Revival Testimony Festival

Yearly Dinner on the Grounds at Family Cemetery at Burnt Fort, Georgia (Burnt by the wicked Yankees, of course. Our Civil War dead rest in the back of the cemetery. One boy is only 17 when he died.)


After Mr. Black comes Dr. Hamilton in the parade of the denigrators of Mr. Erwin. They aim to be adroit in their trashing but are as clumsy as elephants in a ballet of denigration.

Hamilton's ego is as big and a barn; it does not match his talents, which are flaccid. We have already dealt with his not being able to write the English language. He liked to pose a rough 'n tough boss and puffed his chest with claims that as a boss he is "a bastard." If that doesn't sound like an insecure specimen, I don't know what does. The taxpayers of the state paid top salaries to this old windbag suffering from marginal literacy for 30 years. What a waste of public funds.

I first became aware of Dr. Hamilton when I was writing for La Gaceta. Before the Jennifer Faliero sex scandal there had been a gossip flare-up that accompanied Ms. Connie Mileto's getting the $120,000 Tallahassee lobbyist job despite her meagre credential of kindergarten teacher. Rampant gossip said Dr. Hamilton intervened his behalf; that his principal wife was broken hearted and divorced him; and that this pas de trois gave entertainment in the halls and mop closets of ROSSAC and even got out to the provincial schools on the grapevine.

I figured I should write about this brouhaha in local education. So I asked the school public-affairs office for what I thought was the divorced Ms. Hamilton's address, but, lo, despite Mr. Hamilton's close friendship with Ms. Mileto, he had gone and got married again to yet another woman. This will have been Number Three. And his current Number Three was the address I got from the public-affairs office.

So ignorant of Dr. Hamilton's new espousal and thinking I was writing to the previous divorced wife, I wrote instead to the current Mrs. Hamilton this request for an interview:

April 11, 2006

Ms. Jean Hamilton

10396 Carrollwood Lane, #27

Tampa 33618

Ms. Hamilton:

I write a weekly column for La Gaceta. I enclose a couple that touch on the irregular hiring of Connie Mileto.

I believe it violated Title VII, so I continue to explore the issue. I have asked most recently that Ms. Elia and the School Board reopen Ms. Mileto’s and Ms. Linda Kipley’s jobs that were awarded to them by powerful senior male administrators for unknown reasons. I hear that the gossip about Ms. Mileto and your previous husband was rampant in the halls of ROSSAC at the time Ms. Mileto got her job.

I have heard as well that you were a nice woman, a good principal, and a conscientious performer in your profession. I also heard that you were heartbroken about the Mileto-Hamilton issue and retired at about that time and went to Pensacola. Hearsay is always apocryphal, but I believe that you should know what people have told me.

I was a teacher for 28 years, actually a professor of English at HCC, and was for a time president of the faculty union there. I know how administrations work and how the conduct of the administration too often goes athwart the wellbeing of students and teachers, indeed, the whole school operation.

While at HCC, I raised a ruckus each time I discovered another administration piece of skullduggery. I wrote about it and exposed the chicanery. There is nothing that cures unlovely conduct as shining a light on it. So many people know what’s right but fear to fight for it. These include college professors who can recite the Constitution but are too timid to defend it.

Today, I do the same thing I did at HCC for twenty-eight years for the county school system, in which I became interested when Dr. Lennard’s web page showed he couldn’t punctuate and got a quarter of a million tax dollars a year including perquisites despite his heading a school system that required children to learn the basic literacy skills he lacked.

I would be interested in any insight you could provide about Ms. Mileto’s rocketing to a $120,000 job from being a kindergarten teacher. There is nothing wrong, of course, with being a kindergarten teacher; but there is something amiss about that person’s being plucked from such background because of favoritism by the second in command in the administration hierarchy and put into one of the top jobs for no professional reason and without giving other people a chance to apply.

The last time I visited the public-information office to review files, it was shortly after I had written a column criticizing the Mileto hiring and referring to her as “The Munchkin” because she is so small. Both she and Ms. Elia made a point of coming to say a faux hearty hello to me in the public-information office. This was the first time I had occasion to see Ms. Mileto up close. I noted that the young woman is not only small but has a head too large for her body. I suppose one could say the Ms. Mileto is cute if one likes tiny specimens with mismatched body parts, but one must concede that she is far from having the allure of the standard femme fatale. I wouldn’t object to that mismatch affliction if Ms. Mileto’s ethics were better.

I would appreciate a meeting with you to discuss this irregular hiring situation. I continue to pursue it.

You can call me at 727-398-4142 (I live on the beach in retirement) or email me. I will understand if you don’t because I am sure the topic is not a pleasant one for you. But if you can give me any insights into the hiring, it would help me right a wrong if possible. I was able forty years ago to force the Tampa Police Department and Sheriff’s Department to hire women for the first time by calling in the persuasive forces of the federal government: The EEOC and the Justice Department. That task took persistence, but it was far from impossible. I hope for the same success eventually in the present one.

I hear that there is pressure on your previous husband to retire, a pressure I also hear that he resists. I see that Dr. Otero’s name occupies a space after Dr. Hamilton’s in parentheses in the online list of top administrators. I have, of course, inquired about this peculiarity, asking for both men’s job descriptions and to determine whether the taxpayers are funding two administrators for one job.

When men get old and lose their powers both professional and physical, that is the time that marriage and a family look a great deal more alluring than it might have in their rambunctious heyday. I wasn’t born yesterday. I speak this truth from the perspective of a 50-year marriage with four children and ten grandchildren. I hear that Dr. Hamilton and Ms. Mileto are no longer as companionable as they once may have been. This sequel does not surprise. It is the customary one.

I hope to hear from you.

Lee Drury De Cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, FL 33708

tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

So the current wife handed over to her spouseirino Hamilton this communication from a journalist, and I guess he didn't like it, especially the part about aging males coming home to be taken care of . I am sorry to be frank, but I must speak as I find.

I wondered why I hadn't heard from who I thought was the divorced Mrs. Hamilton who had been a principal before she divorced her socially active husband, and everybody had good things to say about her.

Anyway the next time Hamilton saw me he looked daggers through me and clumped by like a wounded and irate buffalo.
Somebody then told me about his current wife, and I asked the public-affairs people if the address they gave me was the divorced Ms. Hamilton; they said no: it was the current Ms. Hamilton. The light bulb lit up.

I laughed my head off.

lee
Be patient. I am scanning in Hamilton's testimony as soon as I can get to it.

Oh, lord. I see on the second page of Hamilton's testimony that he says this: "At one point, Dr. Lennard asked that I talk to he [sic] and Doug...." This is the guy who went up to Tallahassee to lobby for the schools with the legislature. He had represented himself as Cato the Elder so long that the early-childhood degreed administration believed him and took to saying "between you and I" to be as grammatically advanced as was Hamilton. Not all those guys in the Florida house are illiterate. Some spot such whoppers and make the correct dismissive inference." ldd