Mentor, protector, motivator, friend

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This article was published 11/02/2022 (1560 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A weekly series in honour of Black History Month, Taylor Allen highlights incredible accomplishments made by Black athletes and coaches in Manitoba.

He was a professional baseball player turned teacher, but Mike Gaston was so much more than that.

It’s been decades since the former Winnipeg Goldeyes pitcher taught at Gordon Bell High School, yet when you speak to his former students, their memories of Mr. Gaston remain vivid.

That’s because in addition to being their social studies/Phys-Ed teacher, he was a coach, mentor, protector, motivator, historian, poet, nicknamer, a friend and when it was called for, someone that would lay down the law. But to some students, such as Mary Bain, Gaston had an even more important label: father figure.

“He gave me away at my wedding. I didn’t have a father, my father passed away when I was very young. So, he gave me away and he made an amazing toast,” said Bain, the youngest of 11 siblings, nine of whom attended Gordon Bell. Gaston taught Bain in the early 80s.

“… He knew I didn’t have a great family life. My mother wasn’t very kind and I missed a lot of school because of the things she did to me. He would literally come to my house and get me and bring me to school. She knew not to argue with him because he was a teacher and kind of in control of that situation. And we bonded. His nickname for me was ‘Marvelous Magnificent Mary’ and I cried every time he said it because I never felt that about myself. I only felt that from him.”

Stories like Bain’s (and there’s a lot of them) almost never happened because Winnipeg was originally just supposed to be a pitstop for Gaston.

A highly-touted pitching prospect out of Western Michigan University who grew up in Alabama, Gaston signed a professional contract with the St. Louis Cardinals organization in 1957. The following year, Gaston suffered a serious back injury at the Triple A level and was sent down to the Northern League’s Winnipeg Goldeyes for a rehab stint.

That stint ended up turning into a lifetime in the Manitoba capital. Gaston would get his teaching certificate at the University of Winnipeg, get hired at Gordon Bell in 1961, marry a local girl named Luise whom he met at a party, and raise a daughter here. Gaston, who died in 2005 at the age of 65 from a massive heart attack, was interviewed in a book published in 1993 titled The Black Experience in Manitoba and asked why this American ballplayer would make Winnipeg, of all places, his home.

“During my summer stay, I was fortunate to develop some strong and lasting friendships with some very fine people. Terry Hind (Goldeyes general manager), Peter Curry (owner), Gordie Mackie (team therapist), and many others. Upon graduation from the University of Winnipeg, I decided to try Winnipeg for one year. After establishing more lasting and genuine friendships with community members, including the Black community, my stay became indefinite. The people whom I had dealings with seemed to be genuinely interested in me, oblivious of the colour (of my skin). The weather, however, was brutal. It was the kind of weather only the devil himself could enjoy.”

Liz Duerksen, who graduated from Gordon Bell in 1978, is one of many who are thankful that the Winnipeg winter didn’t scare Gaston away. She only had Gaston as an American history teacher, but as a member of the basketball team, Duerksen would always see him at the school as Gaston was known for opening the gym, even on Saturday mornings, for students to shoot hoops.

“He was probably as close to a mentor as I ever had… He really saw people. He noticed if there was something wrong and he also noticed your talents and your gifts,” Duerksen said.

Gaston had a nickname for everyone and Duerksen’s, née Keep, was ‘Keeper.’ He would often ask her to babysit his daughter Alexis at their Southdale home.

“For a West End/Wolseley girl, it felt like the other side of the planet. I took a bus at first and it would take me a really long time. So he’d say ‘Hey, why don’t you drive?’ And I said ‘Well, I don’t know how to drive.’ So, he taught me how to drive,” Duerksen said.

“He would come and get me from my house and he’d say ‘OK, get in’ and would let me drive. When I graduated, he gave me this Cross pen. It’s a very beautiful, expensive pen. I love to write and he noticed that. I didn’t even know how he noticed that. He was a really amazing human.”

Mark Strople from the class of 1974 is another name on the long list of students who had a special bond with Gaston. Similar to Bain, he lost his father at a young age and came from a single-parent home. He and Gaston ended up forming a connection that lasted many years after Strople, a.k.a. ‘Big Mark,’ graduated. But one of the things that sticks out the most for Strople about his favourite teacher is his love for music, especially jazz. If you walked the hallways of Gordon Bell at lunch time or after the final bell of the day at some point in Gaston’s 30-plus years at the school, you likely would’ve heard one of his jazz records coming from his classroom. Gaston, who was also the choir director at Pilgrim Baptist Church, took great joy in lending his records, that all had ‘GASTON’ written on the back of them, to students to educate them on his preferred genre of music. Gaston gifted several of those records to Strople over the years.

“I have a real love of jazz now. Every time I play one of those albums, I think of him,” Strople said “… The day he passed, it was May 5, 2005. I came home that evening and long after everyone had gone to sleep, I put on some of his albums… In fact, I’m going to put on an album of his after we’re off this call.”

Gaston was a fit person who remained in good health in retirement, making his passing equally shocking and devastating. The impact he had on the community was evident by the sheer volume of people who attended his funeral.

“The church was packed. There were people downstairs, there were people in the lobby. You couldn’t get everyone in. It was very overwhelming for me. People were giving condolences and you’re thinking ‘Is this line ever going to stop?’ But of course, you’re thinking the love people had for him and the amount of people that he was important to was amazing,” said Alexis, who still lives in Winnipeg and now proudly owns her father’s record collection. Her mother Luise declined to be interviewed as she felt Gaston’s story should be told by his students.

“The thing about the funeral, he wouldn’t have wanted that at all. I was saying to my mom ‘He’d be so mad right now.’ He’d be like ‘Why’d you have this big thing?’ As a family, we probably would’ve done something smaller, but we couldn’t. We just knew people needed to come and say goodbye.”

It’s fitting for the record collection to now belong to Alexis as she was often right there with him on his hunt for more albums. They’d bus downtown together on Saturdays to catch a movie and go to Mother’s Music on Portage Avenue where Alexis would sit on the counter and they’d flip through discs together. And of course, almost always on these outings, they’d bump into some of Gaston’s former students.

It’s something Alexis still experiences to this day.

Alexis appreciates it now more than ever, as their stories serve as a constant reminder as to how many lives her father touched.

There might be an even bigger reminder in the coming years as a group of Gordon Bell alumni are hoping to get the main gym renamed after Gaston in honour of the school’s 100th anniversary in 2026.

“He passed away 17 years ago this May and I’m still running into people that knew him. That hasn’t stopped,” said Alexis.

“I went to get some medication for my mother and this woman saw the name and she’s like ‘Oh, is Mike Gaston your dad?’ I just feel like that’s how things are going to be forever. I just feel there’s always going to be someone that knew him and had positive experiences with him. It’s a really good feeling.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31