n l AT LUNCH WITH ...

‘Mr. D’ is still telling stories his own way

BY JANET GIBSON UFFINGER
PHOTOS BY RACHAEL SANTILLAN

What happens when you leave your hometown as a young adult, stay gone for several years and then suddenly return? Well, you get older, for sure, maybe a bit fatter and hopefully wiser. And if you’re real lucky, you get to reconnect with people who mentored you as a kid.

Janet Gibson Uffinger has lunch with her ninth-grade Spanish teacher, Rob “Mr. D” D’Alessandro.

This is a story about a teacher, the passion for journalism and how life has a strange way of coming around full circle.

“Janet, you always have a cause,” said my ninth-grade Spanish teacher, Rob D’Alessandro, aka “Mr. D.”

Funny how a little phrase like that sticks with you.

“What were we talking about?” I ask Mr. D as we sit down to lunch, some 32 years after he made that statement. “I know! It must have been something to do with the school newspaper.”

“No, I don’t think so. Janet, you were always expressing your opinion about something,” Mr. D replies in his cool, nonchalant way, and then a semi-smile.

Some things never change.

“Wait, are you trying to tell me I was just being a pain-in-the-butt kid?” I shoot back.

And we laugh.

“I’ll tell you what I do remember,” says Mr. D, suddenly serious. “On the last day of school, you were having a really tough time, thinking about making the transition to high school. And you came into my classroom, so sad, and said, ‘Mr. D, I’m so afraid I’m never going to see you again.’”

Ooow, now I’m embarrassed.

“And do you know what I said to you?” asks Mr. D.
Not a clue.

“You know, Janet, I have a feeling that our paths are going to cross again.”

REWIND & FAST FORWARD

The year was 1974. I was 15 going on 25, a ninth-grader at Anne Chestnutt Junior High in Fayetteville. Mr. D was 28, my Spanish teacher and yearbook adviser.

Fast forward: I’m 47. Mr. D is 60.

Wow.

It’s true what your parents said about life flying by.
“Call me Rob,” says Mr. D.

“Mr. D, forgive my grammar, but that just ain’t gonna happen. When I reconnected with Ms. Towler again — you know, my first journalism teacher, she said, ‘Call me Linda.’ No way! I just can’t do that.”

Must be a respect thing. It’d be like calling your parents by their first names.

We’re at Luigi’s. Now, that makes sense. All our “at lunch with” subjects in NEXT! are asked to pick the place, and Mr. D is a second-generation Italian.

He’s also a filmmaker.

I mean, this guy travels with his own movies.

Mr. D breaks out an iPod, hands me a set of headphones (duh, how do these things work?) and proceeds to play for me the first of several movies. There are movies featuring his beloved journalism students at Terry Sanford High — running their own show called “Bulldog Moments” — students that he misses since retiring on June 30. For some 11 years, Mr. D immersed himself in teaching both broadcasting and print media, serving also as adviser to the student newspaper, The Bulldog, and earning himself a well-deserved reputation as an innovator.

Dr. Bill Harrison, the superintendent of Cumberland County Schools, puts it like this:

“Mr. D will truly be missed because he contributed so much to so many. He exhibited excitement about what he was doing every day. All of his students and everyone he worked with knew he was there because he wanted to be, not because he had to be. It is my hope that each day we all do the same thing — work to make our school system a place where teachers and students want to be.”

The irony of ending his teaching career at the high school where he graduated from in 1964 does not escape Mr. D.

Frankly, he just doesn’t know how this “retirement thing” is going to work. But we’ll talk some about that later. In the meantime, there’s more to see on the iPod.

A clever clip features Mr. D’s youngest son Paul, and another movie stars his son John, a baseball standout.

These are polished mini-films, with just the right mix of scripted and spontaneous moments.

“I’m a documentarian. I tell stories,” Mr. D says.

And as I watch, Mr. D further re-enforces his “Inspector Gadget” image by engaging in conversation about Macintosh computers and digital cameras with NEXT! photographer Rachael Santillan.

“Technology. I love it. I can’t live without it,” he says.

BREAK OUT THE YEARBOOK!

Suddenly, I feel “so last century.” Mr. D has brought something so modern that I don’t even understand it.

What do I bring to the table?
The 1974 “Hornets’ Nest” yearbook.

Before I can even open it, Mr. D is dreading the photo of him with Elvis-like sideburns. I just wish I was as skinny as all those extracurricular-activity pictures.

We reminisce, wonder about “what happened to ...” — and laugh, a lot.

There’s a photo of a young girl who is now the mother of a student that Mr. D just had in his journalism class. We compare photos of both, and the resemblance is striking.
“It must be so interesting to teach different generations,” I remark.

“Thousands of students,” he says. “People come up to me all the time and give me their names. I usually say, ‘Give me a year.’ And we pick up where we left off.”

But the story that takes the cake in the “it’s a small world category” involving former students?

“I was visiting my brother in Mill Valley, California, and I pull into a gas station. A guy walks up to my window and says, ‘Hey, Mr. D. What are you doing here?”

FUTURE BOUND

Something life-changing happened to Mr. D last fall.

With no warning, he was told by doctors that he was “a walking dead man.” Four arteries were blocked in his heart — two by 90 percent — and a quadruple bypass was ordered immediately.

“So, you joined the Zipper Club?” I ask.

“Yes, I’ve got the zipper!” he says.

“I was so proud of my students while I was out,” Mr. D says, beaming. “They really ran the class like a business.”

It’s obvious that he misses them.

But North Carolina state law says that a teacher who wishes to return to the classroom must wait a minimum of six months. Mr. D hopes, maybe, that he can oversee an after-school journalism club at his alma mater.

Even if that does not happen, he’s not letting any grass grow under his feet.

CornerStore, a video production company, is his new venture. Currently in the works: a plan to revive his popular community TV show of the ’80s, “Fayetteville City Limit” — only this time it will be high-tech, and, hopefully, seen on iPods everywhere.

“I can’t help it,” says Mr. D, smiling. “I’ve got to be a storyteller.” n

BIO

Name: Rob D’Alessandro.

Age: 60. Born Oct. 8, 1945, in New Rochelle, N.Y.

Background: Italian. Father was a career U.S. Foreign Service Officer; mother cared for five children and entertained dignitaries and celebrities as the family traveled worldwide before moving in 1962 from Brazil to Fayetteville. (Father had accepted an assignment at Fort Bragg.)

Family: Wife, Pam, a kindergarten teacher at Alma Easom Elementary. Sons, Marc, 25; John, 19; and Paul, 12; and two grandchildren.

Profession: Retired on June 30 as the longtime popular teacher of newspaper and broadcast journalism at Fayetteville Terry Sanford High School, where he graduated from in 1964. He also has taught Spanish and driver’s education during his varied career.

What’s next?: He’s created
CornerStore Productions, “a lowprofit video-production company.” Plus, a revival is in the works for “Fayetteville City Limit,” D’Alessandro’s successful TV show of the ’80s — only this time, it will be delivered via vidcasting on the Internet.

Quotable: “After going through quadruple-bypass surgery this past November, things that used to bother me, don’t bother me anymore. I’ve ended up calmer. I have been given a second chance.”

Where we ate: Luigi’s in Fayetteville.

What we ate: “Mr. D” had a pasta salad and unsweetened tea; Janet, a green salad with grilled salmon and unsweetened tea.