"Coach made these guys winners and taught them to believe in themselves."
Tony Arey made this observation about his Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, high school coach from the mid-1950s. In their mid-'80s, Arey and fellow Mount Pleasant athlete Joe Mills made the out-of-town drive to Rockingham to honor their long ago mentor, and friend, Charles P. Harrill, who died on Aug. 26.
In one team photo, Arey noted, you will find a future decorated Marine pilot, a physicist, a pharmacist, a future successful high school coach, and others who would earn advanced degrees. Still young enough to be an older brother to his charges, their coach inherited a struggling athletic program at the rural high school about 60 miles from Richmond County, showed them how to win on the field and, more importantly, made them believe they could win in life.
Just after college, Tony Arey coached under Harrill at Herbert Spaugh Junior High, in Charlotte, while living with Charles, "Bobbie," and their young family for a year. "I was living just as I had grown up. I was so accepted," Arey marveled.
Pat Hahn Moser and Ned Cline finished in Mount Pleasant's class of 1956, and echoed Arey's sentiments about Harrill. Pat Hahn played girls basketball for Harrill, while Cline played on the boys team for him. "Coach was always concerned about each one of us," Pat averred. "Always with a positive attitude; and a smile." Pat took civics under teacher Harrill, describing him as "great", and recalling that he liked classroom debates.
Ned Cline remembered a coach who "never forgot us", and, "worked to help us succeed."
Interest in playing football for Coach Harrill nearly quadrupled over his time at Mount Pleasant. He'd played for a winning college program at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory and, according to Arey, ran well-organized practices. His personal demeanor encouraged players to bond around him. Profanity was not part of his approach, either. "Goodness!" was the nearest expletive that Arey ever heard from Harrill. "When he used that one word, you knew he was upset and it made you try harder."
Taking his teams to college football games at Lenoir-Rhyne, and meeting their renowned coach, Clarence Stasavich, was a treat for boys who had only been exposed to those contests by radio, or by a small black-and-white TV. They were thrilled, also, to receive equipment given to Harrill by Coach Stasavich.
Within a few short years, however, and at a still-young age, their coach would set high school athletics aside and return to his Richmond County home on a different mission. He would never forget his boys and girls from Cabarrus and Mecklenburg counties, but he would help legions of kids in our community find success, too.
Many of us in Richmond County knew Charles Harrill as our elementary school principal. If you attended L.J. Bell Elementary School between 1961 and 1972, he was your school's leader. Beyond that, Harrill would serve as director of elementary education, assistant superintendent, then as superintendent of Richmond County schools from 1979-1983 before, eventually, winning a seat on our local school board.
Generations of public school kids were used to an older man, or woman, leading their school - perhaps a figure with a bit of gray on top. Those of us at L. J. Bell in the 1960s, however, knew a younger man — usually smiling, with an easy-going demeanor — about the ages of our dads.
I'd wager that Principal Harrill could have shed his coat and tie, joined our recess games, and matched our boundless energy.
A Bell student who followed the news during that era could have, understandably, associated their principal with the country's youthful president. Indeed, on Nov. 22, 1963, it was Mr. Harrill's calm voice that first delivered the news to us of President John F. Kennedy's death.
There was always something going on at Principal Harrill's Bell School to stimulate a child's interest in learning. Parent-Teacher Association membership was high; themed dress-up days bolstered history lessons; National Book Week observance, reading groups, and a weekly library hour for each grade promo-ted reading skills. The school-sponsored Cub Scout Pack; Christmas programs; class chapel programs; and, the ever-popular Halloween Carnival were a few of the extra-curricular activities available.
There were other "extras", too. One April evening in the early 1960s, the world-renowned David Rubinoff performed at the Bell auditorium with his Stradivarius violin.
An April, 1962 letter from Governor Terry Sanford cited not just Harrill, but Bell's faculty and students for their contributions to improved educational standards. A major achievement under his leadership came in 1967 when L. J. Bell attained its prized accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools — an early elementary school to be so recognized.
