I was Larry’s teaching coach as he completed his masters in education at Stanford during the 2013-2014 school year at Summit Preparatory Charter High School. Unlike my previous coachees, Larry had pretty extensive life and career experience before he came to us. By the time we were well into the fall and I had gotten a chance to know him and his background, I was a little in awe of him: here was a Columbia-educated, former federal public defender whom I was teaching how to teach US history. He had, as his colleague Jason Crotty wrote, “...more than a little courage and self-confidence” to change careers. As Larry’s coach, I considered myself lucky that year. I had no idea how lucky the students whose lives he would either influence or in some cases, change trajectories, at Prep, at Lighthouse and later at Gateway, would be.
There were a lot of advantages Larry brought to the work and to our students. His experience in law and the venue of the courtroom was a perfect metaphor for the case he would try to win every day - that the history we study matters, and that every student’s personal story matters.
His experiences with young people, so well-developed with the American Junior Golf Association, matured as he took our teaching and mentoring head-on. His passion for both cross-country running and competition found abiding outlets in our cross-country team, which Larry co-coached for two years. Larry’s reputation for school athletic spirit precedes him here, so I leave it to your imagination about how passionate he was when he attended a Prep game. There, he was consistently “the loudest voice”.
As a professional, the part of Larry I will remember the most is his selfless and consistent focus on his students. He was far more than a teacher, coach and mentor: He was an example of what it is to be a good person: Demanding in academic rigor yet compassionate about personal struggles, ambitious in athletic and academic goals for his students, yet humble and vulnerable when discussing his own shortcomings and tough times in life as he sought to teach and encourage his students. They have consistently commented that Larry saw the future identity in them before they themselves saw it. That is the pure faith of a pure educator, and it will inspire me always.
Equally as memorable was his sense of the ridiculous combined with approach to competition, whether it was retiring the Jack-in-the-box taco eating title forever during his time with the LA federal public defenders office with a decisive 21 tacos consumed in a single sitting or, as his Cal brother Otavio put it “...unfailingly buy a churro at halftime of Cal football games, because our sturdy Golden Bears just might fail to pull out a win without #ChurroToVictory”.
Those are my experiences of Larry. He loved different kinds of history, so I’m going to borrow a tribute from an 11th century poet and scholar that will help me express what I’m feeling. I hope it will help you to find some meaning in this tremendous loss that I know we all feel:
“Tis a Fearful Thing
to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.”
-Judah Halevi
...and finally from Larry’s last email to the Prep team when he left in June 2016:
“I love you all. Keep on doing the amazing things you do.”