Jerry Bartee once patrolled the halls of Tech Junior High as a security guard charged with steering students 
to class.
He had just come off a six – year run as a professional baseball player. He had no college education and, for the moment, no big - time plans.
Last month, Bartee returned to those same halls for a new assignment.
He is 30 years older – no longer a young man just looking for a job after baseball. The building no longer is a junior high school.
Bartee has become one of Omaha Public School’s newest assistant superintendents.
His office: district headquarters.
It is the latest step in a career that includes nine years as a principle at South High School and a nearly completed Doctorate degree.
“He is such a success story, “said Joyce Christensen, a retired educator who served as a mentor to Bartee at South High. “I am so proud of him.”
Bartee grew up on Omaha’s north side. His mother, a single parent, worked two jobs to feed her three children.
Louise Bartee provided her children with food, clothing, shelter, and lots of love and attention.
“My children didn’t have everything they wanted, but they had everything they needed,” she recalled.
Among Bartee’s children homes were a housing project and a semitrailer parked in his uncle’s back yard. He spent part of his childhood in the shadow of Creighton University – the instruction that later would launch his career in education.
For a time, his family lived two blocks from campus, but Bartee considered it off-limits. He still remembers the brick wall that enclosed Creighton’s old football stadium.
“We weren’t supposed to go beyond that wall,” Bartee said. “That wasn’t a place for me.”
Bartee’s mother relied on her brother, Howard S. Duncan Jr., to serve as a strong male role model for her son. “Uncle Dunk” taught Bartee to walk away from trouble. He passed on positive, can – do attitude.
“Not once in his life did I hear him say it wasn’t a good day,” Bartee said.
Duncan also propelled Bartee toward his first career.
Known as the singing catcher, Duncan snagged pitches for years in the South as a traveling Negro Leaguer – He taught his nephew and his own children to love the sport. “From the time we could walk, we swung and hit and threw,” Bartee said.
Following his uncle’s model and a childhood dream, Bartee developed into a star baseball player. He started as a shortstop at Central High School in the 1970’s and began a professional baseball career after graduation.
But he walked away from the game after six years of living paycheck to paycheck in the minor leagues. Bartee played until his “knees and eyes wouldn’t play anymore.” He was ready to return home.
In Omaha, Bartee landed the security job at the junior high. It wasn’t long before the sports staff at Creighton University came looking for Bartee.
“I had no ambition when I got done playing baseball,” he said. “I’m in debt to the individuals at Creighton University who saw more in me than I saw in myself.
A summer job working with the underprivileged kids turned into a full – time job overseeing the university’s intramural program. Part of the deal was that the university would put Bartee through school.
Bartee – whose son, Kimera, is an outfielder with the Iowa Cubs – eventually became Creighton University’s head baseball coach. But after three years in that position, he needed a change.
Bartee, who was 29 years old at the time, saw fee opportunities within Creighton’s Athletic department to advance. He decided to substitute teach – a step backward so that he could move in his career.
As a sub, Bartee worked every day .He never turned down a job. After a year, he talked his way into a full – time teaching position overseeing in – school suspensions at Nathan Hale Junior High.
“I said, ‘I’ll do anything, just get me in the building,’” Bartee recalled.
It wasn’t six years before Bartee moved onto the administrative track. – one that led him to become an assistant principal, and, later, principal at South High School.
Christensen, the former South principal, first met up with Bartee when he was substitute teaching. The well dressed young man made a quick impression on her and the students.
Later, when Bartee became assistant principal at South, she came to appreciate his positive attitude and team building efforts.
“He cares about everyone – he cares about his teachers, he cares about the parents,” Christensen said, “He expects the best from people.”
IN his new job, Bartee expects to encounter new and difficult issues. He will be in charge of many of the business aspects of running a school district – everything from school lunch to school buses.
One major project he must jump on is shepherding the district’s $254 million bond issue to close in the next few years.
The 54 – year – old expects to deal with it like he has so many things in life: welcome the change, welcome the challenge.
“It would have been so easy for me to be satisfied being a part of the security team,” he said. “I want to grow and live and learn.”
