DISPATCHES

Grace Plater’s legacy will live on.

By: Hank Kalet
   Grace Plater was the conscience of South Brunswick.
   The former Kendall Park resident who was instrumental in calming racial tensions at South Brunswick High School and in making sure the needs of minority teens remained a priority for township schools, died last month at 91, leaving a legacy of commitment and courage that all of us would do well to imitate.
   I met Ms. Plater for the first time in early 1990 when I was a fledgling reporter for what was still called The Central Post. I was working on a story about a teacher at the high school accused of making derogatory racial remarks in class and was looking for some context and historical background.
   Someone suggested I give her a call, which I did, and I spent an afternoon talking about race, culture, education and her memories of the problems that rocked South Brunswick High School in the late 1960s and early 1970s, problems that forced Concerned Black Parents into being.
   What struck me about her at the time — and what struck me about her every time we talked over the years — was not just how passionate she was, but how gracious she was, how she made a point of listening and not jumping to conclusions.
   Talking about the incident at the high school — and about the racial tensions that had simmered in the past — she refused to cast anyone in the role of bad guy, refused to follow the script that now controls political discourse in the United States. Her focus was on education — making sure that all students, but especially black students, had the opportunities to excel in South Brunswick and making sure that the adults doing the teaching and acting as role models understood history.
   Willa Spicer, who supervised curriculum for South Brunswick schools as curriculum director and later as assistant superintendent, has said that the history of blacks in America is taught in district schools because of Ms. Plater.
   "Grace Plater kept after us," she told us in 2003. "She called, she talked, she sent us books."
   Ms. Plater and several other people started Concerned Black Parents and Citizens in the early 1970s to address growing racial tensions in the high school and to ensure that the needs of black students were being met.
   The group’s efforts — which have included educational programs, essay and poster contests and a major awards ceremony for black students — have gone a long way to addressing what Ms. Plater viewed as a dangerous recognition gap.
   Just as important as these public efforts were the small things she did in her private life, the kind words she’d offer or the birthday cards she’d send.
   I e-mailed a friend in Wisconsin, Rob Stolzer, after I heard about Ms. Plater’s death.
   "You’d be hard-pressed to find a more loving human being than Grace Plater," he said.
   Rob grew up in town, across the street from Ms. Plater, and "knew her (or I should say, she knew me) since I was a baby."
   "Because I would tan so dark during the summer months, she would call me her adopted son," he said. "You sometimes take those folks closest to you for granted, but having Grace across the street, next to Gene and Alice Glazer, the neighborhood Socialists, I learned many lessons about the human race. It was Grace who introduced me to Claude Brown’s ‘The Children of Ham,’ which left a great impression."
   I didn’t know Ms. Plater nearly as well, but her impact on me was great. She reinforced my sense that history has been written for the winners and that it is the responsibility of all of us to seek out and tell the stories of those that history has left behind.
   This attitude informs much of what I do now, the approach I take to writing editorials and columns and the stories we choose to highlight in the paper.
   The temptation for all reporters — one I would sometimes fall prey to when I started — is to identify the people sitting at the dais at municipal and school meetings as our audience. When we give in to the temptation, we end up writing about the bureaucratic maneuvers and insider issues that have little impact on the average person living in our communities.
   Ms. Plater reminded me that there is more to history than the machinations of government and, by extension, that there needed to be more to journalism, as well. It is a lesson I try to impart to every reporter who spends time on my staff and that I hope has an impact on readers — just another way in which Ms. Plater has had an impact on this community.
   While she will be sorely missed, her impact on South Brunswick will live on for a long time.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post. His e-mail is [email protected].