Early METCO Alumni Return to Celebrate Milestone Year

Gemema Murchison was ecstatic to meet a few Bedford High School seniors. “You are the fruits of what we started. You are standing on our shoulders,” she proclaimed. “We want greatness for you. Push for excellence.”

Murchison and two of her companions were among the earliest cohort of students attending Bedford schools as part of the METCO program that sponsors inner-city students of color who enroll in and diversify suburban schools.

A few current METCO seniors greeted the three visitors during a reunion with their former district on Nov. 20, one of the events planned by METCO Director Akil Mondesir to celebrate the 50^th year of the program in Bedford.

Murchison, Teressa Meuse, and the Rev. Clarence Powell were METCO first-graders in the town, and all ultimately graduated from BHS. Besides Mondesir, who is a 1998 Bedford High METCO graduate, they were accompanied by METCO alumna Brianna Robinson, BHS class of 2015, who chronicled the occasion with her camera.

They also had a chance to meet with three other Bedford High METCO alumni on the staff of the Bedford schools: Jonathan Brome, Ayesha Thomas, and Chauncey Williams.

The visitors spent several hours together, touring all four schools, reflecting on their experiences, and sharing memories that evoked laughter – even the bus ride home as the Blizzard of ’78 accelerated. At the BHS library, they pored over their old senior yearbooks and recalled teachers and counselors who made a difference. 

Charles Alperin, the BHS adjustment counselor, dropped by to greet his classmate Murchison. Principal Heather Galante, dressed up for BHS Spirit Week, also met the visiting alumni. She learned first-hand that in the 1980s there were too few high school students for a bus, so the BHS METCO students hitched a ride on a Lexington bus, which dropped them at the high school at the end of its run, often during or even after first period.

Meuse graduated in 1986; she was Teressa Tilman then. She entered Bedford school in the fall of 1974, four months after the School Committee voted unanimously to affiliate with METCO.

The “struggles” – early mornings and long bus rides – “instilled a work ethic in me,” Meuse said. “My mom was very big on education. She thought METCO was best for me.”

For several years, Bedford built its METCO population from the ground up, through the primary grades. The high school cohort was small in the ’80s and there wasn’t a late bus back to Boston. Following after-school activities, Meuse said, she relied on the MBTA: “two buses, two trains, and then another bus to get home.”

After a while, “I stayed most of the time with my host parents.” And she planned to stop by Joan Melville’s house before the end of the day to sustain that connection.

Meuse went to Northeastern University on a scholarship. Her initial concentration was in criminal justice. After 14 years in Arizona, she is back in the Boston area, working as a licensed social worker.

Murchison graduated from BHS in 1987 and is an entrepreneur in geriatrics care based in Rockville, MD. She said in Maryland, “there is so much opportunity, especially for African-Americans.” Moving there “just made sense for me. They push a lot of entrepreneurial spirit.”

“Education was a high value in our family, something that was coveted,” Murchison said about her METCO enrollment. “My mom was trying to look out for me. Her message was: ‘You are not going to the Boston Public Schools.’ All my friends went to METCO.”

She remembers watching televised news reports about white adults throwing things at school buses in reaction to court-ordered busing of students in Boston.

As Bedford METCO students, “We could have benefited with more support,” Murchison acknowledged. “We had to overcome a lot of things,” many of which have been addressed over the ensuing generation. Sometimes, she said, several hours passed before eating, “and we were six years old.”

“We were always ‘The kids from Roxbury,’” Murchison said. “I had to determine in my brain that would not define who I was.”

All of that “allowed me to develop skills – out of everything bad comes something good,” Murchison continued, attributing the idea to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She emphasized the bonds that the students formed and strengthened with each other, waiting for and riding the school bus between Boston and Bedford. “All we had was each other.”

Murchison attended Mount Ida College in Newton. She cared for her aging parents, and that inspired her to establish and manage a business of geriatric care services and health care advocacy. 

“I was created to be a social worker,” she said, “Everything I went through is working together.”

Powell, who was joined by his wife during the Bedford visit, began his Bedford career at the former Page School. He graduated from BHS in 1989. He said when he travels around inner-city Boston neighborhoods, the landmarks that stand out are the street corner where he waited for the bus to Bedford. 

Irene Parker, the legendary METCO director, was upset because he had no immediate college plans, Powell remembered. But he said he always has known that “the church was my calling. My grandparents were church planners. I have been in the church all my life.”

Powell began theology school in 1999 and was ordained in 2004. He received his master’s degree in 2010 and is pursuing his Ph.D. at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. The BHS graduate is the pastor of Abundance Life Deliverance Temple, which he founded in Dorchester.

Robinson matriculated at Quinnipiac College after BHS graduation, and that’s where a friend introduced her to photography, which she said has been self-taught. She said she is the personal photographer for one of the reserves on the Boston Celtics.