Posted on 02/15/2004 6:46:32 AM PST by Non-Sequitur
ROANOKE, Va. — The two-lane bridge that Ron Mayfield Jr. came to the morning of his death stands almost 200 feet above the waters where his father took him fishing as a boy.
Years later, he spent hours there with his own son, casting for catfish and perch.
He made two final calls on his cell phone that morning, gasping out a farewell to his wife and dialing 911 without saying a word. Then he lay the phone beside the road and straddled the knee-high metal bridge railing.
At an hour when the school day was just getting started six miles away at Woodrow Wilson Middle School, Mayfield leaned sideways and let go, falling into the river.
The note he left tucked in the Bible, on the front seat of the car he left properly parked in the rest area by the bridge, began this way: “I am so sorry for what I have done, but there is no way I could carry on, absolutely no way.”
The apology was for taking his own life. He had no need to apologize for what drove him to his death, because Mayfield knew it was untrue.
A student at Woodrow Wilson told authorities that he had been assaulted by Mayfield, 55, who taught English to non-native speakers. Mayfield denied it, but his word, his reputation and his spotless record weren't enough. He had been suspended, and police were called in to investigate.
What Mayfield didn't know as he mounted the bridge that morning was that police had cleared him of wrongdoing.
No national statistics are kept on the number of false accusations that students make against teachers, but experts have said the evolving culture of the classroom has caused the number of reports of abusive teachers to increase in the last 15 years. A study in Great Britain found that 1,782 allegations of abuse by teachers resulted in 96 prosecutions.
“There is a culture now where students know how to get rid of a teacher, they know how to get a teacher removed from a classroom,” said Greg Lawler, general counsel for the Colorado Education Association.
Lawler said the change occurred after states began requiring schools to report alleged abuses by teachers because “stuff was being swept under the rug.”
When he took the education association job 17 years ago, Lawler said, he spent 30 percent of his time defending teachers accused of criminal acts. Accusations have increased so dramatically that he and another lawyer now work full time defending teachers, he said.
Mayfield's friends and family said they are struggling to understand how a man who never had as much as a traffic ticket and no history of depression or mental illness could be driven to such despair.
“So many of us are at a loss to comprehend what level of loneliness and isolation he was feeling to drive him to such a tragic end,” said Anita Price, president of the Roanoke Education Association. “It is hard to just even begin to fathom how someone could feel so totally alone and isolated.”
The flow of the waters where Mayfield fished as a boy and a man is controlled by a dam. The waters were slowed the morning after his death, lowering the river level to aid in the search for his body. A National Park Service ranger found it about 11 a.m., caught on rocks normally beneath the water.
At his funeral, a student gave the family a letter. It said: “He taught us how to be courteous and polite like he was. I would never forget what he taught us. Thanks for being a great teacher, Mr. Mayfield.”
It's not that at all, the article does not make what manner of assault he was accused of, I had to go on the net and do further research to find out what he was accused of.
What leads everyone to the conclusion that he was accused of sexual assault, was HIS reaction to the accusation.
You however, have removed all doubts as to what you are.
I have known some people who suffered a suicide in their families. It has seemed to me that their pain must be at least as great as the pain of those who took their own lives.
Devestated because he was suspected of allegedly shoving a student? Sorry dude, but nothing here rose to the level that anyone should have offed themselves. I must be one shameless guy, because I think I could live with myself even if I was guilty of shoving the kid.
That and as I said before, I could have lived with myself if I'd have shoved the little bastard.
For years the NEA has taught students how to turn in their parents for abuse. Tons of parents have been wongly accused of abuse when parents try to exercise disipline.
So it appears some smart kids have learned the methods used to get parents into huge trouble could be used on teachers as well.
As they say what goes around comes around. I say site the NEA. The NEA has been working for years to undercut parental control. They have to a large extent gotten it done and now teachers will get to pay the price.
Even if the kid were telling the truth, it was barely actionable, if actionable at all. If a guy is so damned sensitive that he's going to kill himself because a kid falsley accuses him of shoving, then that guy is not long for this world. Something else is going to break anyone that weak.
Then you lose your bet.
ROANOKE, Va. -- The two-lane bridge that Ron Mayfield Jr. came to on the morning of his death stands almost 200 feet above the flowing waters where his father took him fishing as a boy and where, years later, he spent hours with his own son, casting for catfish and perch.
He made two final calls on his cellphone, gasping out a farewell to his wife and dialing 911 without saying a word. Then he lay the phone beside the road and straddled the knee-high metal bridge railing.
At an hour when the school day was just getting started 6 miles away at Woodrow Wilson Middle School, Mayfield leaned sideways and let go, falling into the river.
The note he left tucked in the Bible, on the front seat of the car he left properly parked in the rest area by the bridge, began this way:
"I am so sorry for what I have done, but there is no way I could carry on, absolutely no way."
The apology was for taking his own life. He had no need to apologize for what drove him to his death, because Mayfield knew it was untrue.
A student at Woodrow Wilson told authorities that he had been assaulted by Mayfield, 55, who taught English to nonnative speakers. Mayfield denied it, but his word, his reputation, and his spotless record were not enough. He had been suspended, and police were called in to investigate.
What Mayfield did not know as he mounted the bridge that morning was that police had cleared him of wrongdoing.
