MEMORIES OF MATTHEW MONREAL
AND GEORGE W. BUSH
It was election day. For some reason,
I had to leave class. I walked alone down
the hallway, then up the large staircase,
and as I was about halfway up, around
the bend came Matthew Monreal, him-
self alone. We paused on the stairway.
I said, “Matthew, how are you? Have you
voted today?” I was running to be president
of the sophomore class. I knew Matthew
from Roosevelt Jr. High. He was, I think,
the only Hispanic in school there. My
recollection was that he had few friends
at Roosevelt; he was essentially ostra-
cized by his fellow classmates, especial-
ly the ones in the know, the ones who were
white, the ones who were upper-middle
class. But Matthew was my friend; he
had always been my friend. It was not
lost on me how others treated him.
Throughout all my schooling--from grade
school through college--I had always
felt that way. I was ashamed of my fellow
classmates who treated anybody that way.
Matthew and I chatted for a few more
minutes, then bid each other a good after-
noon. I had other friends like Matthew,
essentially social outcasts because they
happened to be Black, or poor, or not
very bright, or different looking in some
peculiar way. But these, too, were my friends.
It was early fall, 1959. The next year, my father
would send me to Andover. But that evening
at an all-school function held in the cafeteria, I
found out I had been elected president of the
sophomore class at Topeka High School by
more than 800 fellow classmates. I think
Matthew had voted, and I think he probably
had voted for me.
George W. Bush and I were schoolmates at
Andover. George was two years behind me. I
never met him, I never knew him. George
should never have been at Andover because
he wasn’t very smart. He was a poor student
at Andover. But legacy raised its ugly head.
Papa Bush, who had also attended Andover,
and who became head of the CIA with
Noriega secretly on his payroll, then VP
under Reagan, then president of our country,
was George’s dad. And George’s granddad,
Prescott, was serving on Yale’s Board of Trustees
when George applied to Yale, so George got
in. George was a C student at Yale. But that
did not keep him from being accepted by Har-
vard Business School, where George continued
to be a C student. It’s common knowledge how
George and his henchman, Cheney, lied to the
American people about Iraq having weapons of
mass destruction, which meant we had a brutal
war with Iraq, not to mention Afghanistan, for years
and years and years, instead of never.
Of the two, I prefer Matthew.
Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and human-rights advocate for his entire adult life. He recently
finished his first novel, A CHILD FOR AMARANTH.