At the Unselds’ School, bracing for fall without ‘Mr. Wes’

Alix Clise, an administrative assistant at the school, handed Connie the proposed schedules of systems in nearby counties. Connie, 72, scanned them and shook her head.

“None of us have ever done this before,” she said. “We’re all fumbling around.”

Campus was quiet. Noticeably absent: the booming-but-measured voice of Wes Unseld, who died in June at 74. He’s survived by Connie, his wife of 50 years; children Wes Jr. and Kim; and this small private school sandwiched between an auto shop and a funeral home.

Unseld was a hard-nosed, bruising forward who at 6-foot-7 was somehow both undersized and larger than life. But around the Unselds’ School, he was a grandfatherly figure the students called Mr. Wes. He would greet kids at the front door and remind them to tuck in their shirts. He would cook lunches in the kitchen — lasagna, spaghetti and hot dogs were among the school favorites — then sit in the lunchroom and help kids pry open milk cartons. He was the field-trip bus driver, a teaching assistant and the groundskeeper who mowed the grass and picked weeds.

“Oh, the kids always responded to Mr. Wes,” Connie said with a chuckle. “Are you kidding me? Multiplication tables — he’d say, ‘Now tomorrow, I want you to know your 4s.’ And you better believe they learned those 4s. He’d check them: ‘What’s 4 times 3? 4 times 9?’ You were scared not to know them all. ‘Okay, good work. Tomorrow we’ll do 5s.’ ”

Now he’s gone, and the family is searching for any semblance of routine, at school and at home.

“We still haven’t defined our normal yet,” said Kim, the school’s principal. “Every day, we’re still trying to figure out.”

Wes Jr. is an assistant coach with the Denver Nuggets. Connie and Kim run the day-to-day operations of the school, which spans kindergarten to eighth grade. It has had more than 150 students but generally targets 75 these days — small classes, personalized instruction, a focus on social and emotional learning, especially for the younger ones.

Though the school year starts Sept. 8, only 21 students are currently enrolled. Some parents aren’t sure whether to spend money for instruction that might take place online. Others aren’t sure they’re comfortable sending their children to school.

Connie and Kim have talked to their teachers and parents. Many of the school’s students come from poor parts of Baltimore, and the Unselds’ School, like most schools, provides a safe haven, not to mention a more effective learning environment than Zoom. It quickly became clear to the Unselds that there was no solution that would please everyone.

“We hear from some parents, and they’re desperate,” Connie said. “Kids are going crazy. The parents are going crazy. They’re eager to get their kids out of the house. Then you hear from others who say: ‘I’m so scared. I don’t want them to get sick.’ I’m sympathetic to everyone, and so we’re trying to figure out what we’re going to do.”

Time is running out to decide. They know that. For four decades, the blueprint worked, and the daily schedules and school calendar were easy to navigate: parent orientation, picture day, field day, midterms, final exams, eighth-grade trip, the school dance.

Suddenly, their whole world has been knocked off its axis, and just getting to the first day of school feels more important, and more daunting, than ever.

It wasn’t a cupid’s arrow that struck Wes Unseld but a 1966 Buick Skylark, with a freshman named Connie Martin behind the wheel. It was the first day of classes at the University of Louisville when she accidentally hit the school’s basketball star as she was backing into a parking spot. That was the beginning.

Unseld, an all-American, was chosen second overall by the Baltimore Bullets in the 1968 NBA draft. When Connie graduated two years later, the couple got married and she joined him in Baltimore, where Unseld would carve out a storybook career: rookie of the year and MVP honors, all-star games and an NBA title. He was a rebounding machine and one of the league’s top defenders. Players today still study his bone-rattling picks and crisp outlet passes.

Connie, a full foot shorter than her husband, was a kindergarten teacher in Baltimore. After the couple had Wes Jr. and Kim, Connie began looking at schools and realized what she wanted didn’t exist. With Unseld’s encouragement, she set out to launch her own school.

The couple bought a former nursing school in 1978 and started a day-care center. In 1983, it became certified to offer elementary school instruction and has slowly added in the decades since: more grades, more students and more rooms and additions for the campus.

As his playing career wound down, Unseld was a constant presence. He moved into the franchise’s front office and spent time as its coach, but he still kept an office at the school.

Connie’s father was the principal for years, and her mother worked the front desk. Wes Jr. was the school’s first student. Kim still teaches social studies and science, and Connie handles English classes. Just like all those years on the basketball court, Wes Unseld did whatever was needed.

“He was always saying, ‘Connie, I got this great idea.’ He’d wake me up to tell me something he wanted to do,” Connie said.

He once surprised his wife with a school library. He even built the bookcases, with a top shelf only he could reach. He built the sandboxes and benches in the courtyard, too. He rang the school bell each morning. He bought tents, sleeping bags and canteens and hosted a camping trip for students on his and Connie’s sprawling spread in Carroll County.

Kids didn’t know him as an NBA great; he was Mr. Wes, the towering figure who would always try to find a seat so he was at eye level with the students. “Some Google me and are all surprised,” Unseld told Washingtonian magazine in 2015. “The little ones, they don’t know basketball from Dr. Seuss.”

They did know that Mr. Wes squirreled away rewards for students and extra school supplies; that he would pop in on history lessons and offer personal recollections of places he had visited or things he had lived through; or that he was just as likely to be shooting baskets in the gym as he was leading a classroom spelling bee, calling fouls on spelling infractions.

