Obituaries

Fair, level-headed, compassionate — those are adjectives that just a few of the scores of people who worked with longtime Calhoun County educator Charles N. Boozer applied to him Thursday.

Boozer died Tuesday at his home in the Williams community. He was 91. Funeral services are to be this morning at 11 at First Baptist Church of Williams.

At the same time he was becoming a well-regarded administrator, Boozer also was a great teacher, Grace Dickie, long-time Ohatchee school secretary, warmly recalled.

"He was not only our principal, but he taught us. He was wonderful. He was one of those guys who walked down the hall and everyone thought, 'Here he comes.'"

That meant, Dickie said, that although his students regarded him as an adult educator, they also warmed to him as a friend.

"He was on your terms, yet you respected him," she said.

Boozer, a World War II veteran, was principal of the Ohatchee school, grades 1-12, from 1950-59. Senior government and economics was the subject he taught Dickie and her friends in 1957-58.

His popularity among students and their parents was such that he was elected Ohatchee's first mayor in 1956 — on a write-in vote, over two other men. He served in the position for two years.

Boozer went away for a while to be principal of a Kentucky school, but the Calhoun County Board of Education brought him home in July 1963 to be superintendent. He held the post until he retired in 1977.

Euna Tuck, custodian of county school funds under two superintendents prior to Boozer and under the two after him, recalled him as "a good boss."

"He was kind of a quiet, easy-going person. He just knew how to get along with people well."

"I thought he handled [problems] very well. Tactfully," Tuck said.

Superintendents come in daily contact more frequently with teachers and principals than they do with students, and here, too, Boozer gets good marks.

"From my point of view, he was very supportive of teachers," said Frances Morris, an Ohatchee teacher from the 1960s through the '80s, as was her husband.

"I really liked him, thought a lot of him," she said. "He was fair."

Jim Winn, county school superintendent himself from 1984-96, said Boozer was "fantastic" in his dealings with principals in the system. Although following the leader's direction was obviously expected, Winn said that it was still possible for a principal to disagree without fearing repercussion.

"He was nothing but a scholar and a gentleman. He was one of the most caring people that you would ever know," said Winn. "He led by example, and I think that is not always the case [with others]."

Dan Henderson, who served as assistant superintendent before he followed Boozer in the top chair, said his boss and predecessor had "good knowledge and common sense about school business."

System accomplishments that Henderson recalled during Boozer's years were the construction of a new high school for Weaver and an elementary school at Wellborn.

Boozer himself, in a 1977 interview with The Star, recalled a highlight of his own: Transformation of what was then called the Calhoun County Technical Vocational School from what had been "an old cow barn."

Pleasant Valley School didn't open during his term — it opened in August 1981 — but Boozer is credited with helping to bring it into existence. Therefore a plaque at the school is dedicated in his honor.

Although desegregation was brought about peacefully — "went like a charm," Dickie said — Boozer allowed that it was "a struggle."

But evidently, as his friends and co-workers suggested, there was something about his personality that made the transition work. As he told Anniston Star columnist George Smith in a September 2002, interview: "I always tried to treat people the way I wanted to be treated."