Mr. Defore
When I was a first grader, in addition to
my father, I thought there were three powerful men in the
world: Franklin Roosevelt, Eugene Talmage, and Joe Defore.
Of these three Mr. Defore was the only one I knew very
well. He was the principal of the high school and
superintendent of the Fayette County School System. If he
came to our school we all knew someone was in trouble. I
always stood in awe of him. He was a handsome, neatly
dressed, young man. Although he often smiled, he did it
with a look of stern authority. No one wanted trouble with
him. Just hearing the name “Defore” sent chills up my back.
My elementary school is now the Fayetteville City Hall. It
was a new building the year I started school. Since no one
in our school had inside plumbing in their home, the only
place we had seen a flushable toilet was at school. It was
a novelty to all of us. All grades had their recess and
lunch periods at the same time. The younger and the older
boys used the one restroom and were usually unsupervised.
Some of the older boys decided it was great sport to catch
smaller first grade boys and stick their heads in the
commode and flush it. I was terrified of being caught and
when one of the boys caught me, I wrestled loose and ran
home to tell my mother. I lived just across the street from
the school. My mother told me to stay at home while she
hurried over to the school. She was dressed in her work
dress and mad as rip. I went to our front door and watched
her. As she got to the side door of the school where the
boys’ restroom was, she met one of the teachers. I could
see Mother waving her arms and shaking her head. Then she
and the teacher disappeared into the school. After a short
while Mother came home and sent me back to school, telling
me to let a teacher know if I were threatened again.
It was not long until I saw from my classroom window Mr.
Defore’s car stop in front of the school. He left his car
and briskly walked up the front walk. Then after a while I
could hear “whop, whop, whop” from down the hall. The boys
guilty of the head flushing were paying the price for their
meanness. That was the end of the restroom terror. Many
years later I ran into a young man who admitted he still
remembers his punishment from Mr. Defore.