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Lunch with Ernest

Still a coach, this time in a suit

In 31 years as a teacher, coach and administrator, Henry C. "Shake" Washington has touched the lives of thousands of students in the county.

Pull up a chair and join us.

HENRY: I got that name from playing basketball when I was in high school. I had a stop-and-go move. It really helped me shake the opponent, and from that point they started calling me "Shake."

Yeah, I am. Most of the time when you have a nickname like that, later on in life they change your name. But it's always stuck with me.

It has because I would not have gotten an opportunity to go to college. My parents didn't have enough money to send me to college. Playing sports gave me an opportunity to go to college for free.

At first, I wanted to be a social worker. I wanted to come back to Tampa and help the needy people. I later realized that what I do best is sports, so I changed my degree to health and physical education, and I got into coaching at Katyana High School in Lafayette, La.

Coaches are more in the arena of dealing with people. You deal with people when they're the good, the bad and the ugly. You deal with all aspects with people, and you learn to cope with that as a coach. You learn to understand people, to understand situations, to be able to make moves like in a checkers game. Every conflict you come into, you have the experience to help you get over. All the experience I've had from playing, from the military, from coaching has helped me a great deal in my life.

I always say you never know where you'll end up. I had no ambition to be a principal. I taught driver's ed, I was the head boys basketball coach (at King High) and I had a great job. But people kept saying, Why don't you get into administration? I always had control of the students, even in a pep assembly. I think it was just God-given. So I told my wife one night, I'm going to Nova to get my master's. She said, You love coaching, you're not going to do it. The next week, I started.

It wasn't the original school but the thrill was there. No other principal that I knew of in the area went back to open the school they graduated from. I knew the neighborhood. I was born on the corner of MLK and 22nd. You know where the Church's Chicken is? That's where I was born. (He laughs.)

It was a midwives clinic. I was born there, and I lived on 14th Avenue. So I knew everybody.

To see them grow, to see them be successful in life. To see them when they really don't know what they want to do, and you guide them on to be successful. Not necessarily to be lawyers or doctors, but to be productive in society.

Always, always. In the back of your mind as an educator, you think you can save every kid. In reality, you can't. But you try hard to save every kid. I'm in this business because I love students. Of course, I like to get paid for doing my job but the greatest aspect is dealing with kids and trying to get them to understand the things they can do in life. There's so many things they can do in life.

You know, I've had kids tell me they've never had an opportunity to go downtown, they've never been to the International Plaza. It's hard to believe that in this time and age.

I have 18 elementary schools, six middle schools, three high schools and 13 other sites. In all, I have 40 sites that I'm in charge of, so it's very challenging. My job is to help the principals and the coordinators educate kids in the proper way.

You know what, I like this role because I have more input on the daily operations of schools, and I have a chance to help principals understand certain things because I've been a principal for a while and I've been an administrator for a while. It's hard, though, because now I'm not around kids every day. It's almost like I'm not a part of the school system because for 31 years I've been hands-on with kids, but I can still go visit schools.

If I had to live my life all over again, I would live it the same way. My wife and I were talking on the way to church Sunday, and I was telling her that there is nothing in life I regret because everything has been a learning experience for me. Going through life, you learn not to make the same mistake twice.

Washington, 56, is an impeccable dresser, often wearing sharp suits with matching ties and pocket handkerchiefs. He says even as a coach, he owned 30 pairs of athletic shoes. Shake and his wife, Cheryl, have been married 24 years. His son, Henry Jr., is the basketball coach at Jefferson, and daughter JaMia is a senior at the University of Miami.

- Ernest Hooper also writes a column for the Tampa & State section of the St. Petersburg Times. Lunch With Ernest is edited for brevity and clarity. To suggest lunch partners, call Ernest at 226-3406 or e-mail hooper@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 22, 2005, 10:20:06]