One on a Pal-O-Mine: "What Happened to My Husband?: A Medical Murder Mystery"

[philip panaritis]

        If you like what you find on the "Six on History" blog, please share w/your contacts. 

        Here is the link to join: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/six-on-history

Deven began his career at MS 127 on the Castle Hill side of Parkchester as a SPED Social Studies teacher, and, from the get, he was a prolific consumer of professional development programs on American History.

He kept up on the news, read books and in our TAH Grant programs (think Saturday local history museum visits and "model" field trips) was usually just about the quickest and smartest person in a room blessed with a disproportionately high number of smart teachers.

He was not at all reluctant to call out presenters, colleagues or history professors about hypocrisy, historical accuracy or high-falutiness.  He despised bullies.

He was kind, polite, generous and mostly in good spirits.  Everyone liked Deven. It bothered him when he tried and tried to teach all his kids well all the time and, as we coulda told him, failed. 

Then he got his LMS lic. and we fell out of touch for awhile.

I had a long and congenial lunch outside at Havana Cafe with him and another pal a few months before he was killed in the shelter.  Same old Deven.  Nothing amiss.  

But how could that be?  Either my other friend and I are pretty slow when it comes to noticing or reading symptoms, or Deven was terrific at masking what was going on beneath with the usual easy charm and good humor. 

So then how do we ever know such things about one another?

He had a sonorous baritone voice.  First day we met I told him he had a "radio voice" and he told me about being a radio DJ on Cape Cod.  

Met his son Jonas who wants to be a teacher at the service in his Nyack temple -- big like Deven, an uncanny facial resemblance.  I remembered Deven telling us a few years ago that he advised the boy to go into another field instead of school-teaching. 

I know the many folks who got to know Deven miss him still.  I'm still trying to figure it all out, and it still scares me.   

Dementia, Personality Disorders And Moods Swings

Dementia, Personality Disorders And Moods Swings by Brad Wieners, The story of Deven Black, who showed patterns of new strange behaviors and changes in personality, and was ulti...