Señor Duncan’s Adventures Abroad

We all know Agent Smith from The Matrix, correct? Or we are familiar with the stereotypical FBI agent, in the American suit and in constant surveillance mode. Map this idea of a person onto Mr. Joe Duncan, a longtime Spanish teacher and running coach at Gilman, when he would chaperone trips abroad, starting in 1982.

One of the tales from his travels came when visiting the Royal Palace of Madrid. On one occasion, an unnamed student under Mr. Duncan’s supervision was talking to a group of girls — an ill omen. Picture the following: In the courtyard before the palace, the Gilman group is waiting in line to enter, a tall fence separating it from the magnificent Royal Gardens. The unnamed student, looking for a method to impress his conversation partners, spots a kitten in those gardens! The student begins to climb the fence. 

Mr. Duncan watches in horror as a guard at the visitor’s entrance starts running across the courtyard toward the student. Mr. Duncan reaches the student, grabs him, and drags him to the ground. The bewildered student scratches his head as the guard scolds them. “You are no longer in America,” Mr. Duncan says.

In the last of his many trips to Seville, an even more action-packed event occurred in the metro. He was with four students, three from Gilman and one from a local girls' school. Heading out into the city together, he has told them to “leave everything in the hotel.” Well, Scott — long-graduated but still clear in the memory of Joe Duncan — has his money, passport, and credit card with him, and is “standing in his slackery, with his arms up,” an American straphanger on the Spanish metro. 

What was bound to happen comes to pass, and Mr. Duncan observes it: someone is brushing Scott’s shirt. “Scott, someone’s trying to pickpocket you!” he yells. The train stops and they get off it. Mr. Duncan, who held and still holds mid-distance records in yards at Dartmouth College, takes after a guy running away. Catching him and searching him, he has nothing. He sprints down another way, catching another fleeing guy: that one also has nothing. 

Then, a nearby couple pointed to another guy leaving the station. He grabs the couple with both arms, holding them in place, and commands the students to search them. The man has the wallet in his hand underneath his jacket sleeve. Scott recovers his passport and card as well.

“Pickpockets work in 4s,” Mr. Duncan told me. “Two guys distract and pass to one guy as part of a couple. You get bumped one way, you turn around, and someone comes from the other side.” Mr. Duncan had to replace a passport before. It entailed five days at the embassy and two chaperones on the job. He was glad to, by virtue of his swift legs, avoid repeating that experience.

Reflecting on the experience of trips abroad toward the end of his 47th year at Gilman, Mr. Duncan remembered how they used to be more of an opportunity for kids to invest in learning. They were month-long programs during the summer that earned a student a half-credit, three weeks being needed to overcome the culture shock and start really taking in the language.

Even though language trips have been less frequent over the past decade, Mr. Duncan remains a staunch supporter of students to travel across the world to immerse themself in the culture they are studying, saying, “What we should do is instill opportunity and interest in going abroad, to encourage a wider breadth of scope.”