http://www.thenewsdispatch.com/articles/20.../news/news2.txt

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As educators, John and Mary White made the community's youth their priority
By Deborah Sederberg, The News-Dispatch


Mary White helped to integrate Joy Elementary School.

“There was not another African-American in that building when I came, not another teacher, not a custodian, not a child,” she said.

That was in 1971.

Her husband, John, who had worked in Mississippi, where he taught Medgar Evers, and in St. Louis, where he taught Tina Turner, had arrived in Michigan City a year earlier. He eventually worked his way up to assistant principal and dean of boys.

Mary taught third grade at Joy and eventually studied at Purdue University-Calumet to become a counselor.

John retired from MCAS in 1993 and Mary retired in 1996. Both were honored on Martin Luther King's birthday with a plaque on the MLK Wall of Fame at the Recognition Dinner at the H.O.P.E. Cultural Center for Social and Economic Change.

At that dinner, Fred Dyer, a psychologist, consultant and West Side native, said John White made a difference in his life because he believed in him.

“We don't forget those teachers, those principals,” Dyer said.

And White doesn't forget his students. Tina Turner, for example, never should have married Ike Turner while she was in high school, White said in a recent interview. When White knew the Grammy-award winner, she was Anna Mae Bullock, who recently moved to St. Louis from Nutbush, Tenn.

“One day, a boy was teasing her, pretending to try to keep her from entering the classroom” where White taught health. “I'll never forget. She said, ‘Mr. White, make this stud leave me alone.' I just fell out laughing,” White confessed. “I had never before heard anyone called a stud.”

Mary recalled the incident and said, “She was performing with Ike in East St. Louis (Illinois) at that time.”

John, who was born in Paducah, Ky., graduated from Wilberforce University near Xenia, Ohio, in 1946, with a major in biology and a minor in health. “At one time, I thought I would go into medicine,” he said. “My biological father was a practicing physician.”

Instead, he went into teaching.

Born Jan. 23, 1926, John graduated from college and married Mary all before his 20th birthday.

Mary's birthday is Jan. 18, 1926.

“She always teases me,” John said in their Edgewood home. “She tells me she is the senior member of this couple.”

While they were students at Wilberforce, they helped to integrate a movie theater near the campus. “Wilberforce is the oldest black university in the U.S.,” John said.

“The theaters were segregated,” Mary explained. “At one, African Americans could sit only on one side of the theater and at the other, you couldn't buy a ticket at all if you were black.”

Students decided to integrate the theater that wouldn't allow any blacks. Students from Antioch College, which was near Wilberforce and populated by mostly white students, bought tickets for the black Wilberforce students. “We all just walked in and sat down together,” Mary recalled, “and that was that.”

It was at Alcorn University in Mississippi where John's cousin, William Pipes, was president that he met Medgar and Charles Evers. The brothers played football at Alcorn, where John was assistant football coach and assistant dean of men, as well as a science teacher.

Mary still shakes her head at the tragedy of Medgar Evers' death. A field organizer for the NAACP, and a champion of civil rights, Evers had applied to law school at the University of Mississippi and was rejected.

He then was charged with opening the NAACP office in Jackson, Miss., where he also worked passionately for voters rights until he was shot dead in front of his own home on June 12, 1963.

The Whites saw an advertisement for teachers in Michigan City in a St. Louis newspaper. “As I recall, the ad said they wanted African-American teachers,” Mary said.

They were interviewed by Alan Howenstine, then assistant superintendent for elementary education.

“And they invited us to stay with them,” John said. “That sort of surprised me, considering the times,” Mary said. The Howenstines are white.

John White arrived in Michigan City in 1970, just after a summer of racial unrest. He eventually served as assistant principal at Rogers and Elston high schools and as dean of students.

“When I retired, (the administration) told me they would get another black dean of students,” White said, “but they didn't.”

The parents of four children and grandparents of seven, the Whites center much of their life around family. Photographs of children and grandchildren as well as their elder family members adorn the piano in the White dining room.

John attends Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church and Mary at Queen of All Saints.

John has been chairman of American Legion Post 37's Americanism and Government program, which rewards students for essays they have written about living in the U.S. He also has served as president of the board of the Dr. Martin Luther King Community Center. He has served on many boards - Kappa Alpha Psi Gary Alumni Chapter, the Michigan City Plan Commission, the Michigan City Rotary Club, Horizon 2000, the United Way of Greater LaPorte County, the Michigan City Urban Enterprise Association, the Sinai Sunday Evening Forum Committee, the John G. Blank Center for the Arts, Kankakee Valley Workforce Development Council, Michigan City Democratic Athletic Club, the Governor's Commission on Drug-Free Schools and Communities of Indiana, the Paducah Club of Chicago, the Mayor's Advisory board and Council for the Arts, Michigan City Family YMCA, Christmas in April, the LaPorte County Local Planning Council and the Michigan City Advancement Corporation.

He has earned a bundle of awards. He was the Michigan City Humanitarian of the Year in 1992, has received the J.C. Penney Golden Rule Award twice, a member of the YMCA Century Club and was named a Duke of Paducah in 1994.

Their lives have not been about winning awards, John and Mary say. They did what they did because they were devoted to young people.

While they have lived to see many of their former students go on to successful careers, the one or two who didn't continue to puzzle John. He occasionally gets a letter from a former student who now is serving time in Indiana State Prison. He worked and worked with that young man, John said. When he was suspended from school, White got him involved in Indiana University-Northwest, and he continued to earn high-school credits.

“Even hired him to cut my grass,” White said.

When the man writes to John, he expresses his regret for not having followed his teacher's advice.

Another former student, however, is grateful for that advice the Whites provided.

Retired now from the FBI, former student C. Lee Thornton has written his memoirs in a book called “Oath of Office.” He sent it and an official FBI T-shirt to the Whites last summer. He inscribed the book to “two of the world's greatest educators. You both inspired my life!”

Contact reporter Deborah Sederberg at dsederberg@thenewsdispatch.com.