Educator Robert Gary helped diversify local teaching ranks

Say there had never been a Robert Gary — reared in Seattle but with roots deep in the South. Say he hadn't broken barriers, or hadn't been attuned to his dues-paying forefathers, or had been born ornery instead of agreeable. Would those young black teachers have taken the risk?

It was the 1970s and Seattle school officials, very aware of the changing racial complexion of their student body, wanted more black teachers in their district. So they asked Gary to join a few others to help recruit.

And Gary, who had only had one black instructor — in the military; never in school — said yes.

He saw the future in dozens of young faces he met at college job fairs, largely on campuses in the South. And when they agreed to relocate to Seattle, he helped them settle in, offering leads to available apartments and inexpensive cars; offering easy directions to the nearest church.

Remarkably, more than 30 years later, seven of the 20 or so teachers Gary lured to Seattle are still on the job, totaling well over 210 years of service to the city's schools. Their numbers thin year by year, through retirement or other life passages, but they are living, working reminders of an important historical investment in the district's teaching corps.

"In many ways Robert Gary influenced more people than most of us could attempt to do in a lifetime," says Steve Wilson, the district's chief academic officer and Gary's longtime administrative colleague.

Maybe it was because he had pulled himself up from humble origins. Or maybe it was how his own Garfield High School counselor suggested that he consider the post office or the waitstaff at the Seattle Tennis Club — but not college — as his next step.

Whatever his motivation, it's clear Robert Gary felt he had something to prove to a whole lot of people, including himself.

Grandfather Oscar Jay Gary had graduated from Tuskegee University and then succeeded as a mortician and a farmer. If World War II hadn't interrupted things, college would have surely been in the cards for the next generation. But war came. So it was up to Gary, eldest of the youngsters, to show the world how high the family could climb.

His first coup was athletic: a track star at Garfield High in the early 1950s. He also played football and basketball; played cornet and trumpet in the school band; and was president of a community-service group known as the Spade club.

All of this made him a known entity on campus and in the city's tight-knit African-American community. And that buoyed him, says Gary. He's the silver-haired, round-faced, sharply dressed man who always manages to attract a "Dr. Gary!" whenever he's out and about, like when he's at Thompson's Point of View restaurant, smack dab in his childhood neighborhood.

Gary was born in Morton, Miss., on Feb. 13, 1933. But after the family's migration to Seattle following the war, Robert Gary grew up right here in the Central Area, on 20th Avenue in a two-story house with a circular porch. The head of the house was aunt Francis Mitchell, a domestic, and husband Mason, a cement finisher. Each had an 8th-grade education as well as empathy for those who needed a place to stay.

That sense of community only grew as Gary came into his own and more people looked out for him. "I couldn't walk down the street without people saying something to me." Gary starts naming some of his early guides. "Robert Joyner. He was a doctor. William Calhoun. He was a doctor, too."

Each had succeeded at a time when there were even more obstacles in place for someone who was black.

"Dr. Homer Harris," Gary continues. "He had graduated from Garfield and he had to leave the state and go to the University of Iowa to play football because [the University of] Washington wouldn't let him."

Gary's own athletic prowess earned him a scholarship and sent him to the State College of Washington, which was what Washington State University was called at the time. His track coach guided him through life: academics, dating. The five other black undergrads were his initial support system, although Gary later found a community in both an all-white fraternity and in a newly desegregated military.

After college graduation, the education major opted for a military career, but the Army posed its own set of obstacles.

"How many black officers do you think I saw during the 26-week officer-training program at Fort Benning? Of those training everybody, there were 2."

Such numbers matter to Gary. But the numbers neither gnawed at him nor made him bitter, which is what can happen sometimes. Instead, when Seattle got wind that Gary had his teaching credential and offered him a job, he took it — while choosing to remain in the reserves, where he eventually made colonel at age 42.

By 1957, Gary was teaching at Whitworth Elementary. Then he moved to Meany Junior High. By 1959, he was back at Garfield, teaching and coaching track. He didn't know of a single other African-American head coach of any sport at any public school in the state, he says.

In the words of those who remember him at Garfield, Gary was a disciplinarian. In his own words: "I was no-nonsense. I told them [the students], 'You're establishing lifelong skills that you'll carry right into adulthood.' "

Gary's own life had been a series of investments: his family, his community, his teammates, his troops, in him.

So when he was finally able, it was his time to pay it forward.

"When I went to the UW and I first started taking my classes, he gave me guidance as to what courses to take," says Charles Mitchell, a younger cousin, who is now chancellor of Seattle Community Colleges. "He made sure I took the core classes whereby I'd get my degree on time, which is what I did."

