b'By Edward Cone 80BOB SATTERFIELDCompetent teachers help you learn, goodMr. Satterfield did not get mad. He did notremoved from the tobacco fields of Caswell teachers help you understand, great teachersbrush it off. He asked me a question back.County where he grew up. help you master the material and becomeThe two of us then discussed the role of the your best self. Bob Satterfield was a greatfilibuster in the emerging political processesAnd some of the things you know about teacher.of Greensboro Day School, concluding,your teachers are just wrong. Bob loved sadly, that there was none.Dolly Parton. We thought she was corny Mr. Satterfield was essential to GDS cultureand he had somehow missed the 60s, from the schools opening day. I have one ofFlash forward a decade. Junior yearman, but of course he had lived through those crystal-clear childhood memories ofadvanced math met right before lunch. Itthem and he was right about Dolly, shes him leading an assembly in the social hall ofwas a boisterous group and the only thingawesome. The birth of his first child was the the old Temple Emanuel on Greene Street,standing between us and a trip off campustalk of the school, our own celebrity baby, where classes were held during the monthsin John Wikles Toronado was that lastbut in retrospect he and Vada didnt actually before the Lawndale campus opened.equation on the chalkboard, but instead ofstart a family just to entertain us. They were getting restless we were geeking out on thereal people with full lives. Who knew? We The all-school meeting was about creatingwork and when we got a little too excitedbelieved he belonged to us. a student government. I raised my handMr. Satterfield could quiet the room with and asked Mr. Satterfield an inane question,a softly-spoken Boys! You wanted to doFlip things around and it can be mortifying one of my specialties as an eight-year-old.your best for him, and he somehow got theto realize how clearly your teachers saw best out of you.you at times in your life when you were little more than a lump of clay soaked in And for all the years in between those twohormones. Yet somehow Mr. Satterfield experiences, and for many decades after,always made you feel good about who and Bob was a constant at Greensboro Daywhere you were. Like the late Lenwood School. He was there a generation later,Edwards, another formative figure from the when my own kids were students. Maybeschools early days, he never lost sight of the you never took one of his classes, maybebest in students even when they were still you didnt overlap with him at all, but ifsearching for it themselves. His obituary says you ever had a patient and kind teacher atthat as head of the discipline committee he GDS who kept working with you until theywas known for his calm counseling rather found that certain specific way to makethan harsh punishment. That sounds about the light go on, even when your cognitiveright.dimmer switch was stuck on low, well, that was the school he helped create. The rest of the faculty - also real people! loved him too. He mentored a studentteacher named Kathy Bland, later Kathy Davis, who went on to become an all-time What do you really know about yourgreat at GDS. He and Vada ended up teachers when youre a kid? Not much. Theysharing a lake house with the formidable seem so old, part of the strange world ofchemistry teacher K Windham, his opposite adults and authority figures, and then yearsin public persona but equal in soul.later you look back and realize how young some of them were. Mr. Satterfield was justThe obituaryyou really should read itstarting out when he arrived at a brand- lists some of the honors he earned during new GDS as one of the original handfulhis decades at GDS. There were a lot of of faculty members, freshly wed, not so farthem, including yearbook dedications and 72 | Summer 2020'