Ordinary Folk Often Role Models in Black Community DALLAS (AP) - The most prominent people in some black neighborhoods in the pre-civil-rights era were seldom elected leaders. Some had no official standing at all. "You had people who may have had simple backgrounds. They may have come up from the country. They may have come to Dallas and, say, opened up a garage and worked on cars," said Donald Payton, a local black historian. "To the world, they were just grease monkeys, but away from work, they were important people in their community. They were role models and mentors." And they made a difference, if only by influencing young people who later led productive and successful lives. Payton's role models include Vivian T. Starks, a teacher and the first black counselor in the Richardson school district, whose personality was a major force in the Dallas community of Hamilton Park. Ben Thomas, who retired as supervisor of a global distribution center, said he was most influenced by his father, a janitor, who also shined shoes, delivered laundry and served as a one-man philanthropy to Plano's Douglass neighborhood. Delmas Morton, who became principal of Stephen F. Austin Elementary School in Grand Prairie, said his appreciation of education comes from his father, a minister who delivered his Sunday sermons in between tending stock on a nearby ranch. Gloria Oliver, who in the mid-1960s became the first black woman hired at GTE, was inspired by her aunt, Lillian Miles Murphy. Murphy had been forced by poverty to abandon a career as a concert singer, but she nonetheless always told her niece, "You can be anyone you want to be." JAMES LAWRENCE THOMAS (Born 1890 - died 1968) The man who gave his name to Plano's J.L. Thomas Elementary School had only a sixth-grade education but almost superhuman energy. From the 1930s until his health began to decline in the 1950s, Thomas shined shoes at Merrit's barbershop, served as a janitor to a score of businesses that at that time formed virtually all of the commercial enterprises in Plano, ran a laundry service and was the town's first - and for many years only - black firefighter. Most memorably, though, he served as a one-man community service agency. "A lot of black folks then couldn't read or write, couldn't make out a check or an IOU, and he'd show them how to do those things," recalled his younger son, James "Dudie" Thomas, 77, a retired foundry worker. "If they got some kind of official notice, they'd bring it to him, and he'd decipher it." As the custodian to the town's businesses, the elder Thomas knew, and was trusted by, Plano's principal families. They would give him food or used goods that Thomas would then pass on to his neighbors. "He would get clothes. We had a big porch, and he'd hang them out on the porch, and people could come by and take the clothes they needed," said Ben Thomas, 79. "We'd have a fit because he'd get some nice sweater that we wanted, but he wouldn't let us take it. He'd say we already had enough." His renown with all segments of the Plano community led to the dedication of Thomas Elementary in his name in 1979. The official program said the school was intended as a tribute "to the noble character of a humble man." Ben Thomas said his father instilled in him an ethic of hard work and public service. His father believed, moreover, that personal poverty did not prevent a person from giving to others. "Daddy's philosophy was that if you waited until you saw someone who was poorer than you were before you gave them something, you wouldn't be giving anybody anything," he said. LILLIAN MILES MURPHY (Born circa 1892 - died 1973) Murphy was a longtime teacher in the Dallas school system, but two of her most attentive pupils were her niece and stepdaughter. "She told people that they did not have to stay where they were, that they could strive to better things," said Daisy Williams, her stepdaughter who now lives in Los Angeles. It was a philosophy Murphy tried hard to follow in her own life. Even her relatives are unsure of the exact year she was born, but Murphy grew up in the earliest years of the 20th century in Hearne - where her family ran a brick-making business. Her chief desire was to move out into the wider world. "She told me she hated that environment, and she was determined to get a good education and go somewhere," said Gloria Oliver, her niece, who is now president of the Bear Creek Development Corp. in Irving. Williams said her mother wanted to be a concert singer, but her family couldn't afford to send her to a conservatory. A brother and sister pooled their resources to help her attend what is now the University of North Texas, where she earned a teaching degree. Murphy taught in a variety of school districts before moving to Dallas, where she taught from 1951 to 1971 at N.W. Harlee Elementary in East Oak Cliff. She retained her love for singing, serving as a solo soprano at St. John Baptist Church and opening her home to prominent black singers who came through town. Her niece said Murphy's dignified bearing was as much an inspiration as anything she ever said. "She was the one with the beautiful home, and all the things that went with being a teacher," Oliver said. "In those days in the black community, you looked up to the teacher or the minister or the doctor. These were our role models, and it was a source of pride to think we had one in our family." VIVIAN T. STARKS (Born 1907 - died 2001) Starks spent most of her life as an English teacher, yet the pallbearers at her funeral included the Rev. Zan Holmes, television anchor Iola Johnson and state Appeals Court Judge Carolyn Wright. "Her biggest lesson was that she wanted the kids to respect themselves," said a friend, Thomas "T.J." Jefferson, 58, a corporate trainer for General Motors. She was a formidable woman who was not easily crossed, said Jefferson, who found out the hard way. In the late 1950s, he had just transferred to Hamilton Park High School from Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas. He wanted to play football at the bigger school and was determined to get back. "Going to a country school like Hamilton Park, as far as I was concerned, amounted to exile to the sticks," he said. "My plan was to get myself kicked out." The first morning he came to Starks' English class, he arranged all the desks in a circle, hoping to create a disruption. "She came into the room and demanded to know who moved the desks around, and all the other kids pointed to me," he said. "Well, she looked at me and she talked to me, and when she finished, I felt like the scum of the earth." Jefferson stayed at the school, where Starks became a close confidant and - after graduation - a lifelong friend. Donald Payton, the Dallas historian, said he and fellow pupils viewed Starks with a combination of awe and fear. "She was very strict. You didn't talk in her class. Your desk had to be perfectly in line," he said. "If she saw you at the grocery store, she'd ask how you were coming on this or that paper or what chapter you were on in the book you were supposed to be reading." But being in Starks' class became a point of honor among students. "You were happy when you learned you were going to be in one of her classes. You knew you were going to learn," Payton said. She was a pillar of the Hamilton Park United Methodist Church and an independent thinker. "It was just like her that when the rest of black folks were becoming Democrats, she was a Republican," Payton said. But she used her formidable personality to get books and materials for students at what were then segregated schools, Jefferson said. "She was a very aggressive person. She wouldn't let race or gender stop her," Payton said. "She taught that if you were a woman, you had to be better than everyone else, and if you were black, you had to be twice as good as anyone else." JOHN O. MORTON (Born 1910 - died 1996) Morton was a minister, but hard work was his religion, too. "I remember he'd tell us, `Get all you can, and can all you can' - that meant work as hard as you can to get some money and then save it," recalled Delmas Morton, 70, of Grand Prairie. The elder Morton was a hired farm worker, though he also maintained drag lines for a gravel company. He worked 12-hour days and studied at night to be a minister with the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, his son said. He would wake his two sons early enough in the morning that they could make the hourlong commute to school in Dallas. Black children were not permitted to attend Grand Prairie schools at that time. Delmas Morton, who later became principal of a Grand Prairie school, said he was inspired by his father's energy and dedication to learning. "When I think what he had to do to keep us in school, I can't hardly believe it," Morton said. After his father became a minister, he wrote his sermons after work on Saturday, got up early Sunday to milk the cows, preside at church, feed the farm animals, and then returned to church for Sunday evening services. In whatever time remained, the elder Morton built a house for the family along Bagdad Road near the west fork of the Trinity River. "He had a high school education, but there weren't that many jobs then for African-Americans," the younger Morton said. "He kept telling us to go to school so we wouldn't see the hard times he did." "These were our role models, and it was a source of pride to think we had one in our family."

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