Hello World, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. Coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 86. This is the special monthly bonus episode, a shorter-than-average episode where we dive deep into one particular topic. Those of you who have followed the podcast know that I've covered a lot of different topics on these bonus episodes, they vary quite a bit. This one might be the most unique, at least as far as how it's structured and how I approach it. Back in episode 58, I did a bonus episode on the teacher who influenced my life the most as far as becoming a writer, et cetera. This episode is going to be about another favorite teacher, but the ending of the story is a lot different. And as we get into it, you'll see why, when it comes to this story, this teacher and everything that went down those from my hometown, those that are from Cape Cod from the area, we all know the story, or at least what was out there. I'm going to go out of my way not to name names. If you all want to dig through the old newspaper articles and such it's really easy to find. This happened my senior year of high school I graduated from Dennis Yarmouth in 1996. So that'll make it really easy for you to find this. This particular teacher had been around for probably 25 years or so by the time I had him, both sophomore and senior year, he taught English but it was more of something like cultural studies. He was there so long that members of my family, parents, uncles, and aunts, had him or knew of him, he was hugely popular. I was considered extremely lucky to get to be in his class because it was different from anything else you would get taught in high school. And my love of writing was apparent even then. So I consider myself lucky I couldn't wait to go to his class. And it was every bit as exciting and different than anything I'd ever seen in English. Especially considering that freshman year my English teacher was far different. She was very much a quiet buttoned down. older woman By the book. I always laugh that she reminded me of like a puritanical woman, not in a bad way, but just her demeanor. So to go to this heavier, bearded hippie-type man was a great change. And he even had a nickname, Baba, how many teachers did you ever have in school that had a nickname? I think we may have had one more in my high school, but there's not that many. The biggest thing that I remember about having Bubba, as a teacher was getting to listen to Pink Floyd music in class. And I mean, a lot of it, like the entirety of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which is like 25 minutes long, watching the entirety of the wall movie, which is kind of trippy. It opened my mind and made me a better writer and a better understanding of culture. So when I was able to have Bubba again, senior year, I was like, This is the greatest way to go out on top as far as high school goes, because I was a great student in school from kindergarten through sophomore year. I put in the work. But I kind of got worn out in junior year, I wanted to do more of hanging with friends and enjoying life, knowing that I was staring at adulthood, quote, unquote. So I kind of slacked off. I guess I took it less seriously. I always joke with my middle niece, Emma, who's in college now for forensic psychology. I say you're doing what I should have been doing because she never stopped the hustle with education. So having Bubba for English, cultural studies, whatever you want to call it for senior year, was kind of a way to keep my interest as I hurtled towards graduation, and then God knows what. So we're going to flash back to January 1996. All of my fellow class of 96 students, you all know this story, but I was there, which kind of gives me a unique perspective. I never thought about sharing this until a random Twitter post a few weeks back where someone asked about that incident from your high school and he said, you know, everyone's got one. And this popped into my head and I said, you know, I might as well share it on the podcast. It'll be kind of a trip down memory lane for people that were there. And it might shock and surprise some people who think that Cape Cod is just rural and people come here for the summer and nothing ever happens. Well, this story here will change that perspective. Everything that comes from here going forward is from my memory of being there and also my researching newspaper articles from the time like I said, you can find these, I'm not going to just give them to you and put links in the podcast. So January 1996, we are, at that point five months, maybe a little less from graduation. I'm sure people who were in the class will be able to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe on this day, we were having some talent show slash show and tell because they can clearly remember I was in photography class back then. And I had my camera that would shoot just black and white film. I have a picture of my friend Mose his nickname with his acoustic guitar. My friend Barry, you hear me talk about all the time is behind him. I'm almost positive that that is from this day. And it's like a moment in time that I captured. Because this English class with Bubba was the last period of the day. It was a great way to end the day. All of us kids are sitting there. I don't know how many 20? Bubba's at the front desk, just watching whatever was going on. And suddenly there's a knock at the door. And in walks the I believe she was the head of the English department and calls Bubba over, he walks over, and they step out into the hallway. And so all of us kids are kind of wondering what's going on. Two or three minutes pass. We're like, what's up, Bubba comes walking back in, collects his stuff silently, doesn't look at us or say anything, and walks back out. We're like, what the