But unknown attackers, believed to be of the Anuak tribe, had ambushed the bus and murdered Lol’s father. “He was devastated,” Ganzel recalled. “So was I.”

  Student and teacher stood side by side, both awash in tears. The next day Lol was back at Central. His eyes were dry.

  “Are you doing all right?” Ganzel asked.

  “I thought about it all night,” Lol said. “This is what my dad wanted me to do. He wanted me to do something to honor our people. I’m going to do that.”

  After his father’s death Lol took a full-time job after school so that he could send money to his mother, who cared for his younger siblings at an Ethiopian refugee camp. Lol g
raduated from Central in 2002 and as a scholarship recipient enrolled in an Environmental Studies/Life Science program at UNO. Among his friends were the Kuon twins, Both and Duoth, and their older brother Miyong. Their father had sent them out of south Sudan while he had stayed behind to care for their mother and his multiple wives. Central’s 2003 yearbook, or “O-Book” featured the twins, then sophomores, who played soccer and were active in several clubs. Miyong was a student at UNO and worked as an ESL paraprofessional at Central.

  In October 2002 the Kuon twins were among sixteen Central ESL students who traveled across town to Benson High to hear a talk by hoops legend Manute Bol, who was in Omaha to raise funds for south Sudanese relief. The yearbook ran a photo of Bol signing a basketball for the twins. Ganzel told the O-Book, “I think we have a lot of education experiences for Latino kids, but very few specifically for the Sudanese.” Another teacher, Marnie Best, said that ESL classrooms tended to provide more resources for Latino students than for south Sudanese and other non-Latino students. The 2004 O-Book reported the formation of the South Sudanese Club, sponsored by Miyong Kuon. The club’s purpose, Kuon said, was to teach south Sudanese students about American culture while not forgetting their native culture. The ESL curriculum for 2003–4, the yearbook reported, included English “for survival skills,” basic reading, math, math essentials, social studies, and technology preparation. The Kuon twins and Miyong’s wife, Nyajouk Kuon, graduated in 2005.

  The racial mix, when Akoy arrived in 2009, was 44.2 percent Caucasian, 38.2 percent African American, 13.9 percent Hispanic, 2.2 percent Asian, and 1.5 percent Native American. About 10 percent were multiracial, though not recorded as such until the next year. Less than 1 percent was African. Students from low-income households, Akoy among them, accounted for 56.5 percent of the 2,359 students and got lunch for free or at a reduced cost. The racial/economic balance was coveted for education and social growth, but it was fragile. It had tipped toward non-white and low-income at vintage schools throughout the country, with adverse effects.

  Akoy’s introduction to Central began with his coach, Eric Behrens, who was virtually raised at the school. His father, Rick Behrens, grew up in Council Bluffs and played basketball against the 1968 Central squad known as “the Rhythm Boys.” The racial divide that shaped the Rhythm Boys and Dwaine Dillard, their star African American center arrested in an inner-city riot in March 1968, rolled forward to touch Rick and Eric Behrens.

  In the mid-1970s Rick Behrens began to teach and coach basketball at Tech High, whose alumni included sports stars Bob Gibson, Bob Boozer, and Johnny Rodgers. Tech was located on the edge of the Near North Side, the African American ghetto, and though it had once been racially and economically diverse, by the late 1960s it was mostly black and low-income. In 1973 the federal government sued Omaha for illegal segregation of its schools, and in 1975 an appellate court cited the “deterioration” of Tech among causes for its order to desegregate.

  The order’s unintended consequence was the flight of white families to western suburbs and private schooling that dramatically reduced enrollments in Omaha. Central saw its enrollment fall from 2,201 in 1975–76 to 1,674 in 1976–77 and to a low of 1,409 in 1979–80. Omaha concluded that it didn’t need both Tech and Central, located a couple of miles apart, and for a while it threatened to close Central, whose building was older and in more need of repair. But even prior to the court order Central had mounted a campaign to save itself, led by Doc Moller and Susan Thompson Buffett, a 1950 graduate and the school’s first-ever female class president. The Future Central Committee marketed Central to middle-class white families in an effort to preserve its racial and economic blend. Omaha Public Schools (OPS) superintendent Norbert Schuerman, in his nomination of Moller for a Reader’s Digest educator award in 1989, wrote that Moller “worked diligently with the community, the parents, the students, the corporate entity, the school board and the central administration to bring about a $10 million renovation of the facility . . . [and] arranged an aggressive ninth grade recruitment package that allowed for school visitation for full days. He instituted both staff, parent and youth-to-youth contact.”

