‘Tough but fair’

“C.H. met him in a parking lot in Kansas City. He signed his contract on the hood of a car,” John McKinley said.

So began the career of William E. Wynn with the Nevada R-5 School District.

C.H Jones was the R-5 superintendent at that time.

In 1964 Nevada High School needed to replace its football coach and in the process, the decision was made also to replace the basketball coach, John McKinley said.

McKinley had known Wynn when they were students at Missouri State University in the 50s. When they graduated in 1958, McKinley accepted a job in Rich Hill before moving to Nevada in 1963, and Wynn took a job in Pleasant Hill.

When the coaching job in Nevada opened, McKinley said he contacted Wynn to see if he might be interested in coming to Nevada, which he was.

McKinley said one of his memories of Wynn was, “How tough he was and how disciplined he was. That is how he was in college.”

He said that while they were going to college, Wynn would drive to St. Louis every weekend to work in a factory and be back in Springfield for class on Monday morning.

In the fall of 1968 Wynn became the Nevada High School dean of students, which is now the assistant principal, and in 1969 he was elevated to Nevada High School principal, which he held until he became assistant superintendent in 1983, a post he held until he retired in 1998.

“I have the utmost respect for Mr. Wynn,” Ranea Schulze said.

“I graduated with Sherrie [Wynn’s daughter],” she said, adding that they played on Kevin Swopes’ NHS basketball team, along with Lori Copeland.

“We had to learn everything from scratch. It was really nice when Mr. Wynn would come into the gym and shoot away hoop shots and sink everyone.

Schulze said that when she graduated from college, Mr. Wynn hired her for the middle school and later for the high school.

She said Wynn told the staff at an assembly for the district staff before the school year started about the 2 percent of students who do not want to conform to the rules and they will always be there.

Rules like the middle set of stairs at the high school are for going up and the stairs at each end are for going down.

Standing for the national anthem and the school song.

“Those are things at my age I appreciate today. Some dropped out because they couldn’t conform to the rules,” Schulze said.

At the same time, she said he cared about the students and staff.

“He challenged everyone to do their best and make a difference in the life of a student.

“He challenged you to help the underdog — those whose only hot meal was at the school,” she said.

For these students the school was their safety net, he would tell the staff.

“I got in trouble one time — that was enough. I did not like the feeling of him being disappointed in me,” she said.

“He was a great guy. I’m a better person for having known him,” Schulze said.

“He was a wonderful boss,” Molly Clark, who worked in the R-5 Central Office with Wynn.

“I went to school with Sherry,” she said.

“To this day I could never call him anything but Mr. Wynn.”

Clark said that when her class held its’ 35-year reunion, she gave them a tour of the high school building, everyone wanted to talk about Mr. Wynn and to have their photograph taken going down the center stairway. When they were in school, in the “olden days,” you could only go up the center stairs. To go downstairs you had to use the stairs at the east and west end of the building.

“He was tough but he was fair,” Clark said.

Former NHS teacher, assistant principal and athletic director Kevin McKinley said that it is hard for people today to realize how important it was to have someone like that at the school to provide order and discipline across the spectrum of students. It did not matter whether you were from Smelter Hill or the Country Club, you would be treated the same.

Kevin said that he is an example of the even-handedness of Wynn’s discipline and wrote about the episode in a letter to the Daily Mail sports editor during his final year at NHS.

Kevin’s father, John McKinley, was a counselor at NHS for 33 years and one day Kevin, who was a 6 foot 4 inch, 155-pound basketball player, got the idea to punch a football player in the weight room who made derogatory remarks about his mother and ancestry.

Kevin was immediately taken to the office by his weightlifting instructor/football coach Alan Spencer, to meet with assistant principal Bill Wynn.

“As I entered the office, I explained my side in front of my dad, Mr. Story, [the assistant principal], and Mr. Wynn.

“Nevertheless, school employee’s son or not, it was three swats or three days. I took the swats and was lit up like a Christmas tree — old-school discipline from old school administration.”

Sherrie [Wynn] Bell said that the Wynn family has received many cards and letters from people expressing their sentiments about Bill Wynn and what a compassionate man he was, as well as many stories about the impact he had on the lives of athletes and students.

Many of those students became dear friends, she said.

Wynn has always been considered an excellent administrator and Sherrie said her brother Bill reminded her of a story of Wynn’s high school days that they think shows why he was so good as an administrator.

It seems that Wynn had a string of 100 firecrackers that he brought into the high school when he was a student. He lit the string of firecrackers and dropped them down a stairwell, and got to class without getting caught.

Later as a coach, administrator and educator at Nevada, Molly Clark said, “He was a master at figuring out who did what. He loved that.”

Kevin McKinley said of Bill Wynn, “I like a quote by A. Peter Bailey— ‘There is no greater love to a community than a master teacher’ — Bill Wynn was a master teacher.”