Stepping down

Everyone knows Wallace Williams.

In the halls of Rogers High School, one student tried to sell him candy and candles to raise money for new choir robes, and another asked for a pass to get out of her P.E. class. Even a group of social study teachers grading papers requested latte funds in jest.

This summer Rogers will be without Williams for the first time in 17 years. Williams, 53, is stepping down as principal to take a special assignment with the district to look into drop-out rates for a year, then he’ll retire after 31 years of service to Spokane Public Schools.

The next three years will be crucial to Rogers as the school begins its long-awaited construction redesign. A principal will need to be on top of most every detail. Williams said he wanted to make room for the next school leader instead of retiring half-way through the process.

“These kids are too special to walk out on,” said Williams, the district’s only African American principal.

Between classes, Williams stood in the hallway to help monitor students. One girl gives him a high-five. Smiles and waves come from other students.

“You guys better hurry, you’re late,” he said as the bell rings. He chuckled at a girl in high heels running down the hall who suddenly broke stride and smiled sheepishly when she saw the principal.

“He’s kind of like a magnet,” said Emmett Arndt, a Spokane Public Schools director who oversees the high schools. “Students do smile, they say hello, they kid him, and he kids them back”

In his regular meetings with other principals and district officials, Williams is known for giving honest assessments of what’s affecting the students, Arndt said.

Among teachers, most everyone has a story of how Williams found a little extra cash to help with equipment, transportation or even lunches for students.

Once when Rogers students were planning a trip to a state science competition near Seattle, they had plans to travel on a yellow school bus. Then Williams heard Ferris was chartering a more plush bus for the event and had plans to visit the Seattle Science Center.

“He said the heck with that and kicked in a bunch (of funds),” said Rogers chemistry teacher Mike McCracken, who had Williams as both a football coach and counselor at Lewis and Clark High. “He made sure we felt as good about ourselves as anybody.”

Arndt said that Williams has lived his life to serve students.

Williams said his mother taught him serve with patience and love.

“My faith is of the utmost importance to me, and I use spiritual principles to guide my work as a principal and every other facet of my life,” Williams said.

He’s the Sunday school superintendent at Cavalry Baptist and credits the pastors for mentoring his faith and guidance.

“Everyone has a moral purpose in life. Mine has been to work with this population,” Williams said. “It’s a population I relate too.”

The community surrounding Rogers High Schools is among the poorest in the state. Some students are homeless, others live with one parent, some sit in class feeling anxiety about going home. But it’s also a school Williams has great pride in. The media in particular mislabels his students, he said.

“I truly believe these are some of the best kids society has to offer,” Williams said. “I get far more than I give working in this community. … It’s going to be really hard on those last few days of school.”

Most people who work with Williams know about his two children, a daughter studying architecture in Maryland and a college-football standout son who’s about to earn a master’s degree in communication at WSU. Everyone knows Williams is a Cougar himself. Teachers once enlarged a photo of Williams in his football gear, painted it with UW Husky colors and posted it at his office before an Apple Cup game.

In 1969, Williams was one of about 50 African American students at WSU. About half were athletes like him. The town couldn’t have been any different than Wallace’s hometown of Bakersfield, Calif. He grew up the oldest of six children raised by a single mom.

“People tend to gravitate to professions they’re exposed to,” Williams said.

He grew up wanting to be a fireman.

“I didn’t know any professional people,” Williams said. “I didn’t have anyone in the family who went to college.”

Williams attended one year at a Bakersfield Junior College and his skills as an offensive lineman drew recruiters from Stanford, Colorado and even Hawaii.

That’s when WSU’s coach, Jim Sweeney, showed up at the door. Sweeney ate dinner with the family.

“He was the first white guy that sat with us at our dinner table,” Williams said. “Mom told me I was going to WSU.”

Williams went on to earn a master’s in psychology and counseling at WSU and was hired by Spokane Public Schools first as a district guidance counselor. His first high school was Lewis and Clark.

The school accommodated his schedule when he played for the San Diego Chargers in the exhibition season as an offensive lineman. He also played in 1974 with the World Football League, a renegade startup league that failed. His name still shows up on Internet programs for his team, the Portland Storm. He discovered a passion for education that replaced his love of football, and he hung up his shoulder pads. His knees still hurt in the cold months from the gridiron poundings.

Wallace and his wife, Adrian Williams, chose to make a life in a town that was unlike anything either had known. Bakersfield is near the Mojave desert, and it has one manmade pond. In Spokane, he was in awe of the countless lakes and wilderness areas. Here people slept outside on the ground and called it camping out. That was much like how Wallace lived with five siblings.

“That’s one of the reasons I wanted to stay here,” Williams said. “I just like being out on the water.”

He also discovered the more difficult side of Spokane.

“When you’re trapped here in Spokane as a person of color, you’re always in someone else’s world. I can’t go to a store and see anyone who looks like me,” Williams said.

His wife must still take regular trips to Seattle for cosmetics because Spokane department stores do not carry hair-care products used regularly by African American women.

“Spokane isn’t very accommodating to people of color, and people don’t realize that,” Williams said.

“I go home every summer,” Williams said, but then he pauses. “I really don’t know where home is.”

He still sees himself as the guy from Bakersfield when he’s lived most of his life in Spokane.

Williams said he is concerned that his departure will remove the only black high school principal in the district.

“I think the kids have a right to see themselves in the school community,” Williams said.

Longtime friend, the Rev. Happy Watkins, who works as chaplain at Holy Family Hospital, said when young people come in who have attended Rogers, he’ll mention that Williams is his best friend.

“They beam with pride about Wallace. He’s huge, not size wise, but his spirit, his integrity, his honesty,” Watkins said. “He’s a principal to all students. He’s a huge role model to students of color who see themselves achieving (their goals).”