More than 300 people -- including students and educators clad in yellow and green Wolfpack t-shirts, fraternity brothers with Greek letters printed across their chest and family from New Jersey -- huddled together Wednesday afternoon (May 29) in the 7th Ward in support of a New Orleans dean who was fatally shot over the weekend.
Reginald “Reggie” Field, 50, was head dean of students at Andrew H. Wilson Charter School, located on General Pershing between South Tonti and South Miro streets, for the last four years, his colleagues said. Authorities identified Field as the person killed in a shooting shortly after midnight Saturday in the 2400 block of A.P. Tureaud Avenue across from Bullets Sports Bar. He was one of the 17 people shot and one of five killed during a violent Memorial Day weekend in New Orleans metro area.
“I’m angry because this didn’t happen yesterday. This is ongoing in our community,” said Amod Field, one of Reginald’s three siblings. “We must own it and be able to take charge of it.”
Amod Field sat next to his brother, Jason Field, along with one of Reginald Field’s two daughters, under the shade of an oak tree, behind a large photograph of the smiling dean.
NOPD said officers responding about 12:10 a.m. Saturday to a shooting found a man, later identified as Field, with gunshot wounds to his body. EMS pronounced him dead at the scene. As of Wednesday afternoon, police have not released any information about a motive or suspect in connection to the homicide.
Amod Field said his brother’s efforts as a dean came from how their single mother raised her four children in the projects in northern New Jersey. She worked “tirelessly” earning no more than $4,000 throughout the 1990s to support her children, until both of her feet were amputated due to diabetes, he said.
"The things that he stood for and that he still standing for is because that’s how we were raised. We competed in everything,” Amod Field said of his brother -- who was a coach to hundreds of students, as well as a high school athlete himself. “And that’s what he wanted to make sure you did as parents. What do you did as students.”
Field played football and basketball, and ran track and cross country in high school, said Jason Field said, before taking on the role as a coach and educator. He remembered his brother as “resilient” and a person who had “jokes for days.”
Jason Field, who lives and works in New Jersey, spoke against the spasm of gun violence across the city over the holiday weekend.
“It is Reggie today, but who is it going to be tomorrow?” Jason Field said. “To me it is a culture to death.”
Jamya Clark, a ninth grader who recently graduated from Andrew H. Wilson said Reginald Field was tough on the students, but was always reminding them how they were “No. 1 in New Orleans.” Without him, there would have been so much violence at the school, she said.
“He helped me know that it is always hard to be a leader in front of your friends and to choose wisely who you hang out with,” Clark said to the crowd, adding that Reginald Field had a large impact on the person she is today and had helped her with speech the past year.
Dozens of members of Phi Beta Sigma attended the dean’s vigil, showing solidarity in Greek letters printed across their blue T-shirts and baseball hats. Reginald Field started college at William Paterson University of New Jersey and later graduated from Cheyney University in Pennsylvania, but pledged the fraternity at Montclair State University, said one of his fraternity brother’s Eric Jaffe.
He got involved with the step team, which turned into a professional gig, Jaffe said. He and Reginald Field toured with their team, known as The Phi Beta Sigma UnKNOWn Step Team, for 25 years. During that time, their team performed six times at Essence Fest, Jaffe said.
Aside from the youth in New Orleans, Reginald Field loved New Orlean’s music and culture and often reveled down Bourbon Street and in music clubs, Jaffe said. But what ultimately kept him in New Orleans was the school and his relationships with the student, he said.
As head dean of students at Andrew H. Wilson Charter School, Reginald Field served 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students, as well as taught teachers best classroom management practices and disciplinary procedures, said Samara Miller, Director of School Culture and Quality at Inspire NOLA.
“He was strict, he was firm, he was stern. But he was fair and consistent,” Miller said of Field’s approach at the school. Field was known for his trademark gesture: holding his hand up and snapping his pointer finger to his thumb quickly. It became a universal symbol for students at school and when it was done, students understood the message that Field often conveyed: There was a time and place for everything, Miller explained.
Principal Lee Green said Field was always celebrating the positive behavior from students at the school. He was a mentor to thousands of students though his roles of an athletic director. He spoke to the crowd Wednesday afternoon wearing a pastel-colored plaid blazer, similar to the “ugly jackets” Field would wear every day to school, he said.
“He made these ugly jackets look beautiful. Just like he made the scholars and staff at Wilson feel like they were the best in the city, every day.” Before working with InspireNOLA in 2015, Reginald Field was working with the KIPP public charter schools in Memphis.
“He believed in the whole child,” Green said, explaining that he coached soccer, volleyball, track and soccer in addition to academic competitions. This past year, Field motivated those students to achieve success in Andrew H. Wilson’s Quiz Bowl, he said. “He celebrated academics just with the same vigor as he did sports.”
Green called the fatal shooting an example of “senseless violence” in the city and stressed the need to support to New Orleans’ students before they become involved with crime.
“I love activists that come out here. But I don’t need re-activists that do something once something is over. Give me some pro-activists,” he said, explaining that Reginald Field was one of the latter.
“I’m not mad at the police. I’m not mad at Mayor Cantrell. I’m mad at us,” Green said, while stressing the importance of a village in raising children and the need to enforce consequences for actions. The crowd echoed their agreement with sporadic cheers and applause.
Miller said students were used to hearing their dean’s voice over the radio: “Send ‘em up! Room 319. Over and out. Mr. Field.” On the third floor, at the end of the school’s huge hallways, Reginald Field sat at a desk next to room 319. If a student needed help refocusing in class, they might be sent to Reginald Field and could find him there, she said.
At the vigil, young students bowed their heads in prayer while grasping green, yellow and blue balloons. As they lifted their heads, they released the balloons into the sky in honor of their mentor and coach. Other students, faculty and family placed yellow carnations under Field’s photograph, next to several candles adorned with handwritten thank you notes to the dean.
In the last five years, Miller said Reginald Field has impacted nearly 700 students on a daily basis at Wilson charter school, as well as 150 new employees that join the InspireNOLA charter school system each year.
“He was an outstanding coach, a mentor, a great leader and a great role model not just for the students of Andrew Wilson, but the teachers as well,” Miller said, explaining that many teachers and deans looked to him for support. Since starting at the school in 2015, he assisted Miller in training new faculty in a three-day “teacher boot camp” and also worked closely with his 16 fellow deans that worked in InspireNOLA schools across the city.
Every Thursday, he stayed after school to lead “after-school specials” where he would help teachers who needed extra coaching on classroom management and how to provide effective instruction in their classrooms, Miller said.
“He got there at 6:30 a.m. with Mr. Green and stayed late,” she said. “He was just dedicated to that school, to those kids and the community.”
Staff writer Kevin Litten contributed to this story.
Olivia Prentzel covers breaking news and criminal justice for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Reach her at oprentzel@nola.com or find her on Twitter @olivepretzel.
Wilson Charter dean killed in 7th Ward shooting on Saturday: ‘Unfathomable loss’
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