A.) I (Luke Strappelli) interviewed Mr. Edward Maynard on March 6th, 2019.

B.) Interview Process

This interview was conducted in person at the John Carroll School. I used Trint.com to get the bulk of the interview transcripted. I focused on fixing grammar and words that the website didn’t pick up. Overall, the website saved me a lot of time. I interviewed Mr. Maynard in his office during the school day. It was one of the quietest places I could’ve done it. I set up the blue snowball microphone on his desk with my computer on the ground (so the signals didn’t interrupt each other) and started the interview. I recorded it inside of FL Studio 20 which is a recording DAW that I was already familiar with. I raised the EQ and cut out a lot of high frequencies to try and get the best quality out of the recording. The phone ringing and the school bell were pretty much the only obstacles I encountered during the interview. I thought I prepared and executed the interview very well.

C.) Biography

Mr. Maynard’s parents came over to the United States in 1968. They came over because they wanted their kids to grow up in a place where the military did not rule. His parents answered an ad in a newspaper which was placed in Clarín (the main newspaper in Buenos Aires). The article was looking for a caretaker and a maid to work on a farm in Bel Air, Maryland; so, they flew to JFK airport and got driven to Bel Air, Maryland to start their new life. Mr. Maynard was born in in 1975 and grew up in a soccer-loving household. He was raised Catholic and grew up with the same Argentine traditions his parents had practiced before. He struggled with the English language early on and had to attend a summer learning program in the language arts to catch up with all the other American kids in his school. He was an outgoing kid growing up and one of the first real challenges he faced was finding friends near him. Growing up, Mr. Maynard yearned for the typical suburban neighborhood while all of his early friends wanted to run around on his farm. In his teenage years, Mr. Maynard received help from a family friend (the owner of the land his parents worked on) to attend a private high school (John Carroll) playing soccer. He recalled that the man paid 50% of his high school tuition and helped him grow all four years. He stated that soccer was his “ticket” in life, opening doors that he could not have opened without his special gift. After high school, he attended the University of Maryland, College Park and graduated in 1993. During his time there he played for the D1 soccer team where he excelled and participated in national tournaments all around the country. After graduating, he got a job at the John Carroll School in 2002 and has not left ever since. Things took a negative turn when he was diagnosed with colon cancer at the age of 39. Cancer may have knocked him down, but eventually, he did beat it. He was grateful for all of the monetary and personal contributions he had received from schools, churches, and friends during that tough time. In particular, his children’s schools and John Carroll played a huge role in funding his medical costs over the years. He returned to John Carroll a year later after successfully beating cancer and has not been knocked down ever since. The John Carroll school has helped him all his life and now he believes that his role is to help others who are in the same situation he was in.

D.) Citations and Research

“Colorectal Cancer | Colon Cancer | Rectal Cancer.” MedlinePlus. 18 Mar. 2019. U.S. National Library of Medicine. 24 Mar. 2019 <https://medlineplus.gov/colorectalcancer.html>.

1.) This information gave me a descriptive background on colon cancer. This describes the disease and everything associated with it. It allowed me to better understand what happened to Mr. Maynard and the statistics around it. It was rare for Edward to get diagnosed so early at age 39; it’s more common for people in the ages of 50 years or above.

Martin, Philip. “Trends in Migration to the U.S.” Population Reference Bureau. 19 May 2014. 2019 Population Reference Bureau. 24 Mar. 2019 <https://www.prb.org/us-migration-trends/>.

2.) This article helped show me what immigrating to the United States was like after 1965. It had graphs, laws, and other useful information portraying trends and highlighting certain points to help the reader understand the history of immigration in the United States. I found that after 1965, most of the immigration was coming from Latin America and Asia rather than Europe. Qualitative and quantitative restrictions were maintained, but national origin preferences that favored the entry of Europeans were dropped. U.S. immigration policy began to favor the entry of foreigners who had U.S. relatives and foreigners requested by U.S. employers (Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965). The United States admitted an average 250,000 immigrants a year in the 1950s, 330,000 in the 1960s, 450,000 in the 1970s, 735,000 in the 1980s, and over 1 million a year since the 1990s. In 2005, the House approved an enforcement-first bill and has opted for a piecemeal approach to immigration reform in 2013, with bills that increase border and interior enforcement and expand guest worker programs for farm and information technology (IT) workers.

