from "It's Me! my story

One interesting, and funny experience I had as a high school senior, the 1973-1974 school year, happened when Colonial Heights High School held a district leadership conference. Because I was class president, I was scheduled to attend, along with the student body president and some other school leaders. Colonial Heights had no Black students, so it really wasn’t hard to pick the two of us, Matthew Gilliam and myself out of the crowd, and most of the other schools had sent only their white students. Anyway, the students had, evidently, been expecting the arrival and attendance of two new students, a Black brother and sister, who had (probably accidentally) moved into the city. I had a friend who lived right at the edge of the city limits, who was forced to go to Matoaca High School because they didn’t allow Blacks to attend their schools, so having Black students was a new thing for them. The teachers had, obviously, convinced the students that they should greet these new students, so many of them walked up to Matthew and me and extended the hand of welcome to us, and we had to explain that we weren’t the new students… we were just attending the leadership conference. They had just assumed, since Matthew and I were both Black and big, that we were siblings. Robert Kuenning, who was white, was with us (he was an Army brat who was not used to the nuances of the racial thing that was alive and well in the tri-cities). Anyway, explaining that we weren’t the new students was getting kind of old, and Matthew and I were used to playing practical jokes… so, when the next group of students walked up to us to welcome us, we waited for them to finish their welcome speech, and when they asked if Matthew was my brother, I said, (brightly and politely of course), “No, Robert is!” The looks on their faces was PRICELESS!! Matthew and I were straight-faced, but Robert was just about doubled over with laughter! It was definitely a Kodak moment!!