• Former educator tells her story of historic change

ROBERTSDALE, Alabama — To say Donna F. Orchard walked into a difficult situation on her first day on the job in a small Louisiana high school in 1969 is a bit of an understatement.

Following the ruling in the landmark case “Brown v Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas) in 1954, schools across the South were given a certain amount of time before they were forced to integrate.

For many schools – including the one Orchard stepped into as a physical education teacher and girls’ basketball coach fresh out of college – her first day was also the first day of that forced integration.

“Federal marshals stepped right in behind me,” the Robertsdale resident writes in her latest novel “Behind the Schoolhouse Door.”

During her interview, Orchard was not told about the integration, or the fact that she would have to take two basketball teams, one from the white high school and one from the black high school, that were selected the previous spring, and combine them into one.

“I was given no direction and no focus,” Orchard said, adding that her principal had a “we don’t want them here and they don’t want to be here” mentality about integration.

As a result, Orchard said, she was forced to add “fight mediator” to her job description, a task that was often scrutinized very closely by those federal marshals.

While the work is considered to be “historic fiction” because almost all of the names except for her own – both the schools where she worked and the people that she dealt with – have been changed, “Behind the Schoolhouse Door” follows Orchard’s experiences during her more than 40-year career as a teacher, assistant principal and principal, largely within the Mobile County School System.

“People who know me and know my name will probably recognize those places,” Orchard said.

The landmark case of 1954 is featured prominently throughout the book with quotes from the Supreme Court’s written ruling being used as a prelude to almost every chapter.

A resident of Baldwin County for the past 25 years, Orchard now writes from her home office in Robertsdale. This is the third novel in the “Roughneck” series, named for her father, who spent his career working on oil rigs throughout the South.

The first book “Roughneck Daddy: A Memoir” follows her life as a young girl, she said, while the second book “Roughneck: A Daughter’s Story” follows her life as a young woman. While the third novel breaks away from the other two stories, Orchard decided to include it as part of the series because it is a natural progression from the other two books, her life as a career woman.

While the book pulls no punches in dealing with the topics of race relations, gangs and her career as a woman dealing with the “good ole boy network” politics of the South, particularly as an administrator, Orchard said she didn’t want the book to be viewed as an indictment of the public school system and education as a whole.

“I have always been and always will be a champion for children and education,” she said, adding that one of her two sons went through the public school system while the other went to a private school, paid for by his father. “This is my own personal experience and it has taken me a lot of time to come to terms with it in order to write this book.”

The book is published through Inkwater Press of Portland, Oregon. This and other novels are available from local retailers and at amazon.com. For more on the author, visit donnaforchard.com.