Less than a week before school was slated to start, Robert Hesterfer was up to his ears in boxes. The large yellow rented truck outside testified to the fact that he was leaving, something that even he found strange. After 20 years in the Secaucus school system, Hesterfer was usually gearing up for school at that time. Now, he was getting ready to move out of Secaucus forever.
In June, Hesterfer retired from the district. Moving south to Myrtle Beach, S.C. had been in his plans for years, as he had acquired a home away from home there during yearly vacations.
“My wife and I always said we would move there when I retired,” he said, noting that he loved Secaucus and would love to stay. “But I wouldn’t retire. I would run for school board. I would want to get involved.”
As he and his family packed the truck that would carry their possessions south within hours of this interview, Hesterfer still thought of Secaucus, pondering over its problems and celebrating his successes. He has been so deeply involved in the lives of its residents during his years in the school district, it is difficult for him to leave without some regret.
Insider view
For years as Guidance Coordinator, Hesterfer has had an insider view into the private lives of Secaucus families, often helping to resolve family and personal crises – each leaving him with knowledge of the residents that few other public figures ever manage to obtain.
Some of these memories will stay with him the rest of his life, like the first time a 17-year-old girl asked him how to go about getting a test for AIDS, or the first time he had to handle a student who attempted suicide. Yet not all the memories are terrible. One particular moment in November 1991 will remained fixed in his mind for the rest of his life: when the school, during its Thanksgiving Eve bonfire, read letters from the 13 Secaucus soldiers stationed in the Middle East during Dessert Storm.
At age 59, Hesterfer leaves on a high note. For years, he was concerned about the fact that as much as 15 percent of the senior class each year would not graduate with the class come June.
“I realized we had to do something to keep the class together,” he said. “That’s when I came up with the idea for a breakfast to kick off the senior year, something that would make the senior class fell like a unit.”
Hesterfer came up with a large wooden puzzle. Each graduating senior would take a piece during the senior breakfast, and then the class would attempt to fit the pieces back together in June during graduation. He said the reasons why kids didn’t finish varied, but until this year, no class had succeeded in putting on the pieces back.
“Then my last year, the entire class graduates,” he said. “That moved me.”
Grew up in a town Secaucus’ size
Hesterfer grew in Glen Ridge and went to high school there, graduating in a class similar to the size of classes graduating out of Secaucus. He said his time in Glen Ridge taught him the importance of thinking like a winner.
“I don’t believe it is only how you play the game that counts,” he said.
It is also taught him how little things like pep rallies, bonfires and other events can make a big difference in kids lives at school. This is something he brought with him to Secaucus when he eventually started teaching here.
Hesterfer’s father wanted him to be an engineer. He hated the idea. He tried and when he couldn’t stand it, dropped out for a job in a supermarket chain where he eventually became manager. “Then came that fateful day in 1961 when I joined the Marines,” Hesterfer said. “That was the best thing I ever did. It make me take a real hard look at myself.”
He served three years and nine months and even volunteered to go to Vietnam, but did not get the assignment. When he got out, he went back to his job at the supermarket and got married. He also returned to school, where he majored in history at Jersey City State College.
“I knew this was going to be an interesting experience when on my first day, the other students started holding open the door for me,” he said. “I was dressed in a suit and tie. They thought I was a professor. When they found out later that I wasn’t a professor, they started dropping the door on me.”
After graduation, he heard there was a job opening in the Secaucus school system and applied.
“Nobody thought I would get the job,” he said. “Jobs usually went to people who lived in Secaucus in those days.”
Schools Superintendent Arthur Couch and High School Principal Ralph Guma interviewed Hesterfer for more than an hour, then hired him.
“I was 30 at the time, and I had some life experiences,” he said. “Most of the others applying had just come out of college, and I think the school wanted something at my level of development.” Hesterfer taught at Lincoln School for about a year. Then when the high school opened, he moved up and taught eighth and 12th grade history.
“It was the best combination,” he said. “The eighth grade is the last grade that you can really get kids to listen to you. They take what you say as the truth. You have the ability to empower them. They still believe in things and aren’t so cynical as they are later. Then, I would get the same kids later in the 12th grade where I saw the change in them.”
Hesterfer was one of those people deeply involved in many extracurricular activities, as well as some of the rituals of graduation. This was not something he intended to do when younger. In his second year, Guma called him into the office and said. “You’re the Key Club advisor.”
“I told him I’m new here I don’t know anything about being the advisor to the Key Club,” Hesterfer said. “He told me I didn’t have tenure yet. So I took the job. The next year, he called me in to make me advisor to the Student Government Organization. I told him I was already doing the Key Club. He said I still didn’t have tenure. So I took that job as well.”
More than academics
Over the years, Hesterfer was responsible for establishing for the schools’ rod and gun club and has been involved in numerous trips. He became one of the key workers in the various play productions like Godspell and Gypsy. He said many students would not have graduated school if not for many of these activities.
“School has to be about more than just academics,” he said. “Many kids are not academically inclined and they struggle, and you have the give them something that will make them want to stay in school. I call it empowering them. There has to be a niche for everyone.”
Perhaps Hesterfer’s most important role was as student assistance coordinator as part of the child guidance team, which he took on in 1988. Most schools across America were not well-prepared for the surge of drugs that occurred in the late 1980s, and Secaucus was no different.
“We had nothing in place,” Hesterfer said, although over the next few years, he and his staff, with the approval of the school board and principals, began to build a network of support that could help almost any child with nearly any crisis.
He said this year’s complete graduating class was testimony to the success of that network.
“Kids quit school for a number of reasons,” he said. “Many come to school with emotional baggage. But with our network there is no problem we can’t find a resource for.”
This role gave him a deeper understanding of the problems children face in today’s society. He said the school district is becoming ethnically and financially diverse, which also means a diversity of new problems. One of the hopeful signs that Secaucus is ready for that change was the appointment of Pat Impreveduto three years ago as the high school principal.
“Almost from the day I started in the Secaucus school system over 20 years ago, I’ve waited for a man like Pat to take over, and now that he has, I’m retiring,” Hesterfer said. “He has gotten more accomplished in the last year than anyone in the last 20 years.”