“I’ve always been involved,” he once told PressBox, which covers Baltimore sports, “but most of the time I just did lawns and painting and that type of thing. Then I actually retired and started doing administrative work.”

“But, from the start,” the interviewer asked, “you believed in the idea?”

“I believed in her,” he said, referring to his wife.

“The school is kind of the essence of the type of people they are,” said Jerry Sachs, a former Bullets executive and a longtime family friend. “She had the spark and Westley always supported her. The whole family helped make it what it is.”

This time of year always inspires a special type of energy for the family. Unseld used to go through store aisles, singing, “It’s the happiest time of the year,” as he plucked school supplies off the shelves.

“He was always thinking about new things we could do, especially at the start of the year,” Connie said. “We would just sit on the porch after dinner and he’d say: ‘I got a splendid idea. We’re going to have a pumpkin patch this year. Kids need to grow their own pumpkins. What do you think?’ ”

And that’s how it went for the better part of 42 years.

“I was so blessed,” Connie said. “After Wes died, all I could do was just keep saying, ‘Thank you, Wes, thank you.’ Who in the world supports their wife like that?”

For years, the couple left home at 5:30 each morning. Unseld would drive, and Connie would often doze under a blanket in the back, and they would start the school day together.

That all changed as Unseld’s health declined. He had had 13 knee operations, including multiple knee replacements, plus surgeries on his ankle, shoulder and hip. He spent his final couple of years in and out of rehabilitation centers. A diabetes diagnosis complicated everything. He walked with crutches and breathed with the aid of a trach tube and later a ventilator. He did it all quietly.

“Just think about him playing with knee problems all those years and never wanting to make a big deal about,” said Kim, 47. “I think some people get a hangnail and need to put it out there. He’d break his nose for the third time and wouldn’t say a word.”

Kim’s dad had always been there for her, especially after a horseback riding accident left her blind. She continued teaching and took on more responsibilities at the school. As his health declined, she wanted to be by his side as he had been by hers.

The family adjusted its routine. After school, Connie and Kim drove to whichever facility was housing Unseld, bringing a change of clothes, books, DVDs and often his preferred deli sandwich.

“I’d dance with him and share stories or jokes,” Connie said. “I’d tell him all the crazy things that happened that day in school.”

Unseld managed to maintain a presence at the school. He would call Kim’s phone every morning at 11:30. “I don’t care what lecture I was in; the phone would ring and they’d shout, ‘That’s Mr. Wes!’ ” Kim said.

The novel coronavirus pandemic devastated their spring. After the school closed in March, Connie and Kim scrambled to sort out online instruction and secure computers for students. As the virus spread, they were no longer allowed to visit Unseld in person. Instead, they met a nurse in the parking lot with clothes and food and FaceTimed to talk and see him. “Just horrible,” Connie said.

The family was planning an eighth-grade graduation ceremony in late May when it got a call from his rehab: Unseld, who had pneumonia, couldn’t get out of bed for physical therapy. He was transferred to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center but never recovered. They were able to say goodbye in person before Unseld died June 2.

That’s when the fog settled in.

“I’ve already had to reset life once with loss of vision,” Kim said. “Now we’re going through this. I tell people I’m not always happy but I’m okay. You don’t want to be a grenade about it and make everyone else unhappy. You just keep it moving.”

The hole is ever-present. Connie had never made a big decision without talking it through with her husband. Now every decision feels huge. She had recently purchased a nearby church building, hoping to use the auditorium for school and community events. Now the building sits empty and she’s not sure what to do with it.

“I always had him as the person I’d talked to,” she said. “So it’s a lot.”

Though Unseld kept the school afloat, Connie and Kim aren’t worried about growing their enrollment numbers. With fewer students, they figure, they’ll have an easier time spacing kids out once they return. But everyone will have to adjust, especially Connie, who’s a hugger.

“That’s one of the things that’s just going to kill me this year,” she said.

They’re trying to plot the safest options. If school is online, they want screen breaks, one-on-one appointments for students and planning time for teachers. There’s no cutting corners for Connie. Her eighth-graders scatter to public and private high schools alike, from Gilman School in Baltimore to Gonzaga College High in Washington, and she prides herself on preparing students for anything.

“This is a general idea of what a schedule would look like,” Clise told Kim one recent afternoon, talking through one proposal.

“Right,” Kim said. “But we’re still waiting on the state mandate, because it sounds like the state’s going to tell us what we have to do anyway.”

There has been no mandate. But last week, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) began pushing schools to open their doors, saying it is now safe to offer in-person instruction. Connie said when they heard the news, they all just looked at one another as though they had all been struck by lightning: They had been focused on virtual instruction. As of Tuesday, with the start of school a week away, they were still meeting with staff and scrambling to find a way to offer families a choice.

The start of the school year, even with all the uncertainty, does provide some comfort. It’s a distraction from the grief — and another place to feel close to the husband and father they lost.

“Everywhere I go, he’s still there,” Connie said.

The fog is still thick, and they don’t know what the new school year will look like any more than they do what life without Unseld will feel like. But they know the school is still vital, to them and to the community.

“Through the good, the bad, the ugly, I still think places like this will persevere,” Kim said. “They’re necessary. They’re needed. We just got to figure out how.”

Read more: