Just when it seemed safe to criticize those white flight corporate Bedouins in Plano, along come the Peavy tapes.
The vocal antics of the former school board member – who was illegally recorded spouting racist, sexist and anti-gay remarks – recalled recent incidents involving white Plano residents allegedly sending hate mail and tagging garages of their non-white neighbors.
For many years, Dan Peavy – who represented a portion of the Advocate’s readership and was the chorus teacher at Skyline High School – seemed to share the opinions of many concerned about our public schools.
He asserted that the system should be declared unitary, or substantially desegregated, to remove it from court control. He also championed other causes that were simpatico with many of us, such as financial responsibility and thrift, teacher’s relief from paperwork and a boost in salaries, and more arts programs. He also voted for much-needed construction and repairs in bond programs.
Unfortunately, Peavygate assisted in joining O.J. Simpson, the Million Man March (which some Woodrow students attended) and the Plano incidents in a vortex of racial disharmony.
I would like to once again give credit to the many students, teachers and parents of all backgrounds who are trying to create what passes for utopia at our very own Woodrow.
If you’ve ever seen most of them interact, you know that what you don’t see at professional sporting events, churches and shopping centers occurs, if only for now, at Woodrow.
There is hope for the rest of the world.
Crimson Pride
Go out and support our Wildcats at their last two football games. They played Roosevelt Nov. 3 and Thomas Jefferson Nov. 10. They’ve had a tough, albeit so-far winless, season and are showing copious amounts of “character”, as it is known in sports speak.
Also, don’t forget that the school’s overall sports program placed sixth among more than 50 North Texas 4-A schools in a recent all-sports competition.
If you need a pigskin palliative, watch Heisman winner Tim Brown (‘84”) play for the Oakland Raiders. He’s having an outstanding season, leading the AFC in three categories and recently hauling in an 80-yard touchdown.
Farewell, Mr. Fair
I was sad to see the notice of W.W. Fair Jr.’s (’29) death last month. Fair who graduated in the first senior class, co-chaired the school’s 50th anniversary celebration with classmate and ex-Mayor Wallace Savage in 1979.
Local Dallas Morning News columnist and Bryan Adams graduate John Anders called the event the largest high school reunion ever held. The crowd, estimated at 10,000, surpassed the number at Harvard’s 300th anniversary.
Fair, who grew up in a two-story home on the southeast corner of Palo Pinto and Greenville, attended SMU Law School and built what at one time was the largest title company in Texas: Hexter/Fair.
I shall always be grateful to Fair for his help on a special advertising supplement I put together about the class anniversary for the now-departed Dallas Time Herald newspaper. It helped me earn an internship and pushed me to earn a journalism degree along with my business degree at SMU.