Navarro, Marysa. “The Sixties in Argentina.” ReVista. 2009. 2019 The President and Fellows of Harvard College. 24 Mar. 2019 <https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/book/sixties-argentina>.

3.) This article goes over what life was like in Argentina during the 1960s. Civilian governments and weak military regimes fought for power in the early 1960s. Later on, Peronists continued to resist with increasing violence and by the late 60s, they had begun to create guerrilla organizations, attracting young middle-class men and women who wanted to emulate the 1959 triumph of the Cuban revolution or show with the rising Marxist labor movement, or even saw their involvement as a way of implementing the changes in the Catholic Church after Vatican II. Notwithstanding the primacy of politics, the growing violence and the tastes of puritanical generals, young Argentines also began to listen to rock and roll. They created groups that imitated the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and played in a few Buenos Aires small cafes despite police repression. Despite, political turmoil, art and music in Argentina started to grow and flourish. Buenos Aires became a culturally vibrant city. This article helped me to better understand what life was really like in Argentina when Mr. Maynard’s parents immigrated over.

E.) Transcription

Luke Strappelli: [00:00:00] I will be interviewing Mr. Edward Maynard today at the John Carroll School. Mr. Maynard, do you consent to giving this interview?

Mr. Maynard: [00:00:05] I do.

Luke Strappelli: [00:00:07] Would you mind if I use this interview as a class example.

Mr. Maynard: [00:00:10] I do not mind.

Luke Strappelli: [00:00:12] Perfect. Can you describe the transition your parents faced when they moved to the United States?

Mr. Maynard: [00:00:23] My parents came here from Argentina in 1968. It was a pretty big transition. They left what was at the time, military role in Argentina. They weren’t particularly crazy about how things were operating in their country. They both, at that time my mom had moved to Buenos Aires, the capital city and that’s where my father was from. So they started looking at opportunities to kind of leave the country together; it was a decision that they made jointly and decided to move to the United States to kind of look for a better opportunity.

Luke Strappelli: [00:00:59] Why did your parents leave Argentina?

Mr. Maynard: [00:01:05] Um, again Looking for a better opportunity. Not really happy with the political structure and the country at the time. That was the driving force for them to leave. When they decided to leave and how they left is kind of crazy to think that they ended up from Buenos Aires, Argentina which was pretty much the largest city in South America at the time, to Bel Air, Maryland which at the time probably had a population of about 10,000 people, is quite amazing. They Answered an ad in a newspaper that was placed in [00:01:45] Clarín which is the main newspaper in Buenos Aires. They Answered an ad there for a caretaker and a maid to work on a farm in Bel Air, Maryland. So long story short, they came here…and… Long story short they came to the United States. They landed at JFK Airport, were picked up and brought to Bel Air, Maryland which at the time was extremely rural and spent a week on the farm kind of seeing what they would be doing and you know kind of shown what their living arrangements were gonna look like and had about ten days to go back and process everything and decide if they were going to move and take the leap of faith and they did. So they packed everything up and left their, basically suitcase for each person and came to the United States and started working on a farm.

Luke Strappelli: [00:02:44] So when you came into life, what obstacles did you face growing up in this country?

Mr. Maynard: [00:02:54] I would say the language barrier was probably the biggest hurdle for my parents which in turn led to a hurdle for myself. I am the youngest of two. My brother who came six years prior, he was actually born a year after my parents moved to the United States. He was born in 69 I was born in 75. But with that being said, they, neither one of my parents had education passed, one past basically grade school and the other one passed high school. So a lot of it was kind of learning as you go. It meant you know my dad was involved in an area rec council in Forest Hill, so I got to play soccer through there and did play baseball through there. But in terms of getting the opportunities that every other kid gets to go into camps and stuff like that, it wasn’t always a thing for me because I’m not necessarily sure that my parents really knew about it. They weren’t really kind of entrenched in the community so to speak.

Luke Strappelli: [00:03:50] What cultural customs from Argentina did you take with you growing up, like that your parent’s kind of brought over; like any norms that you guys practiced in the household?

Mr. Maynard: [00:04:04] One of the big norms is obviously soccer is very big in Argentina. My father actually played professional soccer in Argentina up until he was 18 years old, 19 years old and sustained a career-ending injury and couldn’t continue on. But with that being said that was kind of ingrained in me and myself and my brother growing up, so both of us played soccer. Culturally, a lot of different customs. Definitely one of the ones that’s a big one is we always ate dinner together and always ate dinner late.