No national statistics are kept on the number of false accusations students make against their teachers, but specialists have said the evolving culture of the classroom has caused the number of reports of abusive teachers to increase in the past 15 years. A study in Great Britain found that 1,782 allegations of abuse by teachers resulted in 96 prosecutions.
"There is a culture now where students know how to get rid of a teacher, they know how to get a teacher removed from a classroom," said Greg Lawler, general counsel for the Colorado Education Association. When he took the education association job 17 years ago, Lawler said, he spent 30 percent of his time defending teachers accused of criminal acts. Accusations have increased so dramatically that he and another lawyer now work full time defending teachers, he said.Mayfield's friends and family said they are struggling to understand how a man who never had as much as a traffic ticket and no history of depression or mental illness could be driven to such despair. Teaching had been his profession of choice, but when he graduated from college, there were few teaching jobs to be had. Instead, he followed his father and grandfather into railroad work. After 20 years with the Norfolk and Western Railroad -- a career that outlasted his first marriage -- Mayfield took early retirement and returned to college, determined to make teaching his second career. Mayfield received a master's degree from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas in 1992, the same year his son, Robert, graduated from college. Mayfield taught English in Japan and Saudi Arabia.
Myrna, a Philippines native, was working in Saudi Arabia as a midwife. Her first impression was that he was very friendly, kind, and talkative. Slight of build, he shopped in the boys' department.
They married in Virginia, and he took a job teaching English to foreign students in the Roanoke public schools.
He was clearly distraught that October afternoon. He told Myrna that the accusation was the vengeance of an angry teenager. In fact, he said, a week earlier he had touched the chronically disruptive 13-year-old on the chest, emphasizing that the boy needed to behave and pay attention.
When the boy misbehaved again that morning, Mayfield said, he ordered him from the classroom. The boy responded by complaining to the principal that Mayfield had assaulted him the week before. The boy, the son of immigrants from India, had polio as a toddler and uses a wheelchair.
Mayfield was warned about the troubled boy, Abdul Nahibkhil, at the start of the school year by a colleague who said the boy disrupted her class the year before. Abdul's parents, Abdul and Shina Nahibkhil, had come to the United States from India about 27 months earlier. The parents, who speak no English, were interviewed with their daughter Jasmine, 20, serving as interpreter.
"When the investigators came, my parents told them that in India, teachers hit students all the time and they didn't care if Mr. Mayfield hit Abdul or not," the daughter said. "They said if he hit him, he deserved it. But it didn't matter. They didn't care if he hit him or not. They wanted the matter dropped, and they said that they would make Abdul go to school and apologize to Mr. Mayfield."
Abdul denied being disruptive in class. Another sister, Mina, a high school senior, said she had Mayfield as a teacher last year and really liked him.
The parents said they were upset that no one from the school had immediately notified them about their son's accusation. Had the principal called them, they said, they would have told him to drop the whole thing and get Mayfield back in the classroom.
Superintendent E. Wayne Harris and Vicki Price, then-acting director of the city's social service agency, declined to comment. They said the investigation was a personnel matter and was private.
Mayfield did not know Abdul's parents wanted to drop the case, his wife said. He contacted an attorney from the Virginia Education Association. As each day went by, he grew more depressed.
On Saturday, Oct. 11, he picked up his wife from work and gave her some startling news.
"I'm not supposed to be here today," he told her. "I thought about committing suicide today."
Then he handed her a three-page suicide letter.
"Hi, Honey," it began, "I am writing this to come clean with everybody. . . . I cannot have my face on television and in the newspaper over this incident, an incident where I was attempting to teach Abdul a lesson and wake him up. . . . I am so tired and so nervous, almost paranoid that the police are going to be knocking on our door at any moment to arrest me."
His wife wept.
"I have to see your mother and talk about this," she recalls telling him. "I cannot carry this myself anymore. I can't handle it anymore."
So they drove to his parents' house in Vinton.
He had not told his parents about his suspension. They were stunned.
His father, Ronald, a soft-spoken man, told him, "Ronnie, if you really think that this is going to hurt us, if you commit suicide, that is going to hurt us a lot worse." They kept talking, and eventually Mayfield said he would not kill himself. They asked for his promise, and he gave it.
On the way home, he told his wife that if anyone found out that he had considered killing himself, it would make him look guilty. He never spoke of it again.
On Oct. 15, police informed the school that they had found no evidence to support Abdul's allegation. School officials did not pass the information on to Mayfield, his family said.
The next morning, Mayfield was out of bed before 6:30 a.m. He told his wife he had to visit a friend.
"I won't be long," he said, kissing his wife. "I love you."
The soaring bridge that carries the Blue Ridge Parkway over the Roanoke River held such a special place in his life that he used a photo of it as his computer screen saver.
When she got his final phone call at 8:01 a.m., he did not tell her that was where he had gone. In the minutes after he dropped into the river, his cellphone, abandoned on the sidewalk, rang again and again without answer.
The facts just don't stack up to a manslaughter charge, but if the kid (and the kid's family) are here illegally -- they should be deported.
"A Roanoke schoolteacher accused of assaulting a student leapt to his death from a Blue Ridge Parkway bridge Thursday, two days after he was exonerated. Sources believe he was never informed that he had been cleared."
If I was this guy's wife and son, I would sue this police department into oblivion.
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