Amado Narvaez:
CLASS OF 1965
Norview High SchoolClass of 1965
Norfolk, VA
Bayside High SchoolClass of 1983
Virginia beach, VA
Azalea Gardens Junior High SchoolClass of 1962
Norfolk, VA
Northside Middle SchoolClass of 1961
Norfolk, VA
Crossroads Elementary SchoolClass of 1959
Norfolk, VA
Amado's Story
Life
After graduating from Norview I got a B.A. in German at Old Dominion University, spent a year at UNC-Chapel Hill doing graduate work in German (but never completed the degree), and taught high school German at Bayside High School in Va. Beach for 12 years. Then I went grad school at the U of MD at College Park to get a degree and certification as a librarian media specialist.
At Norview I enjoyed my English and World Lit classes. Always wanted to be a writer.
Perhaps my greatest "claim to fame" is as the illustrator of several books for magicians. My interest in magic started sometime around my sophomore year at Norview.
Five of my brothers also went to Norview. If you do a Google search on "Children of Rose" +"Amado Narvaez" you will get a hit to a page I set up for my family as a tribute to our mother and her _ten_ children.
I have many fond memories of Norview: working on the Co-Pilot staff, the German Club, Miss Cahoon's English class, attending assembly concerts of the Norview chorus and band--I loved the Christmas concerts! One of my pipe dreams has been to write the lyrics for a Broadway musical.
One of my regrets was being so shy when I was in high school, partly because of the Virginia miscegenation laws that made it illegal to for Filipinos (and even someone who was half-Filipino) to marry...Expand for more
Caucasians and vice versa. It gave me a huge inferiority complex. In fact, the state of Virginia didn't even recognize my father's marriage to my mother. One of my brothers had to leave Virginia when Norfolk city hall called him and said that they had made a mistake when they gave him a marriage license. That didn't prevent me from feeling unrequited love for some of the girls in my classes, which prompted me to write this poem, written in August 1965, two months after I graduated from Norview:
She may never know the part she played,
The influence her presence made.
But if her eyes should fall upon
These words I write, God's will be done
And let the world be made aware
That there's no magic anywhere
That quite compares with what to me
Was something more than sorcery.
The miscegenation law was declared unconstitutional when I was a sophomore at ODU. I began dating then, but still felt awkward because I felt that the parents of the girls I dated disapproved of their daughters going out with me. Virginia had made mixed marriages legal, but in the eyes of many people, I was still not acceptable as son-in-law material. There was one potential match for me when I was a junior at ODC, but fate sabotaged that prospect.
Now if only Sam Beckett would leap into my life and put right the things that once went wrong.
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