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Sunday, Sep. 13, 2009

Every paper tells a story

A thousand trees have died for Dr. Ulysses Byas.

It has been their destiny. They have been cut, pressed, stacked, sorted and meticulously organized in drawers and on shelves.

They have made the journey along an endless paper trail, bound together for the afterlife by barrels of ink and a typecast of characters.

Most of it is written down, a lifetime in education documented and preserved. Byas can put his fingers on it. Just give him a minute or two. After all, he is 85 years old and had open heart surgery last year.

Yes, there’s more than just a tiny pack rat in the old professor. You can find the “Ulysses Byas Archives” in a back room at his north Macon home. It’s his own Library of Congress, without the card catalog.

It is here for prosperity. So, if you’re ever looking for the 1957-58 curriculum survey from the Fair Street High School in Gainesville, he’s your man.

Byas spent 39 years in education, making a difference at every stop. He courageously chiseled his mark in school systems such as Gainesville and Tuskegee, Ala., where he became the first black superintendent in the South following school desegregation in 1970.

He eventually landed in Long Island, N.Y., where he served as superintendent of one of the 55 school districts. When he retired in 1988, an elementary school in Roosevelt, N.Y., was named in his honor.

He returned to his hometown of Macon in 1988, content to spend the final chapters of his life with his collection of school records, teacher evaluations, newspapers, periodicals, correspondence and every speech he ever made.

Dr. Byas doesn’t use a computer very often. He leaves that to his wife, Annamozel. He has a totally different interpretation of the command “save file.” No need for extra gigabytes, just some extra square footage.

Eleven years ago, his daughter, Laverne, introduced him to Vanessa Siddle Walker, a Harvard graduate and a professor at Emory.

Walker was fascinated with his passion for education, his pioneer spirit and his devotion to the preservation of his body of work. Here is a man who trademarked the slogan: “Words: One Hundred Percent Thinking.’’ He uses it in every application.

Soon, the two were collaborating. Byas became the focal point of her 312-page book, “Hello Professor: A Black Principal and Professional Leadership in the Segregated South,’’ published this year by the University of North Carolina Press.

“In the last nine years, she must have made 200 trips down here,’’ said Byas. “When she called, my salutation was always, ‘Hello, professor.’ And she would say, ‘Hello, professor.’ That’s how we came up with the title.’’

In 2002, Randall Burkett, an Emory archivist specializing in black collections, visited Byas, who donated a dozen four-drawer file cabinets of documents and records to Emory.

His amazing life story began in Pleasant Hill, where he was one of eight children in a single-parent home. He twice quit at old Hudson High School to get jobs and help his mother make ends meet.

He did a three-year stint as a cook in the Navy, was president of his senior class at Fort Valley State and completed his graduate work at Columbia University in New York.

Byas now has a special book to add to all the others.

More trees have died. It has been a worthy calling.

Reach Gris at 744-4275 or gris@macon.com.