"One thing I'll never forget is the fact that when he was teaching, coaching at Garfield, there was this sprinter Charlie Green, who was part of the neighborhood," recalls pal Carver Gayton , a former Boeing executive and Seattle School Board member who now directs the Northwest African American Museum. "And even though Charlie went to O'Dea, Bob took time after his regular work hours to work with this young man."

"He was like an older brother to me," chimes in Al Roberts, who lived in the Mitchell home in the mid-1960s. Roberts went on to coach at the UW and in the NFL and is now the new co-head football coach at Garfield.

"What he modeled was decency," Roberts says. "He'd always ask me questions. 'How are you doing? What were my goals? Did I get my master's?' More is taught than caught and that's Bob Gary to me."

"Recruiter" was never Gary's official school-district title. But it was the charge for a small group that would end up wooing some 50 black teachers to local schools. Included among them: Clarence Acox, jazz ensemble director at Garfield High and a Southern University alum.

For Gary, recruiting was a calling.

"Back then, say if I had graduated from Xavier in New Orleans, that was a predominantly black school in an all-black community. And then where would I end up? Chances are that I'd go to an urban area and be assigned to a black school.

"For many, they got the degree and the world stopped. We thought, 'We'll raise the lid and let them know there's something better.' That was my attitude."

He knew trust was best built when he went into people's houses and sipped iced tea. He knew that was how best to persuade moms to let their daughters move "to the other side of the world." Or how he could convince those daughters, sons too, that while other districts might be offering more money, coming to Seattle was worth the risk.

It worked, the recruited recall.

"He told us it'd be a great opportunity for us," says Calvin Johnson, originally from New Orleans, who teaches PE and coaches basketball at Cleveland High. "And it turned out it was."

"Our goal was to finish high school, then college and then to move away," says Elnora Hookfin, formerly Elnora Coleman, also from Louisiana. She had 10 brothers and sisters. Dad was a sharecropper. She hated picking cotton, and from a young age Hookfin envisioned her future lay not in the East but somewhere in the Northwest.

She was also an aspiring teacher studying at Grambling, where she met another aspiring teacher, Fannie Willis, who happened to hail from Seattle and who happened to remember Gary from her days studying at Garfield.

"She was the one who twisted my arm and said, 'We have to meet Mr. Gary,'" Hookfin says. And even though Detroit was beating Seattle's $13,000-a-year offer by $5,000, Hookfin heard Gary explain how Seattle was going through desegregation and how they wanted more minority teachers. She and her friend moved to Seattle, trailed soon after by her fiancée, David Hookfin, also recruited into local schools.

"Here I was, a young girl in the city," Elnora Hookfin says about how Gary helped her out with rides to and from work in those first months. "He was like a father. He protected and looked out for us."

Gary left the Seattle schools in 1995, earlier than he would have liked. As an administrator, he became part of the controversy involving Clint Webb, who Gary had helped hire, not knowing Webb had a criminal record including a manslaughter conviction. When Webb was charged (and later convicted) in the statutory rape of a student, the district began an investigation into its hiring practices. Gary was placed on administrative leave, then decided to retire.

Then-Superintendent John Stanford blamed "the system" for failing to adequately screen potential employees, and disciplined three school staffers.

A decade later, Gary regrets the way his career came to a close, but he's also enjoying his retirement. You'll find him, some mornings, fishing in Seward Park. Green fold-up chair. Cup of worms. WSU cap.

The need for minority teachers, he says, is greater than ever and the district ought to be putting forth the kind of recruiting effort of the past.

So retired or not, he hasn't stopped working: a motor, albeit a quieter one now, helping the public-education system move forward. He works with WSU, recruiting African-American students to the campus. He works with the Northwest Black Pioneers and leads tours to historic black universities and colleges in the South.

Not long ago, he was in Shoreline as part of a diversity-training workshop sponsored by the Washington Education Association. He still goes in to the school-district offices, where you might find him talking shop with High Schools Director Ammon McWashington.

The other day, he met with Garfield Principal Ted Howard Jr. and some parents planning an orientation for its incoming class.

"They never really go away," Gary says about the many roots he's planted in local schools. "My son, he'll see people and they'll ask, 'How's your dad doing?' "

That would be son Robert Gary Jr., one final contribution worth noting. Gary Jr. is principal at Rainier Beach High.

Florangela Davila: 206-464-2916 or fdavila@seattletimes.com