Eulogy for Delmas Hybarger
April 23, 1999
by Cynthia Marshall McNamara
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We are here today to pay tribute to Delmas Lee Hybarger.
That's "Mr.Hybarger" to a lot of us.
Dianne and Chuck have asked me to share with you
how they and others see Delmas' life.
Some are wonderful tributes from former students, some are his children's own words,
some are D.L Hybarger sayings, many of them I have heard him say myself,
and some memorable "Delmas stories."
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As Dianne realized that Mr. Hybarger was entering the twilight of his life,
she wanted him to hear-one more time-from "his kids" themselves,
and to be reminded how much they loved him.
She put his name on the FHS web site and asked that people send him messages.
They poured in and she read them to him over his breakfast each morning.
Many messages began, "You probably don't remember me",
but he usually did-then added to their stories his own memories.
Here are some of the wonderful tributes. Some of you will recognize your words:
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"When I heard about the FHS website, of all I found there the best news was to hear that Mr. Hybarger was still encouraging those that came near. The reason I know of the encouraging is because he was one of the most important people in my life. The top men that have been in my life are my Father, my Grandfather and my Principal. Between him and my Dad I 'best not mess up,' or else!"
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"You probably do not remember, but you were a powerful influence on my life, just by treating me as an individual and with kindness, instead of punishment (which did not work)." ". . .it was back in 1957 or 1958, but I still recall the conversation- -and I walked out of your office with a sense of pride instead of anger. It made me think that maybe I had met someone who was a little wild when he was younger and who actually wanted me to succeed--and I have!" "This year my peers voted me Teacher of the Year for the elementary school. I owe my dedication and teaching skills to you, who showed so much love for his students."
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"Mr. Hybarger, when some of our old gang get together, we speak of you often. You were the greatest principal. You were loved by one and all."
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"All of us who came in contact with you walked away with a better understanding of who we were and where we should be going. Of course, I was one of those who took a lot more of your time and energy, but I finally learned your lessons. Thank you for all your efforts."
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"You communicated your standards, promised discipline if they were violated, and delivered on your promise!"
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"I thought highly of your father, not only from French High, but also as a professor at Lamar. He was a great inspiration and friend to many, many young people, and to all who had the pleasure to be touched by his life."
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"He was a good person and had a very positive impact on so many young lives. His dealing with young people who were good and not so good, easy to get along with or difficult to handle, cemented his position in heaven."
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After his death, other messages came to Dianne:
"I have heard news of a great man, that he is not with us in person but is now only in our hearts. He HELPED me over, under and around what life had to put before me in my early manhood and those memories will be with me for many, many years to come. His ways and words molded me like my father's guidance. They have been passed on to our children and grandchildren. He will always be in my heart-his smiles, his way of turning to you in the halls of greater learning and saying your name. Sometimes he did not need the PA system to do that. He would reach down and put his hand on your shoulder and speak a few words of encouragement. Then you walked away with a smile on your face for a little while, but one in your heart for always. That is the way I see him to this day. That is the way I remember My Principal."
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"He was a man's man! That may sound a bit out of date, but that's the way we young men viewed him and always will"
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"Mr Hybarger was, for me, a friend first, then a principal, and a role model always. He was always so kind, even when he knew exactly what we had been up to-and he always somehow knew!! There are literally thousands of us who knew and loved him, and grew to appreciate the values that he taught us."
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"Mr. Hybarger was one of "The Lucky Ones." He spent his career doing what he loved and what he was born to do-teach, inspire, guide, encourage. He pushed us to be better than we thought we could be, because HE thought we could be. He made us want to reach for things we hadn't thought we could attain. He taught us to be decent, to be fair, to be better than we had been before we knew him. He leaves us wishing we could have kept him longer, but glad we were 'his.' His kids, his family, his friends, his fellow beings."
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"As many of you know, a teacher's job is not always easy-especially years ago-not much pay-paid only for nine months. Some of the things he did in the summer to make money are interesting. One of the jobs he loved doing was working on the road repair gangs. In fact, one summer, at the age of 55, he worked on the road in front of Lamar college. He drove rural mail routes for his Postmaster daddy, and he managed Magnolia Park. As he himself used to say: 'A teacher is born, not made.'"