Luke Strappelli: [00:04:36] So kind of like a strong family kind of connection that you brought over?

Mr. Maynard: [00:04:39] Yes, so it was, everybody had to be at the dinner table. Um, and so that was a big one. Very Catholic family so obviously growing up Catholic, being raised Catholic was a big part of my life as well which is you know the majority of the religion in Argentina, the religious background in Argentina is Catholic. In terms of traditions, a lot of its food based. Asado is a big tradition in Argentina. Every Sunday you get together with friends and in my case not family because my parents and my brother are the only family I have, everyone else is still in Argentina, nobody came over. But there is a pretty big Argentine population in the Baltimore metropolitan area, and they all seem to seek each other out so every Sunday they would gather at my parents’ house and have a big barbecue. So a lot of that is kind of, you know, one of the biggest traditions that we had every Sunday getting together with a lot of families and just spending some time, some fellowship, and food together was probably one of the biggest traditions I can recall.

Luke Strappelli: [00:05:38] Now do you remember like um, my teacher brought up something called mate tea, I think it’s called.

Mr. Maynard: [00:05:43] MATE [better accent] Yes.

Luke Strappelli: [00:05:44] Mate, ok, sorry. Do you guys drink that stuff?

Mr. Maynard: [00:05:44] When I was a kid growing up, we drank it all the time, you drink it after dinner, you drank it in the afternoons. It’s almost like, Mate is like tea time in England. So everyone kind of stops what they’re doing around four or five o’clock to have Mate. Yerba is uh, you can buy in some other area, kind of international food shops you can’t buy it here, and actually can buy it here in Bel Air now, but you couldn’t thirty years ago, you had to drive down to D.C. and get it. But yes, my parents love Mate, they still drink it till this day, if they happened to be drinking it when I’m there, I partake. It is an acquired taste. The only way I acquired it was by putting a ton of sugar in it.

Luke Strappelli: [00:06:30] So you said language is kind of your hardest adjustment, but was there any other obstacle or adjustment you faced growing up in the U.S.?

Mr. Maynard: [00:06:37] Culturally it’s different. You know my mom would pack, I am accustomed to eating things that not every American kid eats. So you know my mom would pack culturally appropriate lunches for me like uh [00:06:51] Milanesa is something that everybody eats. Milanesa, they have it, [Milanese in Italian], it’s just you know like a veal cutlet that’s breaded and deep fried you know that I would have Milanese sandwiches for lunch, a Spanish tortilla which is not like a tortilla chip but it’s actually like a big omelet. Um, that’s something I would have slices of that packed in my lunch. So a lot of it was explaining to the kids in the class like “What in God’s name are you eating right now?” Kind of looking at “I would never eat that.” You know empanadas another thing I would get packed in my lunch. So a lot of, probably just breaking down that cultural barrier, getting people to understand that what I was eating was not gross and not uncool, but it was the norm in my family and that’s what we ate.

Luke Strappelli: [00:07:35] So like, when you made friends early on like. Or, was it difficult making friends early on in the first place?

Mr. Maynard: [00:07:43] No, I mean I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m an outgoing kid, was an outgoing kid, and kind of well-liked by my peers. The funny thing was as I grew up on a farm, it was a three-hundred-acre farm, and nobody was really around and there weren’t really a whole lot of neighborhoods. In fact, you know, you where you live now was nothing but woods. So, where your parents live. So you know it was hard to find friends. There were a few neighborhood friends that I hung out with. The hardest thing was getting to their house. I either had to walk for an extensive amount of time or ride my bike and, you know, or they came to my house and nobody wanted to come to my house because it was a really long driveway and in the middle of nowhere. So, that part wasn’t like I had a lot of friends after school per say except for like two kids and those kids always wanted to come to my house because everybody went to play in the woods. I yearned for the neighborhood thing you know playing baseball, playing kickball, playing flashlight tag stuff like that. So I always look to leave and go find neighborhood friends, but it wasn’t such an easy thing. With the language, I think I may have mentioned this before, I did not learn English first, I learned Spanish first. English kind of came secondary once I got into preschool… and talking to my brother, but my parents informed me that my brother and I spoke Spanish to each other for the very early part of our lives. So it caused some delays academically speaking. I had trouble in reading, I had trouble in language arts. My standardized testing was really poor. When.., and I remember going to conferences with my parents where they explained that you know your son is not reading at level he’s very delayed… you know, culturally that was a tough thing for my parents to comprehend. But they did get me into a program, Harford County Public Schools, where I spent a summer, like a summer immersion program in language arts and that really kind of was a catapult for me. And if you look at studies, they’ll tell you kids that learn another language first tend to be delayed in that area and it kind of doesn’t correct itself until around ages 8 to 10 and that was for me it was about 9 years old when the light bulb went off and quickly I caught up to everyone and started getting past everyone by the time I was in fourth and fifth grade.

