Kenneth Brinson, former schools superintendent, dies at age 81
By Brandon Davis
Published in News on December 29, 2016 10:05 AM
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Goldsboro city schools superintendent Kenneth Brinson, left, poses with assistant superintendents Jean Haislip Clay, Donald Faison and Bill Troutman in 1989. Brinson served as the Goldsboro City Schools superintendent from 1981 to 1992.
Retired superintendent Kenneth Hill Brinson fought to merge Goldsboro city schools with the county for 11 years.
His colleagues and family will always remember the love he had for students.
Brinson, 81, died Saturday in the memory care unit at the Courtyards at Berne Village in New Bern.
Friends and family will celebrate Brinson's life at the River Bend Baptist Church, located at 5001 U.S. 17 S. in New Bern, Tuesday, Jan. 3, at 11 a.m.
A native of Kinston, Brinson graduated from Atlantic Christian College in Wilson, where he and his future wife, Elizabeth Brinson, began dating. Mrs. Brinson said her husband's knack for intelligent conversations quickly attracted her to him.
"I was impressed with how bright he was, caring and intelligent," she said, who married her husband in 1960. "I just liked him."
Brinson enrolled at the University of North Carolina for a master's degree in education administration to be a history professor. Mrs. Brinson said her husband's future as a college professor changed when a Sanford school superintendent knocked on Brinson's door.
The superintendent offered Brinson a job as a ninth-grade social studies teacher at Sanford Junior High School. Brinson took the job, and within one year he began working in the superintendent's office as a guidance counselor.
He then transferred to John Graham High School in Warrenton, where he became a principal. He worked with the junior high and elementary school as well.
"He just loved to work with children," Mrs. Brinson said. "He liked to see their minds develop."
But the '60s posed a challenge for students during the time of school integration.
Mrs. Brinson said her husband walked outside on the first day of school as principal to greet children on the bus, but members of the NAACP stood on one side of the schoolyard and members of the Ku Klux Klan stood on the other. She said the two groups held guns as her husband walked in between them to get students off of the bus and into the school.
She said her husband knelt down in the bus to comfort a black girl. He grabbed her hand and walked with her off the bus, but as he turned to leave he saw a white girl.
Mrs. Brinson said her husband picked up both girls and carried them between the two groups to the school.
"Nobody said a word and nobody did a thing," Mrs. Brinson said. "And that is the way integration worked. He just knew how to do it. He followed his own instincts."
Brinson returned to Sanford schools to become the youngest superintendent in North Carolina in 1969. But 12 years later, he and his wife moved to Wayne County where Brinson faced another difficulty -- the merger of city and county schools.
As the superintendent of Goldsboro City Schools from 1981-1992, Brinson implemented an ROTC unit in Goldsboro High School to reduce gang activity and give students responsibility after school, Mrs. Brinson said. She said 400 students showed up for the program on the first day.
Brinson then focused his attention on the exterior of the school by creating the theme, "Courtesy is Contagious." The theme led students and faculty to clean graffiti off of the school buildings.
He handed more authority over to former Goldsboro principal Patrick Best to hire and fire teachers, and he also formed a positive school board, Mrs. Brinson said.
"The highlight of his career was working in Goldsboro," she said. "He just enjoyed everything that they did there."
City and county schools merged in 1992 -- and Brinson retired.
Dr. David Tayloe of Goldsboro Pediatrics remembers his time on the Goldsboro City School Board of Education with Brinson from 1983 until 1991.
He also looks back on the finalized merger.
"He was bound and determined to merge these schools because he knew until it was one consolidated district, that the poor kids in the city school district were not likely to get their fair share of the resources in the county," Tayloe said.
After retirment, Brinson and his wife made a home in New Bern, and the two traveled to South America, Europe and to islands of World War II.
In 2010, Brinson was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Mrs. Brinson said her husband continued handing peppermint candies to children and carrying on conversations with them.
Brinson leaves behind two children, Kenneth Hill Brinson Jr. and Katherine Brinson, and two grandchildren, Kenneth Hill Brinson III and Cason Alexander Brinson.
Throughout his career, Brinson served as the superintendent Goldsboro city, Sanford city, Lee County and Durham County schools.
"I didn't work with many superintendents, but I could not imagine a superintendent with a better feel for what needs to happen at the classroom level for students, particularly at-risk students," Tayloe said.
"Mr. Brinson was about how you give children access to the best education possible, regardless of who their parents are or how much money their parents make. And regardless of what color their skin is."