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Angler's Profiles
by Hugh Markey
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| A series of articles introducing RISAA members to the rest of the club. |
| (From the December 2004 Newsletter) Harry Potter |
Yes, that’s really his name. A name that no one would have
batted an eye about just a few short years ago, but one that today
just happens to be shared with arguably the most popular fictional
adolescent in a hundred years. It’s a name that causes more than
a few raised eyebrows, but one that is also responsible for his being
featured on nationwide television. “Kids love it, adults laugh at
it. It opens up conversations, and that makes me happy.”
This Harry Potter may never have to do battle with the dreaded
Voldemort, but he does use his wizardry for two important elements in
his life: children and fishing.THE WIZARD OF DROPOUT PREVENTION Opening up conversations with kids and adults isn’t just a source of leisure for Potter: it’s his job. Working as the Providence School Department’s Director of Student Opportunities, Potter spends his days trying to keep kids in school. This is no small task in a district like Providence. “What I like about what I’m doing is I get to set the agenda,” Potter says. “I’ll spend maybe two or three hours talking to eighth graders at a middle school. Then, in the afternoon I’m doing the same thing with juniors and seniors at the high schools.” Potter talks with kids about staying in school, keeping away from the many dangers that creep into students’ lives like gangs, drugs, and guns. Not always a pleasant chat. “Believe me, some of these are hard conversations,” he says of his visits. “But the thing is, most of these kids are where I’m from.” Born and raised in a federal project in South Providence, Potter knows the streets from personal experience. It gives him an edge when talking with youngsters, but it wasn’t always that way. There was a time when the street life nearly got the better of  Harry Potter.“I was thrown out of school in ninth grade,” Potter says bluntly. “You know the kind of ninth grade kid that just wants to be all bad, causing trouble, swearing? I was like that. One day, they said they’d had enough of me and that was that.” Potter spent the next year and a half at alternative high schools designed for kids who couldn’t deal with the typical school structure. After that, Potter decided that he wanted to return to regular high school. He successfully petitioned to return, but found himself tracked into low-level classes, clearly steering him away from college. It looked like he would limp through his remaining year, until one day his assistant principal stopped him in the halls. “Theodore Haig was a young African-American man who had just recently come to Hope High School. One day he asked to see my schedule, and it was full of classes that weren’t challenging at all. Right then and there he took me to the guidance office and had my schedule changed. I was taking physics, calculus, advanced English – a college track. “If he hadn’t taken that one moment in time to say ‘You’re smart’ and put me in those classes, I would have ended up like most of my friends by now – in jail or dead. That’s the kind of thing I try to bring to the students I talk to.” POTIONS FOR FISHING  While Potter’s job involves keeping kids in school, he admits that the call of fishing occasionally kept him out of the classroom. “When I was a boy, my brother and I would sometimes play hooky and go fishing in Roger Williams Park. We’d go to the bakery to get dough to use for bait, and man, we caught huge carp! I’m talking, like ten pounds! We didn’t think you could eat carp then, but other people in the neighborhood used to give us 25 cents a pound for it. That was good money for us!” The two boys continued to develop their fishing skills, and eventually they turned their attention to salt water. “We knew we were in a state practically surrounded by salt water, so as soon as we had the chance, we started going.” Always self-taught, young Harry began to spend quality time mining bait shop owners for information. “I used to go to Quaker Lane Bait and speak with the owner for hours, you know: what’s biting where? What can we use for bait? We would just spend time talking strategies.” HARRY POTTER AND THE BOATERS OF RISAA Harry Potter recalled those and other experiences when he heard about RISAA’s Take-A-City-Kid Fishing Day. “Those times going out fishing were pretty special. I started realizing, heck man, if we could expose kids to fishing, we could change lives!” Potter made a call to the Providence Recreation Department, and one to RISAA president Steve Medeiros. Before long, Medeiros realized his crowd of kids was likely to be bigger than ever, thanks in part to Harry Potter. “That day was a beautiful thing,” Potter recalls. “We had a hundred kids with us. It was great to have the kids mixing with people of status. They could see that although they were around people who were strangers at first, they were people who cared.” Potter says now that the children he recruited had so much fun this year, he’ll be bringing more the next. “Steve says he’ll find room for however many kids we’ll bring!” THE MAGIC OF TELEVISION And just how does a man who was then a high school principal find himself chatting with Katie Couric of The Today Show? “Well, shortly before the first Harry Potter movie came out, Katie Couric was searching around the country for other guys named Harry Potter.” When Couric heard there was a man in Providence with the same name, it wasn’t long before she and her crew arranged to come to town. Still, there was one small problem. Although the J.K. Rowling books were immensely popular, Providence’s Harry had not read them. “You should have seen me, calling little kids so I would know what to say!” Potter laughs. “That crew spent about nine hours at school that day, interviewing the kids, talking to the faculty about me. Then later they brought me out to New York and we set up an interview in a classroom near the studios.” The show aired as part of a huge buildup to the movie, and Potter had his fifteen minutes of fame. “All off the name!” he says, laughing again. THE WIZARD LOOKS INTO THE FUTURE While the novelty of sharing his name with a popular character doesn’t seem to wear thin, being Harry Potter means being your own person. When it comes to the future, his dreams lead straight back to the water. “I love working with kids. Still, I see myself retiring in Florida someday, getting out and learning about tarpon, bonefish, and species I’ve never fished for. “I’ll always keep fishing,” Potter says. “I hope when my time comes, I’m standing on a beach with a fishing rod in my hand.” |
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