School principal grew up homeless
School was his haven because he had a place to stay for seven hours.
DAYTON (AP) — The pupils taunted their classmate, the little boy who wore the same plaid, tattered pants and white collared shirt day after day, the homeless fourth-grader who reeked from nights on the streets sleeping in bushes and under bridges.
“They’d call me dirty Glenn, stinky Glenn, say, ‘You wore that yesterday, nobody wants to sit by you,’” Glenn Faircloth recalled years later. “I didn’t shut down; I acted out. I was the kid that started fights. I was the kid that started something, would do something stupid out in the hallway, and I did that mainly to be the class clown. It’s easier when they’re laughing with you instead of laughing at you.”
No one’s laughing now, especially his students.
Faircloth is still in school, but he wears wool-blend jackets these days, stylish ties in Windsor knots and flashy handkerchiefs in his left breast pocket.
He’s a principal now, the top man at Patterson Career Center, where he oversees 370 students and 45 teachers and staff.
The once-bullied boy walks with calm confidence today. He holds his head high, constantly eyeing his high school students, looking for potential trouble or for the quiet, lonely kid with the 500-pound anvil on his back.
“HEY!” Faircloth yelled, spotting two girls arguing outside their allied health classroom.
“HEY! HEY!” he repeated.
The second-year principal defused the potential scrap in seconds, then turned to the rest of the students in the hallway for good measure.
“Get in your classrooms! The next person I see in the hallway is going to my office!”
The hallway cleared.
“You gotta have a loud voice in this job,” he said with a grin.
When he thinks about it — and he said he rarely does — Faircloth wonders how someone with his background could have possibly survived, let alone reached a position of teacher, principal and mentor.
His parents split up when he was around 3. He’d live off and on with his mother, then in foster homes and group homes. But after seeing a teenager hang himself with a bed sheet in a group home, the frightened 9-year-old boy fled.
The streets became his home, the bushes in a stranger’s yard or alongside a business. Friends would sneak him through a window at times, not letting their parents know. He’d arise early, then sneak back out without a shower or breakfast before the parents could find him and call Children Services.
“School became a safe haven,” Faircloth said. “That was the only true time that I knew I was going to be from 8 o’clock to 3 o’clock, even though it was hurtful to be in school.”
He paused for a moment, shaking his head in his Patterson office. “Kids can be hateful. And the thing about it, you can have those emotional scars for a long time.”
Brenda and Travis Dunson knew Faircloth when he lived with his mother in an apartment across from their own on Layton Drive. They wanted to adopt the boy, take him into their merged family of eight children that lived in a two-bedroom unit with a basement.
“He was quiet; he was just a good kid,” Brenda Dunson, now a widow, recalled. “And he was great with his schoolwork.”
Faircloth’s mother wouldn’t have it, and Children Services wasn’t much help either, Dunson said.
She said the family lost touch with Faircloth when he moved to another foster or group home. They had moved away, too, buying a house in Trotwood. They didn’t know what happened to Faircloth until their son Shaun found him walking near the Salem Mall one day.
Just the night before, an exhausted Faircloth, tired of life on the streets, had slept in the mall’s bushes, praying to God to let him die.
“My mom’s asking about you,” Faircloth remembers Shaun telling him that next day. “You can stay with us.”
With the Dunsons, Faircloth found stability and a family that would call him their own. He stayed in school, graduated from Meadowdale High School, then joined the Army, serving in Desert Shield, Desert Storm and a tour in the Panama Canal as an airborne ranger.
He’d send $500 checks home to Brenda and Travis Dunson; they’d return it each time. He’d come home on military leave and try to take them on a trip; they’d refuse each time.
Faircloth attended Sinclair Community College and Central State University, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in science and education. He applied for pharmacy school at Ohio State University and took a job teaching science at Belmont High School in the meantime.
Ohio State accepted him, but it was too late. In teaching, Faircloth found his calling, found his haven again, a way to reach children the way some reached him years ago.
“When you work with people, whether you want to or not, you end up hearing their problems,” said Faircloth, standing in a crowded cafeteria at Patterson. “Next thing you know, you’re a mentor.”
A student politely interrupted. “Can I have a dollar?”
“A dollar?” Faircloth replied in a teasing tone. “What am I going to get in return? What kind of interest are we talking?”
“Twenty-five cents. I’ll give it to you tomorrow,” the student answered.
“A dollar twenty-five, that’s pretty good,” Faircloth said, handing the boy a dollar.
Faircloth said he’s had many mentors in his life, many of them in Dayton Public Schools.
High on his list is best friend Julius Beckham, who as a little boy would open his home to Faircloth and give him clothes and food without telling a soul at school.
“Sometimes I would come home to my parents’ house to find him asleep in my bed,” said Beckham, now a school psychologist for Trotwood-Madison schools.
The two remain tight today, living just a block from each other. Both are working on their doctorates, both in education and both at Miami University in Oxford.
“He’s my inspiration in a lot of things,” Faircloth said.
Another student interrupted.
“Can I have 50 cents?” she asked.
“What am I going to get in return?” Faircloth demanded.
“A good education and a loving student,” the girl answered with a big smile.
“All right,” Faircloth told her, handing over 50 cents.
He jingled the pocketful of coins he stores in his sport coat each day. “I’ve got a job to do as an educator,” Faircloth said. “I want to have a school that gives the kids hope. When my family provided for me, it gave me hope. I have hope and faith that I’m here for something else, something other than just being principal of a high school.”
Faircloth looked around his office, reflecting on his home, two vehicles, closet full of clothes and his 9-year-old daughter, Nia.
“I’m not stinky Glenn anymore,” he said.