MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's Friday, which means it's time for StoryCorps. Fernando Hernandez and Moises Villalpando met in 2003 working as teachers at Perkins Elementary School in San Diego.
FERNANDO HERNANDEZ: After all these years, we only call one another by our last names. It's just the culture of our school, right?
MOISES VILLALPANDO: (Laughter) Yes.
HERNANDEZ: Other people might think, what? Twenty years and you still call him Mr. V?
MARTIN: Over the past two decades, the teachers have become close friends. They share a dedication to their students, many of whom live in poverty. They sat down for a StoryCorps conversation to remember when Mr. V went to the mat for his school.
HERNANDEZ: Every student in the school wanted to be in your class. And every parent of every student you've ever had felt that their child had the greatest teacher on planet Earth. Do you remember when we came up with the crazy idea of taking our students across the country to Washington, D.C.?
VILLALPANDO: I remember that.
HERNANDEZ: And a huge percentage of our students are homeless. Their parents are working two or three part-time jobs, trying to make ends meet. So we did all this fundraising.
VILLALPANDO: We had tacos for sale. Everything was in the name of taking our students to Washington, D.C.
HERNANDEZ: And then we had a magnificent gentleman, a wrestler. His name was The Colorado Kid. He wanted to help, and he said, can I wrestle for the children? And we're like, sure. But I remember thinking, gosh, are we going to get in trouble because we're holding a wrestling event in the auditorium of an elementary school? What if the superintendent finds out about this? And you even wrestled.
VILLALPANDO: Yeah, I remember that. But before that could actually happen, I needed to go down to their warehouse. And I had to learn how to run the ropes, how to land, how to get hit. Finally, the day shows up, and I'm nervous. I can't believe I said yes to this (laughter).
HERNANDEZ: Everyone went crazy when you came out onto the mat and you were flying in the air, doing somersaults, acrobatics. I'm like, I don't know how you did that. The whole school was, Mr. V, Mr. V, Mr. V. It was just electrifying.
VILLALPANDO: I'm still undefeated. No one has been able to beat me yet.
(LAUGHTER)
VILLALPANDO: But our number one goal was to take every single fifth grader to Washington, D.C.
HERNANDEZ: And we did it.
VILLALPANDO: Yeah.
HERNANDEZ: We took over three-quarters of the plane. And then right when the plane took off, all the kids yelled.
VILLALPANDO: All the kids were screaming (laughter).
HERNANDEZ: Yeah, they were all yelling like if we were on a roller coaster at Magic Mountain. But when we landed, it was such a special moment. Our kids who had never even left the neighborhood, to see them there at the White House, it had an enormous impact. I remember because they would come back and they would say, I applied to this school, I applied to that school, and some of the essays they wrote were about our trip to D.C. It was triumph.
MARTIN: That was Moises Villalpando and Fernando Hernandez in San Diego. Their conversation is archived at the Library of Congress.
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