Considering the impact the Dick Tyson made locally and nationally in drivers education, his initial certification to teach it was almost comical.
Dwayne Peters, one of the legion trained personally by Tyson during his four-plus decades as supervisor of drivers education for Newport News Public Schools, recalled it during an informal gathering recently of 35 Tyson colleagues.
It was 1969 and Newport News Public Schools Superintendent George McIntosh — the man who’d hired Tyson as a teacher nine years earlier — was appointing him the city’s first drivers education supervisor.
“Dick told me that his certification test was getting behind the wheel of a state police car at Ferguson High School,” said Peters, a former Warwick baseball coach and Heritage athletic director. “He drove down Warwick Boulevard (one mile) to Warwick High School, turned left, circled Copeland Lane to Warwick Boulevard and back to Ferguson.
“They told him, ‘You passed.’”
From those humble beginnings Tyson, who died in late December at 88, created a drivers education program that won area, state and national awards. His 54 years with Newport News Public Schools made him the longest tenured employee in system history at the time of his 2014 retirement.
“You can go up and down the East Coast and the Newport News driver’s education program is renowned for its quality,” former Denbigh and Woodside athletic director Al Dorner told the Daily Press upon Tyson’s retirement. “His driver’s education program is a model.”
Tyson began as a health and physical education teacher in 1960 and went on to coach Ferguson’s boys varsity basketball team for four seasons. Like others on the Peninsula in those days, his teams took a back seat to Hampton and Newport News high schools, so he liked to say his most memorable win came against Charlie Woollum’s Newport News team.
However, Woollum’s biggest moment at Newport News came against Tyson and Ferguson, a 48-40 victory in December 1965 that ran the Typhoon’s home winning streak to 100 games. Tyson would go on to serve for 23 years as NNPS director of athletics, juggling five schools at Todd Stadium.
His renowned sense of humor was evident when he informed NNPS assistant superintendent Wayne Lett that he was building a 4×8-foot planter to decorate the entrance to Todd Stadium.
“Dick said he thought that if the plants were native to Virginia it would be educational for students and the public,” recalled Lett, a former Tyson student who would go on to become NNPS superintendent. “I said it was a fine idea, then I saw that one of the plants he put in was tobacco.
“The city was considering a “no smoking” ordinance at the time. He smiled and said he’d remove the tobacco plant.”
Former Newport News Public Schools athletics specialist Belinda Langston organized a gathering recently for the late Dick Tyson (shown). Tyson, who supervised NNPS athletics for 23 years, is best known for creating one of the best driver education departments in the country during his 54-year career. (Courtesy Belinda Langston).
Tyson was serious, and passionate, about driver safety. Former NNPS assistant superintendent for instruction Harvey Perkins, another former student of Tyson’s, says Tyson turned drivers education from an “afterthought” in Newport News to a local, state and national giant.
“It wasn’t perceived as a worthy academic discipline, but was kind of an add-on,” Perkins said. “That wasn’t the case with Dick. He built what I would say it was, without a doubt, the premier Driver’s Ed program in the commonwealth
“He did that because he realized he was teaching life-skills, for one thing. There wasn’t any kid, whether they were a straight-A’s students or a struggling student, he overlooked.
“He approached it that all kids needed that discipline because it was life or death for them.”
So, Perkins said, Tyson convinced city council to build a “first class driving range, ahead of its time with an observation tower” in the large back parking lot at Todd Stadium. Perkins reckons the range was one of the first with a skid pad.
“I don’t know of anybody around who had a skid pad for high school kids to learn how to deal with losing control in a slippery environment,” he said. “Kids were getting real world experiences that I don’t know they got in anybody else’s drivers’ education program.
“It was a well-thought-out combination of classroom and hands-on-the wheel. That made it very powerful.”
Powerful, also, Perkins said, was that Tyson recruited instructors from every level, elementary to high school, and from all aspects of education rather than only gym teachers. Those colleagues made up most of the 35 gathered by retired NNPS athletics specialist Belinda Langston to remember and tell their favorite Dick Tyson stories.
“Dick would’ve like it because it was low key and he wasn’t about pats on the back,” Lett said. “It was a joyful and respectful remembrance of a life well-lived in helping kids and adults learn to be safe.
“It was a celebration of life.”