Luke Strappelli: [00:10:00] So we’re like their kids from other countries in that little camp with you?

Mr. Maynard: [00:10:05] No, it was basically all of the kids that were remedial kids. It was kids that you know back then nobody had learning differences. It was just kids that didn’t learn like everybody else or kids that they didn’t think cared. So I wasn’t necessarily grouped with kids that were academically strong, it was, I was more grouped with kids that had deficiencies in reading and language arts. So, but, that was kind of the, back then you weren’t labeled as having every anything. I was just labeled as a kid that couldn’t read well or write well and didn’t understand the basic functions of English grammar.

Luke Strappelli: [00:10:41] So you say you’re the first person in your family to receive a college education. What did that mean to you?

Mr. Maynard: [00:10:48] Actually I was, my brother beat me by a couple of years, so I was the second. It was quite an accomplishment for myself and my brother to not only go to a Catholic high school but also go to a university. So that part was quite an accomplishment for myself and you know, I had a goal in life to play college soccer and to go to a big university and that’s what I had set out to do and my parents kind of helped me throughout the way and so they were excited to kind of celebrate it as well. Funny story, my parents actually missed my college graduation because their car broke down on the way to graduation. So, we did, I did kind of hang out for a couple hours and my cap and gown waiting for them to get there and this is predate cell phone, so you’re just kind of sitting there wondering where they are, so, they showed up about two hours later very upset that they had missed graduation but we still got some pictures taken.

Luke Strappelli: [00:11:44] So like you said you played soccer. What role did that play in your life growing up? Like from Argentina to the U.S.?

Mr. Maynard: [00:11:51] Soccer was always kind of at the middle of everything for me. My parents make, as I’m finding now with my own kids in soccer, my parents made tremendous sacrifices for me to play which included traveling all up and down the eastern seaboard, all over the world, all across the country. You know you don’t appreciate it until you’re older and one of your own children is into soccer as much as you were, and you realize “man that’s a must have cost them an arm and a leg to get me everywhere.” So that was, you know, it was, for me I wasn’t the strongest student regardless of whether or not I caught up and got past everyone you know from a language art standpoint. It was my ticket, it was my ticket to college, it was my ticket to high school, it was my, you know, my ticket to a lot of different things, and soccer really opened a lot of doors for me in life. And you know, because of my parent’s commitment and dedication and kind of getting me everywhere to do what I needed to do on the soccer field, that’s, that’s a huge asset for me and I owe them a great deal of gratitude for that.

Luke Strappelli: [00:12:56] I feel the same for my parents too. I don’t really understand it yet, but like, I guess once you get older and have kids, you definitely start to understand that.

Mr. Maynard: [00:13:04] Ironically enough my last collegiate game I ever played was a shootout loss in the NCAA tournament to James Madison.

Luke Strappelli: [00:13:15] Not uh! Look at that! That’s Weird. Oh my gosh.

Luke Strappelli: [00:13:18] Ok, so as you got older, I remember when I came here when Scott [my older brother] was here, you were diagnosed with cancer. Can you describe like the battle with it and how you overcame it and like all the feelings you felt; stuff like that it?