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Delmas was always fascinated by navigation, which he learned during Officers Candidate School in preparation for his stint in the Merchant Marines. All of us remember questions like, "Do you know the difference between longitude and latitude? How do you navigate when you can't see the sun or the moon or the stars?" Of course, we didn't know. He would then proceed to try to teach us. He was still trying to teach this recently. This time to the Grandchildren, Recently, his grandchild Drew visited him when he was ill. Dianne remembers this night especially fondly because apparently all of them in the room were in stitches while Delmas was teaching Drew how to navigate by the stars.
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Also, he LOVED clocks and they were all over his house. Talking clocks, chiming clocks, dinging clocks, all going off at precisely the same time. "Want to learn how to tell time by a ship's clock?" he'd say. I can vaguely remember standing in their living room with Dianne when we were quite young while he tried to teach us about that. At that time, he hadn't yet got his ship's clock so he would do the ding dings. Dianne says that just recently she finally learned. He did finally get a ship's clock and it stayed by his bed until the day he died. Chuck says that when you spent the night at his house, you knew the hour or half-hour had come, but you were rarely awake enough to do the math and figure out what time it was.
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Delmas was passionate about baseball in general, but specifically about the Lamar Cardinals and the Houston Astros. He always listened on the radio.
"They give the best description," he would say. Some of you may have heard Milo Hamilton, the announcer for the Astros-acknowledge him on the air during a game broadcast as a great fan and a great educator at French High School and Lamar University. That was the Friday before he died on Sunday.
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You are about to hear a Delmas story.
It's really a Delmas story. Some of you may have heard this.
Dianne and I have certainly told the story over and over,
and so has my mother who loves this story.
This is Dianne's telling in her words:
A "pure Delmas" story. Going home from a family visit in East Texas,
the Hybarger family began to realize that they were not going to make it home to Beaumont in time to watch "Bonanza," the most popular television show of the time.
(You either remember the show or not. I won't try to explain.)
Soon more and more anxiety crept into the mantra of,
"We're going to miss 'Bonanza.'" " We're going to MISS 'Bonanza! "
"We're going to miss 'BONANZA!' "
Mr. Hybarger listened to this awhile and decided to fix the problem.
(You had to be sure you wanted a problem fixed, before you complained about it to him. It would be fixed, but you might not like the solution.)
He said, "I will see that you don't miss "Bonanza."
Everyone fell silent,
suddenly wondering if they would like the WAY they would see "Bonanza."
He said, "Everyone in the world watches the show.
We'll just look for a house with the t.v. on."
"No, Daddy, that's OK. We can miss it. That's OK."
"Nope, you want to watch it and I will see that you do."
He pulled up to the next country house he came to, saw that indeed all were perched in front of the television in anticipation of the all-important show (he was sure) and, followed by two girls saying,
"That's OK. We don't need to see it this bad," he proceeded up on the old porch and knocked on the door. Silence behind the door, then a timid peek as the screen was opened. "Yes?" "I'm D.L. Hybarger, I'm principal of French High School, I have my family with me, they're dying to see "Bonanza," and I'm sure you will be watching it.
Do you mind if we join you?"
By this time he was in the house, searching for places for all to sit, and the woman was standing there with a very surprised expression on her face - until her manners overrode her surprise and she helped him get everyone settled.
Mr. Hybarger's daughters and his wife were overcome with embarrassment and the host children stared at the strange intruders instead of the t.v. The hour seemed very long to all but Mr. Hybarger, who thoroughly enjoyed every moment of that episode of his favorite show. At the end, he graciously expressed his thanks, they exited, and his children promised themselves - once again - to be careful what they asked for.
A week later, a tablecloth from the White House department store appeared on the porch of the "Bonanza" house and it's probably a tale still recanted by that family - whose names the Hybargers never got, by the way.
And three people in the Hybarger family always wondered if
"Bonanza" had been on that family's t.v. agenda for that evening.
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Here are some sayings from Delmas himself:
"Expect the best and people will live up to your expectations.
People are mostly good." (He never passed a hitchiker)
Here are more:
"Me Third. God first, the other fellow second, and me THIRD."
"Guide by example."
"Never make a rule until you have to."
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This next sharing is from his son Chuck, in Chuck's own words:
"He was such a great guy. It's hard to explain-the kind of fellow everybody likes, but without that something that can make you dislike someone just for being so popular. I guess it's because he truly liked people himself and it showed. People respond to that, and I never knew anyone who didn't like him."
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Chuck goes on to tell a story that, for many of us,
will catch the part of the essence of his father:
He loved math word problems.