Integration of the public schools had proved very contentious, even violent at times, throughout the South in the decade following the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs Topeka Board of Education decision. Its local implementation, though, was comparatively smoother thanks to faculty and school leaders such as Charles Harrill. HIs professional "north star" always proved to be whatever was best for the students under his watch.
Charles Harrill employed his leadership skills with Bell's faculty of professional educators, some of them decades older, including some who had taught at Rockingham's downtown "Graded School" — the 19th century predecessor to Bell's 1952 facility. His faculty ranged from young student teachers to the venerable Miss Nena Deberry, Bell's librarian, who began her teaching career in Anson County prior to 1910.
A few years younger than Harrill, Ann Brooks loved teaching for him at Bell, and described him as "very fair" in his relationships with faculty and students.
In terms of discipline, she noted, he could be as "a steel fist inside a velvet glove". That description found agreement among other former students and athletes under Harrill.
Following his graduation from Hamlet High School, Charles Harrill earned an undergraduate degree from Lenoir-Rhyne College. A top all-around high school athlete, "Charlie" excelled on the gridiron at L-R under their legendary coach. Eventually, he earned a master's degree at Appalachian State.
But Charlie Harrill's most valuable education may have come at a much earlier age. Before his achievements in Richmond County; before he inspired boys and girls to succeed at Mount Pleasant High in Eisenhower-era America; before he played for a legendary coach on a college field; indeed, a couple of years before earning his Hamlet High diploma, there were the locks of Panama's canal, and the war-torn Pacific islands beyond.
Like his age peers, young Harrill had experienced World War II's early years through a schoolboy's eyes. Full of patriotic fervor, he must have chafed as the war's end drew near and he was wrestling with mere school assignments. Before he developed the patience necessary to mold successful athletes or lead a faculty of educators, young Charlie set aside those books and donned a naval uniform before his 18th birthday. But it would pay dividends in his personal perspectives.
In a 2011 interview with local reporter Dawn Kurry, Harrill revealed his teenaged fascination with the world beyond America's shores, beginning with a trip through the Panama Canal, and a glimpse at South American jungles. "That was exciting … a big experience for someone from Hamlet."
Soon enough, he was enjoying the wonders, and weather, of Hawaii. But that was only a stopover before he would see war's devastation. It was in Hawaii sometime after Aug. 9, 1945 that Seaman Harrill, and his shipmates, learned that the U.S. had dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, effectively ending the war. Before that, young sailors — like Charlie — must have been exposed to notions of what a months-long, full assault on imperial Japan would mean for them. Speculations of allied casualties ran well into the hundreds of thousands.
On Guam, he heard of Japanese soldiers hiding in the hills, unaware of the war's end; and, he spent time on Okinawa, which hosted one of the Pacific war's worst battles. "You could see where the Marines went through," Harrill noted. "There were tanks on the shore, and ships were sunk."
In war, especially WWII, there were sharp divisions between grizzled combat veterans and younger men, such as those who qualified for military service near war's end. Arguably, Seaman Harrill's experiences buffed the edges from his boyish ideas of war, while leaving him with valuable insights about war's reality without singeing him with the combatant's trauma.
He professed to gaining maturity and discipline from his service time. Still a teen with a military discharge in hand before earning his high school diploma, Charlie Harrill, surely, returned to Hamlet with a fund of lessons learned on a world stage, and a desire to translate them to building a better world for younger generations.
Not surprisingly, the students of Mount Pleasant High School dedicated their 1955 "Tiger Roar" yearbook to Charles Harrill — before his 28th birthday.
"For his devotion to athletics, his determination for sportsmanship, his friendly character and his teaching ability." As generations of students, colleagues, and friends here in Richmond County can attest, that long ago narrative could not have pegged Charlie Harrill any better.
