Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 3, 1993 TAG: 9306030357
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
LeGette, 60, handed in his resignation as principal of Blacksburg High School this week and is headed for retirement a second time.
Five years ago, LeGette came out of retirement after 30 years in various North Carolina schools to take the Blacksburg job. He brought with him something the school needed badly at the time - structure and stability.
His contributions to the school are praised by its teachers. "We're really going to miss him because of the depth of his wisdom and the strength of his character," said Mary Fain, chairman of the school's vocational department.
A native of Greensboro, N.C., LeGette was educated at East Carolina University and Appalachian State. He began his teaching career in New Bern in eastern North Carolina, where he was a teacher and elementary principal.
He and his wife, Mary Lou, an art teacher in Montgomery County, have two grown daughters, Noel and Blair. A third daughter, the couple's eldest, was killed in a car wreck in 1979 when she was 20 and a junior in college.
LeGette's last job before coming to Blacksburg in 1988 was as principal at Walter Williams High School in Burlington, N.C.
After the move, he found Virginia school systems to have fewer state controls than those in North Carolina, where, for instance, the state sets a statewide salary scale for teachers. In Virginia, he found more local participation by parents and citizens in the school system's decisions.
Wednesday, LeGette still was laboring under the weight of his decision to retire for a second time.
"Right this minute, having turned in my resignation, I'm sitting on empty," he said of his feelings. "I don't know that I'd ever be ready to get out."
LeGette doesn't like to talk about himself but, coaxed to do so, said he felt he's had five good years at Blacksburg. He hopes he's brought stability to the school and been able to raise the self-esteem of its students.
The students at Blacksburg are some of the most talented he's ever encountered, from academics to athletics to vocations, he said. "This school's got so much potential it can be anything it wants to be."
He said he regrets that he'll miss out on the restructuring of secondary schools that will occur in the years ahead.
Schools now are operated on models that are decades old. The school calendar was established when most people lived on farms. The 45-minute class periods are held the same way they were in 1925, he noted.
But the biggest change coming is in teaching styles, he said. The future will see more "hands-on" learning by students in classes that will relate more to the work world.
"I think it's going to be an exciting time for school." But it's also going to be an upsetting time, he said.
As he leaves, LeGette said, he is disturbed by the trend toward violence he sees in other school systems. He also worries about drugs, which he says are a problem in Montgomery County but not as big a one as elsewhere. He's concerned with the disintegration of the family unit, teen suicide and teen-age pregnancy.
Although he has hobbies such as golf and antique sports cars, LeGette said he's not one to sit on a bank and fish in his retirement.
"If I could find a job in education, not full-time, I'd have to think about doing it."
Delores Grapsas, chairman of the social studies department at Blacksburg High, would like to talk LeGette into forgetting all about the notion of retirement.
Two years ago, when LeGette decided to transfer to be principal at Christiansburg Elementary School, she and others talked him out of it.
She usually doesn't like administrators, Grapsas said, but she likes LeGette both professionally and personally. It wouldn't be expected for a teacher with 20 years of experience, like herself, to have a mentor but she considers LeGette a mentor, Grapsas said.
"He set standards for all of us, standards he lives by," she said.
"The kids are really excited about him because he's visible. . . . He made a lot of personal contact," Grapsas said. LeGette's office is not hidden down some hallway guarded by a secretary. His office doors are always open, she said.
No activity at the high school was too small that he would not give it his personal attention, she said. "If you work very hard, there's no one who can support you more."
LeGette is a "real professional," Grapsas said. "He made [Blacksburg] into a real first-class school."
by CNB