Pair who desegregated E.C. Glass forever linked

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When news of Lynda Woodruff’s marriage first reached E.C. Glass High, it was just assumed by some that her betrothed was Owen Cardwell Jr.

“I got wedding gifts for Mr. and Mrs. Owen Cardwell,” Woodruff, a woman with a big voice and infectious laugh, recalls today with amusement. “My husband wanted to know who this Owen Cardwell was.”

For many who witnessed the events of 1962 — the year Woodruff and Cardwell stepped into the all-white E.C. Glass as its first black students — the identity of these two young trailblazers would, evidently, remain forever linked.

“They locked us together” in their minds, said Woodruff, who’s maintained a lifelong friendship with Cardwell and is godmother to his two grandsons.

For his part, Cardwell, a Baptist minister whose soft but firm drawl puts him in contrast to Woodruff, says he sometimes felt like the more isolated of the two.

The semester following their entrance to E.C. Glass, two other African-American girls, Brenda Hughes and Cecilia Jackson, also enrolled, he noted. Cardwell, however, remained the lone boy.

“You’ve got to remember,” he said, “we’re talking about 13- and 14-year-olds who were just beginning to get out of the era of puberty and were looking for acceptance. But we were social pariahs at E.C. Glass.

“I tell people (when it came time to choose a college), I didn’t want to have anything else to do with white folks. I was done with white folks. I wanted some social interaction with black people.”

A new book, “Way Opens: A Spiritual Journey,” tells the story of Cardwell and Woodruff, as well as author Patricia Wild, a white student and senior at E.C. Glass during its desegregation.

Wild, a silver-haired woman now living in Massachusetts, recounts a sheltered upbringing that left her oblivious to the unfolding Civil Rights movement.

She describes riding on the bus one day and seeing a student from the all-black Dunbar High School reviewing a handout about Crispus Attucks, one of the five people killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770.

“And I said, who is that?” Wild recalled. “I discovered a piece of history I had never known before, because, guess what, that information wasn’t in my history book.”

Last week, Wild, Woodruff, and Cardwell appeared together for a schoolwide assembly at their alma mater. They also participated in a panel discussion at the Legacy Museum of African-American History, where they talked about their separate and unequal upbringings and the unexpected friendship they would forge decades later as adults.

The following contains brief excerpts taken from interviews following that discussion:

On belated apologies

Decades after graduating, Wild would be moved to write to Woodruff as she attempted to grapple with her own feelings about what happened in those early months of desegregation, including her own inaction when she saw others ostracize Cardwell on his first day.

The reply sent by Woodruff, who was teaching at a university in Atlanta, mentioned she had received several such letters over the years.

“I think that was the beginning of my process,” Wild said. “Here was this guilty white girl who, years ago, didn’t go over and sit with Owen (in the cafeteria). And now she gets this letter from Lynda saying, you’re not the only one. That there are a lot of us out there saying, I’m sorry. I didn’t reach out, and I wish I had.”

On returning to Glass

Woodruff, Cardwell and Wild each found themselves struck by the changes in E.C. Glass when they appeared at a school assembly last week.

“In 1962, there were 2,000 white students in that school and just two black,” Woodruff noted. “If I wanted to find Owen in the auditorium, it wasn’t very difficult.”

On their return visit, standing again in that same room with a throng of contrasting faces before them, Woodruff scanned the audience for a glimpse of Cardwell’s grandsons, her godsons.

“I knew they were in the audience,” she said. “But I couldn’t find them.”

Cardwell, who now leads his own church in Richmond, described the mix of students seated before them that day as a “heartening” sight.

“It makes me feel like what we went through was worthwhile,” he said.

On the book

“Way Opens” tells the story of Lynchburg’s desegregation, as viewed by each of these three former students. The book’s blending of black and white perspectives appealed to Cardwell and Woodruff, who are both used to recounting their own experiences.

Woodruff, who said her friendship with Wild has forced her to examine “the other side” of desegregation, can’t help but feel a voice is still missing.

“Patricia wasn’t really the other side,” she said. “She wasn’t a racist.”

The true racists, those who jeered at her and Cardwell or inflicted cruel pranks on them, are not heard from in the book.

“I so much want a chance to confront those people, those people who were racists,” Woodruff said, adding with marked emphasis:

“None of them have ever written me a letter.”