Marriage to a superintendent: not for faint-hearted - Guest Column - Column

School Administrator, August, 2002 by Beth Bruno

After I told Gordon about the accident, we immediately informed the board because we knew that a report might appear on the newspaper's police blotter the next morning or maybe even on TV later that night. Board members could not have been nicer. They told a few accident stories, too, and we laughed about the irony of the situation.

The next morning the story appeared predictably in the local newspaper, but not on the blotter. My run-in with that school bus made front-page headlines! Right beside the accident story was a small photograph of Gordon in his shorts, jogging merrily along the bike path that ran through the center of town while members of the media interviewed him about his educational philosophy. I was mortified, Never have I wished so hard for anonymity, and we still had two more towns to go.

"Honey, aren't you glad you brought me along to help you make a good impression?" I asked Gordon as we headed out of town. "If I play my cards right, maybe I can get myself thrown in jail in Wisconsin."

Beth Bruno is a school psychologist and author of Wild Tulips, a collection of stories about parenting and family life. She can be reached at 96 Fiesta Heights, Meriden, CT 06451 E-mail: bbruno@snet.net. Gordon Bruno left his last superintendency in 1994 to lead the Connecticut Center for School Change.