hell just happened? Where's he going? We all gather around the windows as we look out into the parking lot, and there he is getting in his car. He starts his car up, drives away he waves to us as he drives away. And that was the last time I ever saw him. The head of the English department came back in and she didn't tell us what happened. It was more or less Something had come up. The rest of this period will be like a study hall. And I believe that was the rest of the semester. I think we just had it as a study hall. So what exactly happened that caused Bubba to leave in the middle of class never to be seen again? Well, this is where it really gets crazy. The gist of it straightforward was that it came to light that Bubba had been making adult films in California during his summer vacations. These were distributed to a few, I guess less reputable Cape Cod video stores. I don't know exactly how, but in some way, the superintendent of Dennis Yarmouth Regional District was alerted to these videos. And he even said he went and had he either had someone rent one or he went and rented one and put it into watch to see for himself which in and of itself has got to be a scary proposition. And he said not only could he hear Bubba's voice because he had been at DY teaching for 25 years, so you couldn't mistake his voice. But he was in some of the videos. As far as I know, he was never nude in any of the videos. Oh, he did some stuff with some of these actresses. And there was no mistaking Bubba, he was a heavyset man, with curly hair, and a big bushy beard. You knew it was him. Now making adult videos, especially away from your full-time job, it's not illegal. And as far as we knew, in our class, he had never mentioned it at all. I mean, it was a huge shock. Because Surprise, surprise, it was all over the news the next day, that an English teacher from a smaller High School on Cape Cod had been suspended, essentially for adult videos. Even saying it now it's weird that this actually happened. Even teachers at the time said there was no morals clause in their contracts. But the adult videos, it was more about being a good role model for your students, which I can understand. So what exactly led to him being released from our classroom on that day in January? Well, there was at least one student who said he had solicited them to be either in a video or at least have modeling photos taken of and like I said, I'm not going to name names. I know who one of them was. And the reason why I knew was because she actually worked with my mother at her job. And so that's what kind of changed my opinion was the fact that my mother was telling me no, this girl told me in detail what was said, because I didn't want to believe it. Bubba was one of my favorite teachers I ever had. So for him to be making these, even if they're softcore adult films, and he's not having intercourse with the women, the fact that he solicited a student to be in one or whatever the photography was, I didn't want to believe that it could not be true. So the next day when we were at school, every media outlet you could think of in the country was in our parking lot. All the local newspapers, radio stations, to Boston-based newspapers, and TV stations. MTV was their MTV interviewed me, but I didn't have anything bad to say about Bubba. So they never used my footage. I had a friend tell me last week that she and another girl kind of got ambushed outside of the library by Hard Copy, which was like an investigative journalism show. Back then, this was national news for a while, my little High School on Cape Cod was national news. Like I said, we students didn't want to believe that Bubba could do anything like this. So being 17-18 years old, we're thinking, Oh, it's a conspiracy that whoever said he solicited them was just a bad student, and they wanted revenge on him. I'll never forget the crush of media out in front of the school, I can still see it in my head, because Yarmouth, Massachusetts is not that big of a town in the grand scheme of things. So if you go to your high school, and you see MTV there, I can't remember if any of the bigger national news outlets were there, like CNN or something. But all of the news vans with the logos from the TV stations were shocking. And slowly, the news stories started coming out. As I said, you can find these news stories to get a better perspective. But a lot of the opinions were from people who didn't have Bubba as a teacher. So us students our opinions were seen as emotional responses as one of our favorite teachers was at that time suspended, so I went back and did my research. I'm looking at a lot of these opinions and editorials of these holier-than-thou people who are thinking they never ever did anything wrong in life. And I get it. It was all true to a degree what Bubba did. And I do agree that he had to be let go, there was no way that he could come back and teach with that hanging over his head. He fought it. And first for wrongful termination. It took about a year for a settlement. But we students all supported him regardless. It just shows the positive impact that he had on us students that had him. A few days later, we had a walkout where I mean at least 100 of us students or more walked out of the school. It was peaceful. It was fun to just get up and leave in the middle of class because I was one of them. I went out and the news vans would still be there staking out Bubba's house. At times there were students who would go to visit him to kind of give support. I remember one interview with two guys who were coming from his house and just saying they were checking on him. And none of us students had a bad thing to say about Bubba. But the thing is, it's a different view. If you were the girl that was solicited by him if you were the superintendent that saw the