‘To serve in whatever capacity you can’

Brar still remembers her first interaction with the We the People coach from Arvin High back when she was a young small-business owner of a Subway franchise in the southeast Kern farming town.

"He asked if I could donate food to his students who would prep all day long for the competition," she said. "I'm like, 'Absolutely.' We've been feeding the kiddos for 23 years now."

But Hallum's advocacy for Arvin High's students didn't end with a lunch order. He asked Brar to come see for herself the improbable dynasty that he and the other coaches had built over generations among the children of farmworkers who were a lot like how Hallum described himself growing up: "Dirt poor."

"These kids who are below the poverty line go up against some of California's richest schools, but Mr. Hallum always instilled in them that they are as smart and deserving as anybody," Brar said. "He's an example of what it means to serve in whatever capacity you can, not for notoriety, not for your name in flashing lights. He does the work we're all supposed to be doing to make the world a better place, and he does it in his little corner of Arvin."

By the time Hallum died in 2023 at age 79, he had left an everlasting imprint on the community where he grew up. At Arvin High, where he was a student himself, he served as a teacher of U.S. history, economics, civics, government and coached football, baseball, tennis and, of course, We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution, a rigorous competition that promotes civic education.

He "retired" in 2004, but never has that term been so loosely applied, said his wife of 46 years.

"The high school district had a five-year project for retired teachers," said Mrs. Hallum, also a lifelong educator. "You write your project, which for him was We the People, and see if it's accepted. You have to do 240 hours over that time. He did double that because it was his passion and after the five years, he still kept going and never stopped."

About a decade into his "retirement," Hallum coached a bright We the People student named Nick Hernandez. Like Hallum, Hernandez left town for college and - also like his mentor - followed the same boomerang trajectory back to Arvin High, where he assumed We the People coaching responsibilities. His former coach became his "right hand."

Hernandez still has a couple of civics texts that belonged to Hallum that offer a glimpse into the coach's thinking.

"He'd go through and handwrite questions for every paragraph in these dogeared textbooks and photocopy them," Hernandez said. "When we'd start with a team, he'd give them 70 to 80 pages of ancient photocopies and handwritten notes, and he didn't have the best handwriting. But when you look through the margins, you realize that Mr. Hallum never stopped learning things."

This year's We the People competition was the first without Hallum since its inception in Arvin. Hallum had thought he would be unable to participate in the state competition in Sacramento last year because it conflicted with his other love - the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Nevada.

"In the middle of night, he sent me a message. He said, 'I'm going to travel all night and get there in the morning to see the kids,'" Hernandez said. "It's really easy for students to pick out teachers who don't have a real love for the things they teach. It should be in Teaching Credential 101 that if you don't have enthusiasm, the kids won't either. Mr. Hallum was always so excited and he knew the names of the thousands of kids he taught over the years. He took a lot of pride in his community, and this community takes a lot of pride in him."

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