It is probably safe to say there are not too many school administrators who are professional house painters as well, but Emory Lamar has proven he can do both jobs — successfully.
Lamar is a lifelong Jones Countian and a retired school administrator who has been painting since his teens. While that aspect of his two professions may have started on the right track, his educational career was another story. Following graduation from Maggie Califf High School, he went to Morehouse College in Atlanta. He did not fare well initially, however.
“I didn’t have my priorities in high school,” he admitted, “and, so going to Morehouse was superchallenged; a lot of people wondered if I was going to make it because I said Morehouse also had a reputation of being for the ultra-bright. I had the ability, but there were other things I enjoyed doing in high school other than studying books.
“But I was determined,” Lamar declared, “that when I got to Morehouse I was going to make it. I was not going to say that I flunked out of school. I had to come back to Gray, Georgia. So, I finished all four years.
“My degree was in Economics and Business Administration,” he shared. “See, I never wanted to teach. I was going to be a businessman.”
Lamar went to work with Phillips Petroleum after graduation.
“I was the first Black they hired in a division office,” he pointed out.
But that didn’t work out well, either.
“I’m an only child,” Lamar said, “and I had a very, very strong mother, who worked hard. My father was not around, but she pushed me to go forward. She didn’t really like the idea of me working for a petroleum company, since, especially in her mind, I was working in tires and batteries.”
Lamar explained that his mother persuaded a neighbor who was a principal in Putnam County to offer him a position. He moved back to Gray, began teaching in Putnam in 1968 with a provisional certificate and went to school evenings and summers, first to Fort Valley State for his undergraduate degree in social studies, then to Georgia College. He attained a master’s degree in 1974, a year before he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Lamar turned 80 last month, some 50 years since that diagnosis.
“I am just very, very grateful to get to be 80,” he expressed. “In 1975, when I came down with Hodgkin’s, at that time, there was not really a cure for it. And so the prognosis that I might live to be 55 or 60, and the fact that I’ve lived beyond that makes me feel very proud and very grateful.”
Lamar said there was only one doctor in Macon at the time who had experience with the disease. Following initial treatment and a relapse, a physician from Florida was brought in. He changed the medication, telling the patient he had the worst lymphangiograms he had seen.
“I didn’t know I was as sick as I was, but he told my wife and family that he thought I had a 50-50 chance.”
Lamar survived and, in fact, he said, “I was the first patient to live with Hodgkin’s from the Medical Center. So, when I would go back, I was like the Messiah. Everybody wanted to come see me. ‘He’s really living.’” Lamar resumed teaching in 1983 in Bibb County and, after going to evening classes and summer school to earn an add-on in administration, went to Baldwin County in 1988 as vice principal at Northside Elementary School.
“I was the first Black male that worked as an administrator at that school,” he pointed out.
Lamar left Baldwin County in 1995 and returned home, where he assumed the duties of vice principal at Califf Middle Grades, which later became Gray Station Middle School. That was his last full-time position.
“I retired from the Jones County schools in 2000 as a vice principal,” Lamar stated, “but I went back, and so I worked part-time as a graduation coach from 2006 to 2008.
“I was working directly with the children who were having difficulties at school,” he explained. “That went across the grade levels, and for kids that were having difficulties, be it behavior or academic, I came up with programs and ways to try to address that.”
Lamar paused for a moment before pointing out he never fully retired. He still paints.
“I have been painting houses since I was 15,” he said.
He and his best friend, Harold Pitts, worked with Harold’s dad, Ollie Pitts. Ollie and his brother worked with another man who painted, Marlin Willett.
“He paid us $1 an hour, $40 per week,” Lamar recalled, “whereas other guys working in grocery stores were making maybe $10 to $15 a week.”
He noted that he and Harold would come home from college and paint every summer.
“But,” Lamar reflected, “the community didn’t give me credit for working because I was the only child. My mother was a teacher, and they just thought I had it made. But I worked all my life.
“When I was painting, I would take that money home and give it to my mother,” he said, “and then Harold and I would get our lawn mower, and we would go cut grass for people in the neighborhood, and that’s where I had my spending money.”
Lamar credits his mother, Eppie Lamar Hammock, with his successes in life.
“My mother was an excellent person for managing money,” Lamar opined. “She could do more with one dollar than a monkey could do with a peanut, as people would say. And,” he added, “she instilled those values in me.”
Lamar said the benefits came with expectations.
“She was a strict disciplinarian. I had chores to do, you know, unlike so many parents. They want to give their kids everything. They spoil them rotten and don’t require anything ever. But I had to take care of that house.
“I had nice clothes to wear to school, and everybody talked about that,” Lamar recalled. “But they didn’t know that my mother required me to take those clothes off when I came home, and that I had to put on work clothes and take care of my school clothes. Those things, like I said, were instilled in me.”
Lamar’s wife, the former Geraldine Patterson, is two years younger and lived in Haddock as a child.
“We met at a school function that Idella Duncan (school) was having over at Califf,” he recalled, “and, needless to say, her daddy wasn’t happy, me trying to talk to his daughter when she’s 11 years old.”
Lamar went to Morehouse, and his future wife two years later enrolled in Clark University. They were married in 1965, while both were still in college.
“It was very hard trying to keep a relationship, starting at such early ages,” he recalled. “Although it was tough, we loved each other, so we made it.”
Lamar acknowledged he was part of the reason that relationship may have been difficult to maintain.
“I was not an outstanding student in high school. That is one of my regrets. I had the ability, but didn’t apply myself the way I could have.
“I tried to sing in chorus, but I couldn’t sing,” Lamar continued. “I tried to play basketball, but I didn’t have the skills and wasn’t willing to work at it. I was president of my class, though, and did a lot of socializing!”
Like her husband, Geraldine is retired.
“She worked at Bibb Manufacturing as customer service manager until they closed,” Lamar shared. “She has not been the same since they closed. She loved that place.”
Lamar explained his reasoning concerning his continued painting.
“Even now, people ask why I always painted,” he said. “The reason I always painted, was that I never wanted any individual or company to determine my income. I wanted my income to be based on upon how hard I was willing to work.” In addition to his painting jobs, the retiree stays involved these days as a volunteer for various organizations, serving as a board member for both the Baldwin-Jones Boys and Girls Club and the Jones County Department of Family and Children’s Services. He is also active in his college fraternity, Omega Psi Phi, whose aim is trying to help children face issues in their everyday life.
“We work with them if they are having problems at school, discipline problems,” Lamar explained, “and we try to expose them to things that are going to be conducive to their well-being.”
When Lamar isn’t painting or busy with one of his volunteer groups, he tries to keep up with the couple’s only daughter, Charisee Lamar, and grandson, Austin Holloway. Lamar, with her PhD, lives in Maryland with her husband, Yul Holloway, and Austin and works as a director with the National Institute of Health. Austin attends Dickerson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he played soccer.
“That has been my greatest joy,” Lamar proclaimed, “going to see him play soccer and traveling around the country to watch them play soccer. We got a chance to go to Las Vegas, several places in Florida, and West Virginia with the traveling soccer team.”
In reviewing his career in school administration, Lamar was very adamant.
“I was always fair and treated my teachers and students right,” he asserted. “I don’t care if the teacher was bisexual or gay. I don’t care if she weighed 300 pounds. I don’t care if she was the prettiest thing you ever saw. All of them were treated the same, and they knew that, as far as I was concerned. I had no favorites whatsoever.
“I also made sure with the students, that it didn’t make any difference to me whose child you were.”