videos. As I've gotten older, I can see where that perspective comes from. Bubba never talked about his summer escapades. He was always professional. But that was with us. If you were the student, and he said, Hey, I want to take pictures of you. Or hey, would you ever want to be a model or an actress? I could see where your opinion of Bubba would be different. Because he's supposed to be a teacher supposed to be someone you can trust for the most part. You know, everyone has a favorite teacher. Everyone has their least favorite teachers. So there's a trust that is broken when you mix those two sides of someone's life together. And I've got no clue as to why he decided to start making adult videos. I don't know. Everyone's got a side hustle. I guess some are just weirder than others. Slowly but surely the media crush faded away. Things didn't get back to normal. I don't remember having another English teacher during my senior year. And just looking through my senior yearbook. It's like 90% of the students in the senior class in their senior memories that we would all right. All mentioned Bubba. I remember sitting with my friend Barry and trying to come up with a poem or song lyrics or something about the situation. It was actually what kind of started my progression into wanting to be a songwriter. It was this situation with Bubba senior year. Granted, I never could be a songwriter because I couldn't play an instrument. But the writing part right there, through this situation, Baba influenced my writing career. He stayed on Cape Cod but his name was never that far from the overall scene of Cape Cod. A couple of years later, we had the Howard Stern Show start to get syndicated here on Pixy 103, one of our radio stations. And Howard Stern interviewed people from Pixy and they asked him what he knew about Cape Cod. And I kid you not he brought up Bubba, and making adult films. So even though Bubba was eventually fired, they settled it, he went away his legacy lived on with those adult films and sticking that with DY in Cape Cod. That's the incident from my school. I read through a dozen articles to kind of research this for the podcast to make sure that any facts that I state are as accurate as possible. I've got my own opinions from being there. But anything else as far as details go the street from newspapers, take their accuracy as far as you want. Bubba ended up still being one of my favorite teachers I ever had very influential on what I wanted to do in life. Regardless of his choice of side hustle, I might disagree with it, you might disagree with it. But it's not illegal, per se, just making the videos soliciting a student to be in one. Yeah, that's a lot different. And while I was researching this, I went to just look him up to see what exactly he was doing. Because he had been a teacher for so long. He had coached youth baseball for a long time. He was an integral part of the Yarmouth Dennis School District for 25 years or more. And I found his LinkedIn profile. And maybe it hasn't been updated in quite a while. But his last update was three years ago. And as of three years ago, he's still listed his adult video company as his job. I mean, everybody's got to make money. But it was definitely kind of disappointing to see that he was still involved in that, at least as of a few years ago. This sort of thing is not unique to Cape Cod, my God, there have been so many stories of teachers having relationships with students, which I just find gross if it's a 12-year-old with the teacher. So by that standard, what Bubba did and has done is very tame. But like I said, teachers are supposed to kind of be role models that are helping to shape young minds and give them direction into adulthood. And whether I like it or not, or any of the other students that were in class with him like it or not, he betrayed that trust. I can say he was one of my favorite teachers I ever had, but also be able to step back and realize that he was no role model. We're all human. But I think a lot of us most of us have not betrayed the position of trust or power if we have that in our jobs. Hell, I'm a personal trainer. That's my day job. And I take very seriously the trust people put in me to help them with their overall health. I've said it a lot of times, it takes many, many years to forge a reputation and a second to destroy it. And for all the good that Bubba did for 25-plus years, in that one instant when the superintendent watched that video, he destroyed his reputation. But that is the story from my high school. I'm sure for a lot of you. This is just retreading something familiar, especially if you were there. For others. Maybe it's shocking that this happened on Cape Cod, but let me know what you all think, and thank you all for tuning in to Episode 86 a special bonus episode. Next week we'll be back to a full-length Episode, Episode 87. We're going to talk about the three sisters lighthouses of Nauset. Our road trip will be all the best scenic fall foliage drives you can do in New England. We're gonna go way back in the day to what it was like being a kid and getting an education and 50s TV through Nick at Nite. There'll be a brand new top five that are the top five defunct New England amusement parks. And a brand new this week in history and Time Capsule all coming up next week on episode 87 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you all again for tuning in. Check out all the links in the description of the podcast to find me on social media. Listen, share, donate, if you can, and know that I appreciate everyone who tunes in. This was definitely a different episode to do, but one I felt was necessary to kind of share but that puts a bow on it. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I have been Christopher Setterlund and I will talk to you all again soon.
