Jim Carlson split his youth between two of Lawrence’s projects. He lived with his parents and his two younger brothers first in the Beacon projects and then in South Lawrence in the Stadium projects. “We had a great time there – we’d sneak into the Stadium at night, turn on the lights and play football. We’d play homerun derby all night. In the summer we’d water the fields for Frankie Harris, who was the maintenance person – I loved it!”
Jim’s parents were hard workers, his dad worked in plastic mills in South and North Lawrence and his mom in the laundry room of a nursing home. “I’m very proud of them. My mom saved money and a house came up and they bought it – they became property owners which is a big deal. That was the whole concept of housing projects – get on your feet, save some money and move on to home ownership.”
Carlson enjoys bumping into other “project kids” who have made it, “I met a woman the other day, she grew up in the stadium projects- her mom bought a house in Andover, she ended up buying a house in Haverhill. There was just a glow around us.”
“How the hell am I going to get out of here?” was a question that Jim constantly asked himself. It was his mom who suggested Greater Lawrence Tech. She “saw it as an opportunity to get a job and go on to college – a way to get ahead of the other kids.”
When he was coming home from Kane Junior High one day he bumped into a GLTS student. “He had created a sound box that you could tap and click and it would play various sounds at different volumes. He said he made it in this thing called ‘electronics shop’ and I thought that was pretty cool. So I filled out my application and checked off electronics,” he laughed.
A lot has changed in the thirty years since he walked the halls of GLTS. There were only 1,000 students at GLTS then, compared to almost 1,600 now. “We had a dress code, we had to wear a shirt and tie and your hair couldn’t be below your collar, no jeans,” Carlson laughed, “and if you forgot your tie they gave you a bozo tie to wear.”
Carlson still thinks of his teachers in the electronics shop – Mr. Cashman, Mr. McDermott, Mr. Jacobucci. Louis Gleason was the superintendent and Carlson credits him for doing a great job of creating structure and a culture of discipline. “Greater Lawrence was ahead of all the other vocational schools when it came to structure and discipline and it still is.”
Junior and senior year Jim worked a co-op job at Honeywell on Merrimack Street. The job enabled him to save up enough money to buy a car, which he would need with his busy life.
Carlson was captain of the football team under Coach Rosmarino. “Coach was old school. He gave kids direction and discipline. He was very focused and organized and kids needed that.”
“I was always very self-motivated, I was the oldest in my family. I just needed to know what was out there. My whole world was North Parish Road, Osgood Street…I didn’t know anything else. Coach Rosmarino broadened my abilities, he pushed you further than you thought you could go.”
The first few years that Carlson was part of the GLTS football squad were not very auspicious ones. “I think my first three years we maybe won five or six games. There would be no one in the stands and all you could hear was the buzz of the lights.” Things turned around in ’87.
“Senior year – the year we made the Superbowl – we were playing on Thanksgiving eve – against Austin Prep. The stands were crowded, Channel 4 was there – they interviewed me pre-game and I was thinking geez, there used to be not a single soul in the stands, and now we have a packed house and we’re on TV. We couldn’t wait to get home and watch the highlights of us beating Austin Prep.”
Carlson was also the captain of the baseball team playing for Coach Blaney. “I was a pitcher and played first base. We were pretty good, we went to the tournament two out of the four years. Senior year we lost to the team that ended up winning at all. Coach did a nice job – he was very organized. We were well coached.”
Salem State College, among others, recruited Jim for their baseball team and he played under Coach Perrone. “We got to play in Florida – it was a fun time and I really expanded my horizons.” He studied Computer Science before switching over to Criminal Justice. But he wasn’t done with football.
“When I went to college I coached at GLTS. I was going to school during the day and I’d run home to my coaching job and I really dove into football.” Carlson’s path was set – he knew what he wanted. “I really wanted to be a teacher coach. I really wanted to be in a school and coaching as well.”
It was important for Carlson to show the players at GLTS that there was a world beyond the walls and fields of 57 River Road. “When I was in college I really heard that ‘vokey’ stigma a lot. I didn’t understand it – I knew they were no better than me. I could see that same inferiority complex in our kids. So I wanted them to know – you’re good enough, you can play. And academically you’ll be fine as long as you do the work.”
Carlson began bringing GLTS players to camps up and down the east coast in the summer. “Jason Nardella, Ray Marshall, Jim McDonald…I’d bring these kids to camps and I’d go to camps myself. I had a real attachment to the kids. I knew how they felt and I wanted them to see that they had that post-secondary option.”
“It was great – Marshall went to University of New Haven and played for a championship team. Jim McDonald played at Amherst. Jason Nardella went on to Northeastern.” He also coached a young Mayor Dan Rivera. “Danny was great – a really focused kid who wanted to achieve.”
After graduating from Salem State Carlson searched for a teaching position but ended up as a DCF caseworker in Lawrence working with CHINS. “I was young and I was learning. I was dealing with judges, probation officers, guidance counselors and therapists. I learned about child welfare laws, testimonies, how to write court reports – and most importantly how to really engage kids.”
Carlson’s next coaching position was as an assistant coach at Merrimack. “I was coaching Division 2 football, learning how to coach at a higher level. I learned how to recruit kids and about college admittance. So I was learning the post-secondary ed piece and learning about college football – so it was great.”
After Merrimack, he went on to assist with the University of Lowell’s football program. He continued his education and received his guidance counselor certification, but still the position in a school classroom eluded him. And if there’s one way to get Carlson fired up it’s to tell him no.
“One summer I put my resume together and I want to every single middle school and high school in the Merrimack Valley and knocked on principals’ doors. That August I got a job at Lawrence High.”
UMass Lowell dropped their football program so Carlson took a position coaching at Whittier Tech. A position in the history department opened up and he was in. “So now I’m teaching history, I got kids in a classroom, I’m coaching football at a vocational school…It all came together.” A couple years later a spot in guidance opened and he took it.
“I’ve been involved with vocational schools since I was 15. I remember our guidance counselor at GLTS, Mr. Daly, bringing us in our shirts and ties, with a slide projector to West Middle School in and we’d talk about the school in front of 10 Andover kids. I’d tell them about being in electronics and my job at Honeywell and I knew it was totally different than what those kids had been told about us and our school. Then, when I was at Whittier, I’d do the presentations in a packed auditorium where every middle school in the district would come.”
Carlson spent a total of fifteen years at Whittier as a coach, a teacher, and guidance counselor. It would be an understatement to say football has been important in his life. “It taught me that when tough times comes to just stay with it – stay the course and everything will be all right. I see it with a lot of young kids – they just don’t know how to handle it when things don’t go well. In football you have to solve real problems – you drop the pass, you get knocked down – you have to get up and figure out what to do next.”
This past fall Carlson accepted a new position as assistant principal at Pentucket Middle School and couldn’t be happier. His twin sons, Brett and Liam, are eighth graders at the school and Jim is thrilled to have this chance to take part in their lives as well as all the other middle schoolers he can affect. “I’ve found my place – to do bigger picture things with the kids, programmatic things with the kids.”
When asked what’s next Carlson smiles, “I just want to do a great job here. I always say ‘be good where you’re at and opportunities will come. I want to be in the moment and do a good job here.”
Again, the conversation turned back to GLTS and its importance in his life. “GLTS really made me think about who I was, what I wanted to do. It helped me figure out myself and taught me to not be afraid to try things, to move to different places.”
The Reggie Family will be watching to see what comes next…
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