Field Technician Mark May - when a job becomes a Calling

To me, helping students understand how the natural world works is sacred.  Broadcasting soccer or baseball or football is sacred.  There is a Right Way to do these things, and I live in pursuit of discovering, executing, and sharing that Right Way.  

The people I like the most, the people I understand the most, the people whom I most enjoy as colleagues are those who have a laser-focus on an outcome that is sacred to them.  I want to be a part of a community of individuals with diverse interests, who take those interests not just seriously but religiously.  For many boarding school employees, school isn’t just a job, it is a calling.  

This isn’t just about teaching.  My wife Shari’s sacred goal is to create beautiful and functional pottery in a collaborative studio atmosphere.  I know nothing about pottery, I don’t even like looking at it  - but I enjoy hearing her talk about her process, about the Right Way to organize a studio culture.  In college, my roommates were into X-men, home improvement shows, and Bob Ross.  I have no personal interest in any of these things.  Yet I loved hearing them talk about the backstories, the little nerdly details they obsessed over but few other people would notice or care about.  

Within our community, I’ve always held deep respect for those uber-professionals beyond the faculty who go way beyond the minimum job requirements.  Cronin Warmack our faculty technology pro, Richard Johnson our long-serving head of housekeeping, Gary Brookman and Don Carlson the golf course groundspeople, and more.  They don’t just do the job ‘cause they’re paid, they do the job because it has to be done; and it has to be done Right.

In 2002 I was assigned to coach JV baseball.  We practiced on a bumpy, out-of-the-way field next to a cow pasture.  It was well kept, way better than the pitted hayfield monstrosities I played on in northern Kentucky in the 1980s.  Yet I had low expectations.  Who gives a rip about JV baseball, beyond the kids on the team and their parents?  The varsity coach sure didn’t.  

On our first game day, I found the field transformed.  Okay, we weren’t at Dodger Stadium - you can’t hear the lowing of cattle in the background there - but the behind the scenes groundskeeping effort had been equivalent to that of a major league crew.  The lines were constant-speed-position-time-graph straight, fresh, and immaculate, including the chalked parts on the dirt as well as the painted parts on the grass.  Even the obscure details like the coaching boxes and the batters’ boxes were just right.  The pitcher’s mound could have been used as a model for the rulebook’s “1 inch drop for every 1 foot towards home plate” language.

I asked the athletic director: who had taken such loving care of our field?  “Mark May,” he said.  I found this guy Mark and told him how much I appreciated his detailed work.  Mark seemed a bit surprised that I had noticed some of those details, but he was happy that I had.  

Mark prepared our field exactly like this for every JV home game.  Of course, he prepared the varsity baseball field identically.  And the lacrosse fields.  And the other parts of the fields like the benches and the bleachers and the screens and the fences and the nets and the equipment cupboards and… everything.  

At other schools, the varsity programs, or the programs coached by powerful administrators, get the high-class treatment while the teams lower on the sports hierarchy get the shaft. Me, I prefer to be low on the sports hierarchy.  I love coaching JV, I love running an intramural program for those who can’t play interscholastic sports, I love broadcasting lower-level games.  Why?  It’s the purest sport there is.  My school’s most iconic mural reads “Effort in sport is a matter of character, not reward.  It is an end in itself, not a means to an end.”*  Too many varsity players are focused on sport as a means to a college scholarship, personal glory, or social status.  JV players are almost all there for the love of the game.  Yet, lower-level programs aren’t always well treated.  ADs and staff and even coaches can generally keep their jobs while ignoring the sub-varsity teams, as long as they kiss important people’s arses and take care of the high-profile teams.

*I would and do say the same thing about effort in physics.

In the late 2000s, an AD put pressure on the staff and on Mark to focus on the favored sports.  Nevertheless Mark always, always made sure my insignificant programs had what we needed.  It would have offended his very soul if a field weren’t exactly right.  Every team mattered, every player, every coach, every visitor.  

When I first ran an intramural program in 2002, I described to Mark the non-standard field markings we needed for flag football and for soccer.  He made notes, lined the fields perfectly… and kept those notes. 

He kept those notes for 18 years.  How do I know?  We didn’t run an intramural program after 2008.  But this year, by necessity, the freshmen and sophomores needed an intramural league because interscholastic competition was impossible in the age of COVID.  I volunteered to run this league.  I told our (wonderful current) AD that Mark would know how to set up our fields.  Sure enough… Mark pulled out his notes, and the fields were exactly as requested.  As requested 18 years previously.

Then there was the Big Football Game one year.  We had probably 7000 people on campus for the yearly rivalry game.  The bleachers were packed, as were the auxiliary bleachers, the standing room in the corners, the area behind the end zones… fans were everywhere.  The game ended, the team and the parents got together on the 50 yard line, everyone savored the beautiful fall weather, the camaraderie, and the afterglow of victory.

Except Mark May.  In the bleachers he held a giant trash bag with one hand while his other picked up soda bottles and chip wrappers, one at a time.  Why was he there?  The cleanup job wasn’t urgent - night was falling, the campus was about to empty for a couple of days.  Had Mark waited until Monday, the entire gounds or housekeeping staff could have been mustered for this herculean job.  But Mark didn’t want to wait.  

I asked Mark for a trash bag, and I helped out for half an hour or so while the sun dropped behind the bleachers and below the horizon.  We had marched our human vacuum through a significant but small fraction of the main bleachers.  Mark had emptied Grand Traverse Bay, but Lake Michigan itself was still full.  I grabbed a couple of full bags, said goodbye to Mark, and headed to the dumpster - and home to my wife, who was probably wondering whether the silly sportsball game had gone into double-time or something.  Mark, of course, kept going, even as dusk turned to astronomical twilight.  He had a job, it had to be done, it had to be done Right.

Mark May died Friday.  He was found in his office on campus. 

Mark had been Woodberry’s Field Technician for 35 years.  He worked to the job, not the clock - which meant I saw him lining fields, carrying equipment on numerous early mornings, late evenings.  Sometimes I marveled to myself, “wow, he’s always here!”  

Mark will always be here.  Man’s not dead while his name’s still spoken.