In Memoriam: Dr. Eulah McWilliams ’76

The youngest child of an impoverished family, this Walden alumna overcame great odds before becoming a celebrated Florida elementary school principal.

By Marty Clear. Copyright St. Petersburg Times. Reprinted with permission. 

 

May 2008

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On a winter day some years back, a bus full of students from a low-income neighborhood pulled up to Lutz Elementary School. The principal, Dr. Eulah McWilliams, noticed that one little boy was shivering against the cold.

 

"Where's your jacket?" she asked him. "It's cold outside."

 

"It's my brother's turn to wear the jacket today," the boy said.

 

Before school was over that day, both the boy and his brother had brand-new jackets, paid for by McWilliams.

 

Such acts of generosity are well beyond the job description for a principal. But they were common for the woman whom friends and co-workers called Dr. Mac.

 

"People didn't know about all the things she did for the students," said Carole Brooks, a longtime music teacher at Lutz Elementary who became one of McWilliams' closest friends. "She'd reach into her own pocket and buy them glasses."

 

McWilliams, who served as the principal at Lutz Elementary for 26 years, died of pulmonary fibrosis July 20. She was 76.

 

It wasn't just students who benefited from McWilliams' kindness. When Brooks developed muscular dystrophy, McWilliams invited her to live in her home. Brooks stayed with McWilliams for several years. For about a year of that time, they were joined by another Lutz Elementary teacher who had developed breast cancer.

 

McWilliams never married, but she adopted a son, and some years later she took in her son's best friend after his parents died and raised him as her own.

 

After she retired in 1998, she spent much of her time doing volunteer work for Seminole Elementary School and for an organization that provided transportation for people who couldn't drive.

 

"It was never about her," Brooks said. "Everything was always about other people."

 

McWilliams grew up in harsh conditions in Fort Ogden, in the Fort Myers area. She was the youngest child of an impoverished family. Her mother was paralyzed, and her father's work caused him to be away from home for long periods.

 

"From the time she was 8 or 9, the household duties fell on her, the cooking and the cleaning," Brooks said. "She never went to school at all on Mondays because that was the day she did laundry."

 

But she was driven to become a teacher. She attended Florida State University and the University of Florida. She earned her doctoral degree from Walden University in 1976.

 

While she was at FSU she was engaged, but her fiancé was killed in the Korean War.

 

She taught at Twin Lakes Elementary School for 12 years before becoming the principal of Lutz Elementary in 1968.

 

She was known not just for generosity but for leadership.

 

"I had taught at two schools before I came to Lutz," Brooks said. "When you see the movie The Wizard of Oz, it starts out in black and white and when Dorothy opens the door it's Technicolor. That's what it was like when I came from another school to Lutz."

 

McWilliams made sure the faculty felt like part of a team. They always knew what was going on.

 

"When you have a faculty that cares about each other, cares about the school and cares about the students, that all starts from the top," Brooks said.