Dahlia Lee Landers looked around her office last Friday and watched as her 41 years in full-time education came to an end. The Oak Grove Primary School principal said she realized that she had been fortunate with the staff, teachers and students to make her journey special.
“I’m just an ordinary person who is blessed to be in an extraordinary situation,” she said. “Last night, we had a preschool program. Two of the young mothers walked up to speak to me because I taught them both. Now, I have had their children at my school. I had a lot of those.”
That circle of life that she has seen as principal for the past 37 years will continue in her own family, Landers said.
“My daughter, Amelia, graduated from Southern Miss and was hired at Longleaf Elementary School as an assistant,” she said. “She was going to finish the year out and then go on the mission field. It took her about two months to realize that there is a mission field right here. So, she has gone back to school.”
While working at Longleaf, Amelia attended William Carey University and graduated two weeks ago.
“They hired her and she is going to be teaching kindergarten at Oak Grove Primary,” Landers said. “To me, that is just the fullness of the circle. She was 2 weeks old the first time I brought her to school. I had to put her behind my desk to get some work that needed to be done.”
In another reminder of Landers’ legacy, the school’s Performing Arts Center – which had been one of her bucket-list items – was renamed in her honor.
“We had our retirement reception, and five of us were retiring,” she said. “They were recognizing us and giving us a beautiful gift. Then, they surprised me. (Former Lamar County Superintendent and WCU Dean of Education) Dr. (Ben) Burnett spoke, and he and I are very close. They presented me with this plaque with my picture on it. They are going to mount it on the wall down there.”
Putting her name on the building was special to Landers.
“That building was a dream of mine from the time I became a principal because this campus had no space where you could gather all of the children together,” she said. “The building is not as big as it needs to be, but the kids can sit on the floor and we can all get in there together.
“I know this sounds crazy, but Wayne (her husband) and I had talked about that after I died, if Amelia was independent, I told him that I would want my life insurance to build that building. I told him that that could my gift to the community. We passed a bond issue and that was what this school got from the bond issue.”
The Performing Arts Center was a blessing for the school, Landers said.
“We used to do our performances outside,” she said. “We used this little courtyard and we would use bales of hay to mark off the area. If it rained, we had to cancel. If the weather was freezing, we all shivered while the children performed. So, the building is important to me.”
As she continued to look around her office at some of her angels collection and the photographs and mementoes, she said the items “are a very, very important part of who I am. It still will be.”
“I know it’s time for the season to change,” she said, “but I’ve been in the school setting since I was 6 years old. We didn’t have kindergarten when I was a child, and I came from a family that could not afford private kindergarten. I am one of 11 children and my dad died when I was 4. My mom didn’t have the opportunity for college, but she pushed us to be the best that we could be and to make something of ourselves. Sometimes I’m afraid if they figure out who I am they will think I don’t belong here.”
Landers first worked in Lamar County after she graduated from college when she was 21 years old.
“They didn’t know me, and they hired me because they were desperate for a speech pathologist,” she said. “I worked in Purvis, and we bused the children from all over the district.”
Landers said she learned how to teach as she worked.
“You don’t come out of the university being a teacher,” she said. “However, I had some great leaders along the way and some great friends.”
Landers came to Oak Grove 37 years ago as a speech pathologist with K-12 children.
“My ploy was every time we had to hire somebody, I would move down a little,” she said. “So, my last year as a speech pathologist, I had kindergarten and first grade. I know my niche. As the school grew and we started adding new campuses, I was fortunate to stay where I was. When we built the lower elementary, my superintendent at that time said, ‘What do you want?’ because I had K-3. ‘Do you want to go with K-3 out to a brand-new facility?’ I said, ‘I will stay with K-1 at this facility.’”
Landers said she has been blessed as a principal of bright-eyed youngsters for 28 years.
“It’s exciting to watch them learn to read,” she said. “We get a lot of ‘aha’ moments.”
Now, when Landers and her husband are out for dinner or running errands, she will see people that she knows. Usually, she was their principal and their children’s principal.