  Tech tried to market itself as well, but Central’s effort was more successful, and in 1983 the city shut down Tech. Rick Behrens was one of the Tech teachers reassigned to Central. Longtime varsity basketball coach Jim Martin recruited Behrens to coach the sophomore team and then the junior varsity. Sometimes Behrens brought along a helper to practice, Eric, the eldest of his three sons. Eric filled in as ball boy and kept shot charts and stats at games. “I learned math by calculating free throw percentage,” Eric recalled. Along the way, with his dad’s help, Eric fashioned himself into a canny point guard. Eric enrolled at Central as a sophomore in 1989, as a transfer from Westside High. He played jayvee and a few varsity games as a sophomore. In 1990 Central named Rick Behrens as its new varsity coach. Eric started for his dad for two seasons, as a 5-foot-8 point guard, and as a senior in 1992 he set a school record with nine steals in a single game. “I enjoyed playing for my dad, but it’s not the easiest thing to do,” Eric later recalled.

  After high school Eric played for a couple of junior colleges, then walked on at UNO but couldn’t crack the lineup. After a stint at Wayne State College, where he met Hammer, he turned his focus toward a teaching degree at UNO and married Central alum Trish Rahaman. He worked for the Boys and Girls Club, where he had a close-up view of grassroots basketball, and helped Herb Welling coach an AAU team that included his younger brother, Ryan, to a championship. By the time Eric was hired in early 2000 to teach social studies at an Omaha middle school, he was the father of two. Later in 2000 he accepted his father’s offer to coach the junior varsity at Central, while he continued to teach. With an eye to the future, Eric hosted a tournament for eighth graders and cultivated the next wave of talent.

  After the 2001 season Rick Behrens stepped down. In eleven years as head coach he had won more often than not, but he had not liked to recruit talent and had failed to win a single state tournament game. When Rick retired, Eric went after the job and beat out three candidates with more experience. “Everybody thought Eric got the job because of his dad,” Hammer recalled. “That might have been true a little bit, but with Eric being a Central alum, it made sense to me.”

  Eric Behrens was shrewd. He arranged Herb Welling a job as a security guard and made him a volunteer assistant, which gave him an instant pipeline into grassroots basketball. The district’s open enrollment policy, which began in 1999 and gave students more choice in high school selection, began to funnel more talent to Central—for example, Karl White. A sparkling new gym, funded by a city bond issue, helped Behrens sell his program. In each of his first three years Behrens guided the Eagles to the state tournament, only to lose to Lincoln High, twice in overtime. In his fourth season he broke through and won a first-round game before an elimination loss. By his fifth season Behrens had not only attracted the best grassroots talent, he had refined his program and matured as a coach.

  Behrens ran hard competitive practices at which he played with and against his players, stopping to critique and teach. He ran “open” gyms his players used when they did not have supervised practices and had them lift weights in the off-season. He led his players on endurance runs, the most grueling of which went from Central down to the Missouri River, across the Robert Kerrey pedestrian bridge into Iowa, and then back, with the last leg uphill to Twentieth and Dodge, about three and a half miles total. More often than not, he finished first.

  He demanded his players be responsible and accountable. “If practice was at 9 a.m., Behrens had me stand by the door, staring at a clock,” said Chad Burns, an assistant coach from 2001 to 2009. “If the kids weren’t on time, we closed the door.” Behrens’s demeanor was casual and informal, so players found it natural to address him as “E. B.” or “Eric.” He was sensitive to his players’ off-court problems, which meant that he often fed players who had no food at home; later on, in
the case of two such players—Josh Bruning and Michael Partee—he and his wife became legal guardians. “He understood kids; he looked at them through the eyes of being a kid and player himself,” Welling said. “He was a players’ coach; the kids knew he would fight for them.”

  “We’re brothers,” Behrens would lecture. “You want to beat your brother at practice. At games brothers come together.” Before games, as his players suited up, Behrens reminded them: “Play hard, play smart, and play together.” On the court before tipoff and after timeouts, as they broke their huddle, Behrens and his players chanted, “One, Two, Three, Family!” “Eric got kids to buy in to playing for Central,” recalled junior varsity coach Jay Landstrom. “He talked about putting ‘we’ before ‘me.’”

  Tactically Behrens paired a full-court press with the so-called “dribble-drive motion” offense. The dribble-drive, which Welling had copied from a college coach in California, spread the offense wide in the half court and set up the guards to “dribble and drive” to the basket. If the defense collapsed, the ball was kicked back to the perimeter for a three-point shot. If the press or dribble-drive were ineffective, Behrens called something else. He studied game film, scribbled Xs and Os, and was open to innovation. His half-time adjustments salvaged games. “In game situations he could think faster than any coach in the state,” said Rod Mullen, who taught a popular African American history course at Central. “After we’d beat an opponent, on the bus ride back, he’d be talking about the next opponent. He had stacks of videos in his office.”