ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 2, 1996 TAG: 9604020028
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FLOYD
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
It's been nearly 10 years since children timidly knocked on the door of the office that read: Al Proffit, principal.
But Proffit remembers like it was yesterday the time a seventh-grade girl walked into his office, closed the door, took a deep breath and confided: ``My stepfather is raping me.''
Proffit had the child removed from her home, then held the girl's hand as policemen forced her to explain ``in horrific, graphic detail'' what her stepfather had been doing to her, several times a week for three years. Proffit had to carry a gun as protection against the rapist, who threatened retaliation, while police staked the man out - successfully - for grand larceny and arson.
``They told me they wanted to get him for `bigger' crimes,'' Proffit recalls. ``And I said, `What could be a greater crime?'''
Sitting in his Floyd County basement-turned-recording studio, the 43-year-old Radford University professor already has a career full of stories worth telling.
As a teacher, Proffit defied weekly lesson plans to teach poor kids in the hills of West Virginia how to play chess.
As a superintendent in Monroe County, W.Va., in 1989, he took a very public, very pro-teacher stance against Gov. Gaston Caperton - refusing to fire teachers who were striking for a special legislative session on education. The governor and the county School Board gave Proffit the authority to certify untrained teachers as fill-ins for the strikers.
But Proffit told them: ``I refuse to certify people whose finest academic moments were when they got three answers right on `Wheel of Fortune.'''
If it sounds to you as if Al Proffit is a bit of a rebel - well, you're not alone. His mother thought the same thing, and rightly so, when 11-year-old Al whined and wheedled his way out of piano lessons in favor of becoming a garage-band drummer.
His high school principal thought the same thing when he kicked him out of school the first day of his senior year - telling him not to come back till he got a haircut.
And now the recording industry is starting to take notice of this song-writing rebel professor. After two decades of concentrating on education, Proffit is going back to his rock 'n' roll roots, combing his career - and his social consciousness - for material.
The girl raped by her stepfather became the inspiration for a verse in ``Kids With Killing Guns,'' which won first place in a songwriting contest. The song is the kickoff number on a recently released compilation CD produced by Spree Productions.
And kids who sell their soul
cause no one cared to love
in time will take its toll,
now, forgive us God above.
Proffit's first published song, ``How Can I Win Your Love?'' was included on a Rodell Records compilation CD. It was written while Proffit was dating his girlfriend, Dawn, who has since become his wife.
I'll write you poems like Shelley and Keats
and sing like Caruso.
And I'd paint your portrait through the years
like Michelangelo.
As the recording company's liner notes say, ``Proffit's Ed.D. may be in educational administration, but he's clearly a doctor of love.''
At Radford, where Proffit heads the university's graduate education program, he's well-known for his inspirational stories and creative teaching style - not unlike the carpe diem-style teacher Robin Williams made famous in ``The Dead Poets Society.''
But as a stressed-out superintendent in Monroe County in 1988, Proffit's breakneck schedule added to the breakup of his first marriage. And he wasn't so sure he was seizing the day.
``As a superintendent of schools, you work 12, 16 hours a day, and no matter where you go people know you, and it's not like The Beatles. They want to tell you how to do things.''
He was defending his doctoral thesis the day he read about the job opening at Radford. And somewhere in the back of his mind, he was remembering the summer of his 16th year - and the chance encounter that he now sees as one of the defining moments of his life.
In 1969, he was a high-school drummer visiting a rural music festival in West Virginia, where jazz great Dizzy Gillespie was the headliner. At a festival party, Proffit approached the trumpeter for his autograph and ended up talking to him for two hours.
Later that weekend, in the middle of Gillespie's performance, the jazzman announced he wanted a friend of his to come up on stage. ``Everyone was wondering if he might bring out somebody like Ray Charles,'' says Proffit, who was floored when Gillespie called him by name on stage.
``I still get excited when I think about it ... although I don't remember what we played to this day. To quote a Beatles song, it was like `Somebody spoke, and I went into a dream.'''
Asked if he's ever topped that moment, he said, ``I don't think it's possible.''
The next year, when it came time to decide between music and education, ``I chose what was sure and true, as opposed to the unknown.''
And while he's never regretted being an educator, he has always wondered where music might have taken him. A few years ago, when one of his former band buddies came to visit - and jam - he decided to find out.
He bought an electronic keyboard and taught himself how to play. He started writing jazz versions of two of his favorite songs, ``Spooky'' and ``The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.'' Then he started writing his own music.
More of a songwriter than a singer - his old band would only let him sing one line: ``Ooh rah, ooh rah, is that your horse?'' on ``Long Tall Texan'' - Proffit does sing on the CDs, delivering his songs in a whispery, almost spoken voice that evokes one of his influences, Leonard Cohen. Other influences include Frank Zappa and Frank Sinatra - and everything in between.
He believes his generation has lost its vision for a better world and his songs often address the need for social change, such as in the opening of ``Kids With Killing Guns'':
There are kids with killing guns
some have homemade bombs,
they kill pedestrians for fun,
where did the dream go wrong?
Occasionally, he pokes fun at popular culture, such as in ``She Said She Saw Elvis'':
Oh Lawd ........
She said she saw Elvis
in a grocery store downtown.
He was over squeezing Charmin
and watching coffee being ground.
Proffit has no plans to give up his day job, calling his work at Radford ``the ideal teaching situation'' and a ``professional dream.''
``My goal is, I'd like somebody to pick one of my songs up, somebody who knows what they're doing, and record it,'' he says.
And he's always wanted to write a jazz piece as a tribute to Dizzy Gillespie, who took the time out to befriend - and musically inspire - a teen-age drummer from rural West Virginia.
To hear Al Proffit's ``Kids With Killing Guns,'' call InfoLine at 981-0100 in Roanoke or 382-0200 in the New River Valley and enter category 6275.
LENGTH: Long : 145 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. ALAN KIM/Staff At his home studio in Floyd, Alvinby CNBProffit talks about his life as a musician, teacher, school
administrator and assistant professor at Radford University.
color
2. Al Proffit has no plans to give up his day job, calling his work
at Radford ``the ideal teaching situation'' and a ``professional
dream.'' But "...I'd like somebody to pick one of my songs up,
somebody who knows what they're doing, and record it,'' he says.
ALAN KIM/Staff KEYWORDS: PROFILE