IN MEMORY
Mr. H.C. Fryar,Jr
1928-2005

BY: Marvin Neely "64"

I was saddened as I heard of the passing of Mr. H.C. Fryar, Jr., our beloved Principal of Westwood High School. As I shared with many of you of his passing, my mind flashed back to many memories of those days back at dear old Westwood High and especially those of Mr. Fryar. And, as I was reminiscing and reading the various e-mail responses from many of you upon hearing of the news, I received an email from Cheryl (Haynes) Bilton, WWHS class of 1968. She asked if I would share with all of you the tribute that I was privileged to present on behalf of the Westwood Alumni at the multi-year class reunion two years ago. While I was not sure that I could find the exact text of what I had previously prepared, I agreed to share my thoughts and memories of Mr. Fryar.

With his courage and leadership he recruited, drafted and assembled a faculty and administrative staff with the same educational philosophies, disciplinary principles and visions of his own and successfully led them in the campaign to put Westwood High School on the map in the areas of academics, citizenship and athletics.

While I am sure that we all have our first impression of Mr. Fryar, my most vivid recollection dates back to the first school assembly in the cafetorium the first day of my freshman year at Westwood. He was standing erect and rigid at the microphone, in his standard uniform of the era…dark trousers, white short sleeved shirt and narrow black tie...his hands on his hips, his crew cut bristling and his neck bulging. His mere presence demanded respect and a hush fell over the crowd of a hundred or so of us excited high school freshman.

He addressed the new freshman class with the expected welcoming courtesies and a review of the policies and procedures, more commonly referred to the ‘do’s and don’ts’. Once finished with the formalities, he dismissed the girls and promptly got down to business with us guys. As my memory serves me, his first words to us were something to the effect of , “So you think you are a bunch of tough guys who like to hang out at the pool halls, smoke, drink and fight. Well, we will just see how tough you are!” And, with that the line was drawn in the sand. For the next four years it would be our responsibility to make sure we did not get caught on the wrong side of that line.

It was obvious that somewhere along the way he had gotten the impression that we were a bunch of hoodlums and juvenile delinquents. Sadly, in some cases it was true. But the fact of the matter is that without his intervention, guidance and love it could have been the case for many more of us.

His challenge was clear to him from the start. It was to harness the energy, anger, toughness and rebellious attitudes of this early crop of ‘baby boomers’ and teach us to use those characteristics and personality traits productively in society throughout our lives. His goal was to take us off of the streets and out of the pool halls, and put us in the classrooms and on the athletic fields where we could be transformed into educated young men and women with a thread of character woven into the fabric of our lives. And, he would be the tailor of this transformation. For some of us it was obviously a challenge which he conquered and a goal which he reached. And, for his courage and accomplishment we are most thankful.

If you think that he was but a ‘gruff and grizzly’ man, with the persona and personality of a Marine, you are both right and wrong. He was in fact a proud Marine veteran with a personality built around the discipline of a soldier. But he also possessed another side, one of dedication, devotion and love of his students, which he seldom if ever revealed. Let me share with you a story of that side of Mr. Fryar.

One Friday night, after a home football game a group of four or five older boys who were not students and had been drinking, jumped a couple of the football players in the parking lot between the high school and the elementary school. After a brief and bloody fight the altercation was interrupted by the arrival on the scene of the entire football team followed by the boosters, coaches and of course Mr. Fryar. The Sheriff’s Department was summoned and, after what seemed to be like hours of interrogation by the deputies, it was their conclusion that all of the parties involved in the initial fight would have to be arrested, booked, spend the night in jail and appear before a judge in the morning.

As the Sheriff’s deputies reached for our hands to cuff us, Mr. Fryar bolted between the deputies and his students. He quite vocally and aggressively advised the deputies that “his boys” were not going to be cuffed or taken to jail. He told them that we were not “hoodlums” and we were not going to be treated as such. He personally assured the deputies that we would be present at the hearing the next morning.

The following morning we all packed the crowded courtroom represented not by legal counsel or even our biological fathers, but by Mr. Fryar. He, once again, expressively told the judge of the incident and the mitigating circumstances surrounding the altercation. As I watched and listened to him that day I saw and felt the love that he had for us, his students. The type of love which, I learned later in life, is the same type of love that a parent possesses for their own children, and a love that he tried so hard to conceal behind his tough and disciplined hard-core facade.

There are perhaps hundreds of stories that we could tell of Mr. Fryar. Like how he worked diligently for two years to locate and secure us a live “longed horn steer” as our school mascot. I am not sure that there ever was, or has been since, any other Principal who worked as hard and was successful in obtaining a two-thousand pound live mascot. And, who on his own time, drove to Texas to pick it up and bring it back to the school.

Then there is the story about the time the ‘gambling epidemic’ spread through the school and he called an assembly of the boys in the gym and offered us an opportunity to test our ‘luck’ with a roll of the dice. Except this time it was to determine the number of licks one would get for having been caught gambling. While all of those invited had not been guilty, or at least had not been caught, it was an impressionable occasion. As the facts of the story go, the first guilty lad that appeared at center court where Mr. Fryar awaited with his long baseball bat handled paddle, rolled double sixes. The impressions were made, more ways than one, and the gambling on campus came to a screeching halt.

I can also remember a personal encounter with Mr. Fryar on the football practice field. A former coach himself, he would often visit the athletic practice sessions to offer advice and encouragement from the sidelines. On this particular day he shouted at me, “Neely, you couldn’t tackle my mother in a phone booth!” While it was perhaps an accurate assessment of my athletic abilities at the time, that moment and those words would resound in my head throughout my life. At that instance, I was embarrassed, but as I grew older I have often used that ‘one moment in time’ to draw on my determination to overcome my weaknesses and inabilities and to defeat my adversities. So, thanks Mr. Fryar for encouraging us to do better in life.

At graduation exercise Mr. Fryar always reserved a special moment to recognize an individual. This recognition was not for their academic achievements or athletic accomplishments but for character. The selection committee was made up of but just one person, himself. He alone would choose a student who he thought best exemplified the finest character of anyone in the graduating class and would present them with an Olympic styled gold medal at the graduation exercise. While I was only present for the first two of those presentations and privileged to know, both then and now, those first two recipients of Mr. Fryar’s ‘Principal’s Award’ I can tell you that he was a great judge of character.

So today, as we remember and memorialize Mr. Fryar, and on behalf of the Alumni of Westwood High School, I can think of no better way than to award him the first Westwood High School “Alumni Award”. This recognition is given in deep appreciation for the dedication, devotion, character and love which he exemplified during his life and career as a principal and educator. While we will always respectfully remember him as Mr. H. C. Fryar, Jr., we will always affectionately refer to him simply as “H.C.”

Thank you Mr. Fryar for your dedication to and love of the many young men and women on whose lives you have left an impression of your character.