Say you've got an eighteen-wheeler with a ramp over it so another car can drive up and over it without slowing down. If the eighteen wheeler goes sixty miles an hour and the other car goes seventy miles an hour, when the car is at the highest point of the ramp, how fast is it going? I don't think I ever knew the right answer. Because no matter what answer you gave him, he would play devil's advocate and argue another viewpoint. And by the end of the debate, he would have you turned around and arguing his answer while he would be advocating your original one. He loved the power of the mind and people. Those questions were just a ploy to challenge you and to interact with you. He taught me to always see things from the other guy's point of view, no matter how much you disagree with him.
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Chuck's favorite story:
As a child I was fascinated to hear him tell
about swimming under water while fuel burned on the surface above.
They gave his squad [in training in World War II] a fire hose and backed them into the corner of a room before setting it on fire. During the winter in Connecticut they had to learn how to control lifeboats. When they came back to the dock, they had to break the ice off their legs before they could stand up. The instructors wouldn't go with them and stood on the docks until they came back.
Fifty years later Daddy would still get mad when he told that story.
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And from Chuck: "Delmas Lee Hybarger: The best man I'll ever know."
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I am going to conclude with a final Delmas/Teacher/Principal Story:
This story was a familiar one, but mostly recently it was told again to Dianne on March 17, 1999. She has entitled the story:
"Moving to the New FHS Building--November 30, 1953.
My husband John says this story reminds him of General Patton turning around the entire Third Army to save the forces trapped at the Battle of the Bulge.
The story is in Dianne's words:
The new FHS building was supposed to be completed during the summer of 1953, so that a leisurely move could take place and all would be in order for the fall semester in the new building. However, union strikes took place that summer that caused delays and it was November 30 before the move could actually take place. Daddy worked out a plan so that the move could be accomplished over a single weekend so that no school time would be lost.
New desks and furniture were already in place in the new building; but business school machines and equipment, the library, teachers' personal effects, files, homeroom paraphernalia, etc. had to be moved. Daddy honed the details of his plan, with assistance from his secretary and office workers, for weeks ahead and on the Friday of the move he was ready. The move started during school hours, so that the students could do the big part Daddy had assigned to them--moving the library. Such a simple plan, but one that could only have been accomplished in that day and time. Every student filed by the library and took as many books as he or she could carry. The librarian, Mrs. Mason, took careful notes as each group of books was lifted from the shelves. The students-many walking, of course--walked home with their responsibility for the weekend. On Monday morning each returned to school and, sometime during the day, the books were placed on the new shelves under Mrs. Mason's careful supervision. The library was reinstalled.
When I asked Daddy who moved all but the library, he said, "Just four custodians and ME!" When I asked why on earth he hadn't commandeered twenty able-bodied FHS BOYS to help, he shrugged his shoulders and said with a big grin," I don't know." He arranged for two trucks and he and his four helpers (he thinks custodians of FHS and, perhaps, of the elementary and junior high schools) moved between the old and new schools all weekend until every item was transported.. All items were marked with the number of the room they had come from and the room they were going to. That had been the teachers' and students' responsibility. [I remember the event well, because he was gone all weekend and the move made me more than a littlesad.]
On Monday morning new homeroom rolls with classroom numbers were passed out as students entered the building. Daddy had everyone meet for the first time in the new auditorium and he remembers that he said,
"You have first period to get acquainted with the building and to have a little fun, but,
by second period, I expect to see every one of you in class!"
Homeroom teachers passed out students' schedules for the rest of the day.
The entire move was accomplished over one weekend; no hired help was required, except for the four workers who worked with Daddy; and on Monday morning FHS classes began again without ever missing a beat!
That's the way Daddy remembers it and the way he has always told me the story. I think it one of the most ingenious and efficient uses of manpower I've ever heard and this story shines for me with the essence that was Delmas Hybarger.
He told me this story again on March 17, 1999.
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Well, all of these tributes, stories, and memories, like him, go on --and on------and on.
From Dianne:
Big Bill was there (in the church foyer with the minister's approval)
and wore Daddy's principal jacket.
There were orange and white flowers everywhere!
They were draped with banners which had the class years on them.
Every class he taught sent one!
His casket was absolutely covered with orange and white roses from Chuck and me.
ALL FHS students were honorary pallbearers,
with Jake Perello (Class of '50) as the representative.
They sang the French High School song - one more time,
again with the church's approval.
Delmas Lee Hybarger
1910 - 1999
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