THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508130313
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
Dr. W. Randolph Nichols, Chesapeake's new superintendent of schools, was still moving into his office the other day, so the walls were kind of bare. There were books on the shelves, though, including one called ``Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun.''
Whoa. Does that mean you agree with him or get strung up by the thumbs? Nichols grins. The title is a joke. The advice inside isn't. It talks about things like common action and the need to build the good morale that feeds teamwork.
Nichols is a heavy believer in teamwork, and now he's administrative boss of the school system that hired him 36 years ago. When C. Fred Bateman retired this summer after 15 years as superintendent, the School Board tapped Nichols to move up from his job as Bateman's deputy.
Now he's got the big office with the big desk.
``I don't normally sit behind a desk,'' he says. ``When you do, there's so much of a psychological separation between you and the person you're talking to.''
There is a relaxed intensity, an easy-going directness about the man despite the semi-formality of his immaculate brown suit and faultlessly polished shoes. ``He's a stickler for doing what's right,'' says a long-time Chesapeake colleague. ``He's a believer in game plans and teamwork, and he's a tremendously hard worker, a real pack horse. I think the School Board made a good choice.''
Part of the easy-going side of Nichols' personality is in the voice, still touched with the sound of the North Carolina town where he grew up. This is a guy who was one of six children of a tenant farmer family in Hertford County, N.C., just outside Ahoskie.
``I was out in the fields when I was in the fourth grade,'' he says. ``I've chopped cotton and harvested peanuts, corn and tobacco.'' He worked his way through college, too, packing bags and stocking shelves at a grocery store. ``It gave me an appreciation of what you can do if you're determined you're going to do it,'' Nichols says. ``And you give an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.''
Nichols signed on with the Chesapeake school system before it ever became the Chesapeake school system. The year was 1959. Norfolk County and the city of South Norfolk didn't merge into the present city until 1963. But in '59, Harry Paxson, a much-loved coach and administrator in the county, was recruiting new teachers. When he got to Carolina, he connected with Nichols.
That's how Nichols became a science instructor at Great Bridge High. He as also given the job of cross-country coach. Never mind that he was no athlete. ``Too small for football, too short for basketball, not skilled enough for baseball, but I'm a terrific spectator'' is the way he tells it. Never mind that he was coach of the team at the first track meet he ever saw. He read books and listened to veterans. The third year he was coach, his team won the district championship. The fourth year, the team was second in the state.
The grin spreads all the way across his round face as he tells that story, but then he turns serious as he talks about the challenges of public education. The American way, he says, is to educate all the children of all the people. ``No other civilized nation places that heavy a responsibility on its educational system. And when I hear people say, `Get back to basics,' I wonder what they mean. The `basics' aren't just readin', writin' and 'rithmetic any more. These days, computer literacy is a basic.''
If the basics are changing, so are the social pressures, Nichols says. ``Young people these days have so many more decisions to make about drinking and drugs and sex. They're decisions that young people of my generation didn't have to make, and today's kids have to face them at ever younger ages.''
To help those kids grow up in a tough world, public schools are increasingly asked to take over where dissolving families and over-burdened social institutions have left off. Nichols sees the demands on public education as a two-edged sword.
``Educators are proud that the community has so much confidence in them,'' he says, ``but they've given us so much responsibility outside of the normal realm of schooling that we can't do it all well.''
Still, you come away knowing that Nichols is a guy who will give it his best shot. Ask him what he hopes people will say about him at the end of his watch and he stops to think about it for a moment. Then he says, ``I hope they will remember me as a fair and just individual sensitive to concerns and dealing with those concerns in a fair and just way.''
Maybe Attila the Hun should have read ``Leadership Secrets of W. Randolph Nichols.'' by CNB