South Benbow Future Outlook

Few high school principals in North Carolina have a story quite like Dr. John Allen Tarpley, the man whose name adorns the football stadium at historic Dudley High School.

Tarpley was Dudley’s first principal when it opened as the high school for black Greensboro students during the time of legal segregation.

Fittingly, Tarpley the man shares many characteristics with the Dudley football team, winners of six state championships through the years. Like a successful football team, opinions of him often reflected if you were a teammate or his opposition.

Tarpley was tough. Some would call him intimidating. He was disciplined. Some would call him a disciplinarian.

The bottom line, though, is that he often got the results he wanted.

Case in point: The construction of Dudley High School, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“He wanted something to be proud of, for the community to be proud of,” said Marvin Watkins, a 1952 graduate of Dudley who was later hired by Tarpley to serve as a teacher and Dean of Boys at the high school.

For that reason, Tarpley would not agree to become the principal of Dudley until he was assured by the city school board that the school and its facilities would be similar to Greensboro Senior High (now Grimsley High School).

While Tarpley made it clear to the school board that he would not accept a poorly constructed high school for black students, he also made it clear to the Dudley student body that he would run a tight ship.

And he was the captain.

“He was not a student’s principal,” recalled Thelma Hatchett, a 1953 Dudley High School graduate who would later go on to teach history at Dudley and be neighbors with Tarpley in Benbow Park.

Hatchett said Tarpley was not the type of administrator that roamed the halls and warmly greeted students and faculty.

“I don’t think I ever saw him smile,” Hatchett said.

Fellow 1953 graduate Bettye Miller agreed that Tarpley took his job as principal — and the responsibilities that came along with it — seriously.

“He was no-nonsense,” Miller said. “All the teachers were.”

Miller, who would later graduate from Bennett College and retire from Guilford County Schools as an exceptional children’s teacher, said Tarpley’s mindset as an educator was common among the faculty and staff at Dudley in the early 1950s.

“Not that they were mean, but they were trying to have a good program,” Miller said.

And if you went against the program, the consequences could be severe.

Marvin Watkins remembers a Dudley prom in the early 1960s or late 1950s, when a brawl broke out during the event.

Order was eventually restored, but as punishment, Tarpley canceled future proms and yearbooks at the school.

“He was retired before we bought prom back,” Watkins said.

But even in retirement, and outside of Dudley High School, Tarpley remained a tough one.

Regina Duren grew up in Benbow Park, on the opposite side of New Castle Road and across from John Tarpley and his wife, Lucille.

Regina recalls a day in the mid-to-late 1960s when several children in the Benbow Park neighborhood had a kickball game going on in the street, in front of the Tarpleys’ house.

At some point, the kickball landed in Tarpley’s backyard.

Mrs. Tarpley retrieved it, and placed it in a window next to the front door, where the kids could see it.

In hopes of being able to finish the kickball game, the youths rang Tarpley’s doorbell to ask for the ball back.

They were met by Tarpley, who refused to do so. His answer to the kids: “Tell your daddy to come and get it.”

Tarpley died in March 1992, after serving more than forty years as an educator. He also was founder and past president of the local Carnegie Library, a founder and past chairman of the Hayes-Taylor YMCA, a founder and past chairman of the Windsor Community Center, and a member of the trustee board of L. Richardson Memorial Hospital.

His funeral service was held at St. Matthews United Methodist Church, where as a member he belonged to the Trustee and Steward Boards, and served as Sunday School superintendent.

The Dudley High School stadium was named for him in 1981.