To the Editor:

Hey, Chuck. I know we never spoke much when I was in your high school, but I just wanted to express a few quiet words now that you’ve passed. If it’s all right. Forty-two years you were in your house with your wife, raising your kids in that snug little village by the railroad tracks raising two or three generations of high school kids in your 28 years as principal at Guilderland Central, and, well, I just think you deserve some special words of acknowledgment for all that you did so quietly.

Your loyalty ran so deep. Your love of a town and of its children ran so deep. I have to confess that I never knew you when I was a student at GCHS, but, as another principal told me when I was leaving a high school in Syracuse to come to Guilderland, “That’s a good thing.” You cruise through high school knowing Mr. Stimson and Mr. Carlson and Coach Field and as many of the girls as possible, but you don’t know the principal.

The principal has the status of the absolute. He is silent, and everything takes shape around him. But he isn’t flat silence. Oh, no. Not in your case, for sure. He is filled with love, guided by it every day as he moves silent and unnoticed in his school and his town and his community. Then there are just the small touches as he goes — teachers selected, teachers cautioned, parents soothed over, tragedies handled.

Here’s a small touch. You were there as Guilderland Central High School took its form. You weren’t the first principal. My classmate’s dad was there at first. But you were in on things like the nickname for the school: “The Flying Dutchmen.” That isn’t the nickname of some quiet, ordinary, unambitious school. It’s the kind of nickname where you say, “If you’re going to have a nickname, have a nickname.”

Or there were strokes of love like the Butch Bastiani Sportsmanship Award that began when Butch was struck by a car on Route 20 near my home in Westmere. How much love was there, in perpetuity, in naming the award for a young man taken from us so rudely and so suddenly.

Now, I knew Butch a little, and he was no model of perfection. None of us were. We were high school kids feeling our way and having fun. But you saw the perfection in him, and you memorialized it. That’s one of the strokes of love from you that you did for the school.

When I saw in your obituary the list of social organizations you belonged to, I know you did them the same way. You didn’t take over. You didn’t demand attention. You just helped — all over town and all over the area and all over the years.

I read, too, that social studies were your specialty in getting your advanced degree. When I think back on the team you assembled to teach us, I certainly nod at other good teachers — Mr. Knapp in biology, Mr. Stimson in math, Mr. Willett in chemistry. Why not? They delivered. Taught by them, we performed awfully well on those statewide exams. We were ready. You were there somehow making sure of it.

But that social studies department, called “citizenship education,” was sheer wizardry. Mr. Kopecek. Mr. Babcock. Mr. Andreone. Any one of them was a “Mr. Chips.” They knew history. They knew the adolescent psychology. And they were filled with love for both, just like their principal. Which would be you, Chuck. That department could have moved down the road to the university and stood out just as well, and Mr. Babcock in fact did become a college scholar of some renown.

I got to know you a little at our reunions, because you came to them. I don’t know if the other teachers were invited or not, but I know you were the one who came, often the only one. When you spoke, it was brief. And somehow perfect.

You spoke in 2017 at our 55th, shortly before you left town, and I couldn’t tell you one word that you said. But I said to myself, “If I ever find myself in a position like that, I’d love to speak just the way Chuck did.” I really meant to chat with you, but you left early and a little bit suddenly, I thought.

I don’t guess there was a standing ovation as Mr. Ciaccio left the last of the dozens, maybe hundreds of class reunions he would attend in Altamont. But in our hearts there was that standing ovation as a great man left the room.

Coming out of “just another public school” we had a red carpet into the workforce, into colleges, and in some cases into the best colleges. My senior year you posted charts of the staggering number of scholarships coming to our class.

When colleges give scholarships, they look at much else as well. But they look at the school. Guilderland Central High School was one they could trust. Charles Ciaccio was one they could trust.

So, I heard that you had passed on. I knew you could handle it. You could handle about anything, with grace and aplomb and a well-placed joke before things got out of hand. But you had a supreme sense of timing, and I guess it was just time to move on.

Safe journey, our Flying Dutchman. And, as I may have never had a chance to tell you, thank you.

Dr. James G. Meade

Iowa

Editor’s note: Dr. James G. Meade, a professional writer, was graduated from Guilderland High School in 1962. See related obituary.