Late Dunbar principal Seay revived in lectures, cutout figure

Thanks to Hermina Hendricks and Nancy Marion, Clarence W. Seay is still larger than life.

He stood atop a desk at Jones Memorial Library on Wednesday evening, towering over the room, while Hendricks delivered the latest in a series of Jones lectures on local history, “A Journey Taken.”

The real-life Seay died in 1982 after a 30-year career as Dunbar High School’s principal and two terms on City Council. This Seay was a cutout figure wearing a tuxedo with a white boutonniere.

“He currently resides in my office at Randolph College,” said Hendricks, a music professor who graduated from Dunbar the year after Seay retired as the school’s principal.

“A Journey Taken” is the story of how Seay’s tenure at Dunbar (1938-1968) created not only a successful school but a close-knit downtown community.

“He used to say that the school was the community and the community was the school, and they couldn't be separated,” Hendricks said.

As a principal, the man was — pardon the pun — old school. He was not the kind of administrator who remained in his office like a spider in his web waiting to confront students who were sent there.

Seay walked the halls, went to Parent-Teacher Organization meetings, and visited parents at home. Instead of focusing on what “his” kids were doing wrong, he directed his considerable energy toward making them do right.

And it showed.

The list of outstanding students who emerged from Lynchburg's black high school under Seay is impressive — National Education Association president Mary Hatwood Futrell, United Negro College fund director Christopher Edley, Rochester, New York mayor William Johnson, Broadway actor Carl Anderson, federal judge James Giles, and on and on.

“We've lost that now, that focus on excellence,” said William E. Clark, who taught chemistry under Seay. “For one thing, the principals don't get the parental backing they used to.”

Hendricks has a special perspective on Seay. She grew up a few houses away on Pierce Street. Unlike many of her classmates, she was never afraid of the man.

She was, however, afraid of his dog.

“That was a bad dog,” she said. “I can’t remember what kind it was.”

 Seay’s time at Dunbar ended before my time in Lynchburg began, but I’ve heard a lot about him. His true genius appeared to be in taking a group of young people whom the larger society said were inferior and convincing them otherwise.

Long before Jesse Jackson made a catch phrase out of “You are somebody!” Seay was running his school that way.

“There was a strong focus on education, nurturing and respect,” Hendricks recalled. “We knew that our teachers knew what was best for us, and we accepted that.”

Granted, times were different.

When Seay ruled Dunbar, there was a cohesiveness in the downtown black community that came from facing a common enemy — segregation.

When that changed, Seay saw the arrival of a new world. He retired.

“His passion was the education of African-American youth,” said Hendricks. “That was where his heart was.”