Remembering Walter Dean Myers

Wal­ter Dean Myers’ memo­r­i­al (3/9/15, in NYC) was unlike any I’ve been too before. Christo­pher Myers (his son) did a won­der­ful job did as mas­ter of cer­e­monies. He was wit­ty, engag­ing, soul­ful, and charm­ing. Mas­ter­ful. In homage to Wal­ter he assem­bled a ros­ter of artists; poets, musi­cians, writ­ers, who per­formed their work. There were songs, poems, sto­ries, music, all deeply per­son­al, all quite won­der­ful­ly per­formed. All of the peo­ple had some con­nec­tion to Wal­ter; friend, men­tor, or just peo­ple he knew and cared for.

It was joy­ous, some­times won­drous, touch­ing, three hours that I sus­pect peo­ple will remem­ber for a very long time.

Christo­pher asked that there be lit­tle direct homage to Wal­ter. In fact, my short intro­duc­tion (see below) was the only one of its kind. But as it led off the evening, it worked well.

Wish you had been there.

(My remarks were an expand­ed ver­sion of the blog I post­ed last July when I first learned of Wal­ter’s death.)

Con­nie, Christo­pher, friends:

Thank you for let­ting me join in this cel­e­bra­tion of Wal­ter. I’d like to share some very brief words about him.

I’m not sure just when Wal­ter and I met and became friends. We were vir­tu­al­ly the same age (he, five months old­er), both from New York City, both had attend­ed Stuyvesant High School at the same time, though—with five thou­sand students—we did­n’t know one anoth­er. Not then.

Where­as I flunked out of Stuyvesant after the first mark­ing peri­od, Wal­ter went on longer.  We also shared an inter­est in the­atre, Lon­don, photography.

We spent the most time togeth­er when we worked in ART, Authors Read­ers The­atre, our trav­el­ing read­ers’ the­atre troupe. Rehearsals over, he and I would sit around in hotel lounges and he would tell me sto­ries about his life, his evo­lu­tion as a writer, and of course, bas­ket­ball. (Of which I know nothing.)

Noth­ing was more pow­er­ful, noth­ing bet­ter than ART’s per­for­mance of Sharon Creech’s Love that Dog, which is, in vital mea­sure, about Wal­ter. He took his own part and when the script read, “Is Mr. Wal­ter Dean Myers a real per­son?”, oh, how he enjoyed being that per­son. Such a sweet smile. Such gen­tle pride. It moved audi­ences and was by far the best moment in our show.

I admired him and his writ­ing so much. There was some­thing Bud­dha-like about the man. He was big, big in per­son, big in voice and in his writ­ing, so full of artic­u­lat­ed com­pas­sion. He could delin­eate the souls, expe­ri­ence, and aspi­ra­tions of African-Amer­i­can kids, of all kids, with sear­ing, some­times bru­tal hon­esty, but always, always infused with under­stand­ing, empa­thy, and most of all with hope

Here’s a small sto­ry about that.

Some years ago, I was vis­it­ing a prison in Vir­ginia, talk­ing to a group of young men, pris­on­ers all. They were dressed in drab prison garb.

I sat in a chair, and they—twenty or so—sat in a semi­cir­cle at a “safe” dis­tance. Black kids. His­pan­ics. White. Guards were stand­ing around at a dis­creet space, though they were cer­tain­ly there. The young men were qui­et, polite, but stiff and dis­tant. Were they read­ers? Read­ers off my books? I doubt­ed it. Or per­haps, just glad to break rou­tine? I did­n’t know.

I talked for a while. There was, at best, vague inter­est. And much distance.

Then some­one called out, “You know any­one famous?” Obvi­ous­ly, I was­n’t famous.

I thought for a moment, and said, “Wal­ter Dean Myers is a friend of mine.”

There was a stir. They sat up.

“You his friend?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, wow!”

The whole mood shift­ed. They sat up.  Looked at me. With inter­est. Dis­tance evaporated.

One of the guys said, “Tell us about him …”

It turned out they were read­ers. His read­ers. They told me how much his writ­ing meant to them.

And I was okay, because Wal­ter was my friend. As they spoke it was clear that Wal­ter spoke to them, of them, for them. Wal­ter gave his read­ers some­thing every writer aspires to, a voice. A mag­nif­i­cent, com­pas­sion­ate voice.

When the ses­sion was over and the guys were being led away, one of them called back, “Hey, Avi! Make sure you tell Myers we like his stories.”

Wal­ter, they liked—and still like—your stories.

Thank you.