Mr. Maynard: [00:13:34] You know clearly it’s life-changing. It gives you, unfortunately, a really good frame of reference because whenever you encounter something as difficult in life and you look at the different challenges that are posed to you by life, you’re always like well I can’t be as bad as cancer. You know, unfortunately, I’m able to say that, so uh, but it does kind of put things in reference. Getting that diagnosis was horrible, but there are some highlights in that, you know kind of the way that the school community rallied around my family, not only from this school but also from my kid’s school. Much of our children school and how they helped and kind of just the outpouring of monetary contributions to help offset the medical costs, to the food and dinners that were delivered all the times was nothing short of amazing. Going through it your just kind of numb to it. You know you have to do it. There’s no way around it. I was just telling a friend of mine the story about when the doctor came in and tells you…you have cancer. You know you obviously naturally want to say well “What are my options?” And they show you option one which is “Hey, here you can do the holistic approach and there’s no chemo involved and you can kind of let the chips fall where they may and you know this is already post operation, so they’ve removed the tumor, and he said you know if you go that route there’s a [00:15:01] 50 percent chance you’re going to die within two years Or, and I said ok quickly, “What’s option B?” And um.. you know they show you the chemo regimen and what you’re going to do over the next six months and how much you’re going to do it, and you know getting diagnosed with colon cancer at age 39 is not common. So, because I was young and because I was in really good health, you know, they were as aggressive as they could be. So you kind of get prepared for it and you just, you just kind of deal with it and you don’t really think about it until it’s over and then when it’s over you thank God it’s over and you just hope it doesn’t have to happen again and you get checked up every six months to make sure it isn’t happening again. But the reality of it is it will always linger in the back of your mind every single time you have to give blood, every single time you have to get a scan.

Luke Strappelli: [00:15:51] Just like even like coming to school every day, do you think about it? And also, has that brought you closer to God in a way? Has that strengthened your faith going through that struggle?

Mr. Maynard: [00:16:02] Um, It has. Funny thing is I don’t actually think about it coming to school every day. What I think about coming to school every day is that when you calculate going here as a student and then working here for 17 years how many times I’ve driven to school and back. Yeah, that’s what I calculate in my head. There are some reminders every once in a while of cancer you know, you never like to hear people have cancer, that always kind of stops you. You know, you hear the statistics you look around, everywhere you look, unfortunately, you see something about cancer. So that’s kind of, I, to be honest with you there’s definitely at least one point during the day, not even including this conversation which of course makes you think about it but there’s one point during the day.

Luke Strappelli: [00:16:45] Sorry.

Mr. Maynard: [00:16:45] –it’s fine–. There’s one point during a day where you always will think about it. It’s always there in the back of your mind. But no, it’s, it has brought me closer to God because I don’t think without you know the strength that I had as a family and without a lot of prayer and a lot of begging, I think I’d be here where I am today.

Luke Strappelli: [00:17:09] So lastly, how’s the John Carroll School impacted your life? By going here and just like seeing all these kids every day, how has it impacted you as an individual?

Mr. Maynard: [00:17:21] It’s the reason I come to school. You know Mr. Holland [Social studies teacher at John Carroll], who I know you know well said he doesn’t consider it as a job he considers it a vocation. And I would say the same thing. I always joke and say “Man I get so much work done when the kids aren’t here.” But the reality of it is, the reason I am here is because of the kids. So I thoroughly enjoy what I do, I love what I do, I would be lying to you if I said it isn’t stressful being an admissions director at a school when things are tuition driven and your job is based on, you know, having classes come in that will meet the quota that you have to attain. With that being said, my time at John Carroll is kind of neat in the fact that John Carroll wasn’t really an option for me when I was in high school or going to high school except for the fact that my parents came here and worked for someone that happened to be one of the founders of John Carroll. So the whole reason I got to go to John Carroll was because he told my parents he would take care of me going to John Carroll and he helped pay 50 percent of the tuition every year I was here. So, that made John Carroll reality for me and made me really appreciate my time here. I’m very thankful for the opportunity to go here. I’m very thankful for the experience I had and the relationships I’ve made and the friendships that, you know, were that came out of being here, and I kind of felt like it was my calling to kind of come back and make sure that kids coming to John Carroll had that same experience I did. You know I’ve been here for 17 years and hoped that I’m doing exactly what I set out to do.

Luke Strappelli: [00:18:56] Alright, that’ll wrap it up. Thank you for coming here and taking your time to do this interview and share with my class hopefully. I appreciate it.

Mr. Maynard: [00:19:05] Hey thank you, Luke. It was awesome. You know and I appreciate the opportunity any chance I can to help.

F.) Conclusion

I believe the interview went great. If I had to fix or change anything, I would have probably gotten a better microphone. It was nice to go off script because it didn’t feel like a school project; it felt like I was just getting to know my interviewee a little better (more personally). I believe I stayed on track very well and I thought I could’ve asked some more questions that were not on the script. My flow was very good and I feel like I couldn’t have done any better than I did.

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