From the memoirs of Joseph Batory

By Joseph Batory

Way back in June of 1960, when I finished high school, I saw three future choices:  One was to attend Philadelphia’s La Salle College (not then a university), which had accepted me for admission as a member of its Class of 1964 (beginning in September of 1960); My second option was to skip college and get some badly-needed money working alongside my father in the huge General Electric Switchgear plant located right in the middle of Southwest Philly; And then, there was my top choice: numbers running (forget attending La Salle and work for the illegal neighborhood lottery/gambling under the direction of Guido, the local “wise guy” bookie).

However, my dream was soon derailed.  Sometime in the summer after graduation from high school, Guido authoritatively reduced my options by demanding that I go to college: “For heaven’s sake Joey, you’re one of the first guys around here who was ever able to get admitted to a prestigious college like La Salle, so why would you throw away that opportunity?” Guido argued. “Besides, you’ll be a representative from us people in the real world!  You didn’t have no silver spoons growing up so you could be a role model for others like us. You could inspire more kids from this neighborhood to reach upward. And what a difference you could make as a teacher or a principal for kids who grew up like you did. So, forget running the numbers.  It ain’t going to happen.”

Guido kept hammering me about equality, saying that people from our Philly neighborhood deserved the opportunity to attend college just like anyone else. “Joey, you can and will compete.” Guido stopped by my house on a steamy July night, and I reluctantly filled out my acceptance confirmation agreement from La Salle in front of my mom and dad.  I mailed the packet to LaSalle. The three adults were jubilant. I was depressed and felt like I was trapped on a tree limb.

I was basically in shock. I paid my first semester tuition, an awesome amount for someone from my social class ($300.00) and picked up my full roster of courses. The good news was that I was able to navigate my way to each of the five scheduled classes on my roster. The professors were friendly, classes were small, and teaching involved “give and take” between students and profs. And I was struck by the manners of collegiate classmates. People said hello and nodded to you like you were an equal. This was a whole new world to me.

The bad news had to do with textbooks.  In my first 12 years of Catholic education, books on different subjects were given to students free of charge and then returned to school authorities at the year’s end.  BUT…to my amazement, in college, you had to buy your own books!!!

I had carefully budgeted the precise amount of money for the first year of the La Salle tuition. Student loans and summer jobs would get me through the next three years.  But there was no money left to buy books that first year.  My professors had mandated eight different textbooks. I was doomed.  The textbook costs were somewhere around $100, an awesome amount for someone who worried about thirty cents of his public transit money back-and-forth to La Salle each day.

And so, it came to pass that I did not purchase even one new book during my first two semesters of college.

Most of the time, I borrowed the precious textbooks and read rapid fire with desperation when classmate friends ate lunch in the cafeteria or sat around the campus at leisure. 

In my subsequent years at La Salle, summer jobs and donations from Guido solved my textbook problems, but the first year at LaSalle without the required texts had been an academic nightmare.

College was another planet for me. I was in alien visitor whose lack of money and lower-class social background were major detriments.

Through it all, Guido was always there for me.  On the congested streets of my Southwest Philly neighborhood, he and I talked hundreds of times during my four-year college adventure. Guido helped to pick me up when I was down and always offered positive reinforcement.

Finally, after more than a year of being lost in the meaningless academic pathways of college subjects, I found some refuge in a superbly taught English novel course.  So many of the works we read featured social class discrimination, hatred, revenge, betrayal, power struggles, violence, and deception. These novels were sort of like growing up in my neighborhood. I had found relevance at last I became a real student for the first time in my life as a La Salle College English major!

To La Salle’s credit, it was the only institution of higher learning that dared to admit me into academia, something several other Philadelphia area colleges refused to do. Furthermore, many La Salle profs encouraged and nurtured me during my four years. Indeed, my eventual degree is a miracle the Vatican should perhaps investigate. 

And then of course there was the irrepressible Guido. In simplest terms without my shady motivator, college for me probably would never have happened. 

Mentoring matters monumentally, especially for those young people who need support the most.  The empathy, motivation, and encouragement from an unlikely source changed the course of my life.

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Joseph Batory moved on from his early life of poverty and despair to become the nationally recognized and award-winning superintendent of schools in the Upper Darby School District from 1984 to 1999. Joe is the only top-level school administrator from the Greater Philadelphia area to ever have been awarded the prestigious Lifetime Distinguished Service Award from the American Association of School Administrators. When he retired, he was honored for his exemplary educational leadership by the president of the United States, the Congress of the United States, and both houses of the Pennsylvania legislature.  He has awarded 41 scholarships to Upper Darby High School graduates over the last 30 years. This article is adapted from the third book of his autobiographical trilogy (Joey Lets it All Hang Out!) published by Rowman and Littlevield (Lanham, MD and Oxford, UK) in 2003.