By Shelley Henry
Special to the Record
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Just a few months after graduating from Southwest Texas State in 1960, Bobby Dale Dupree walked onto a junior high school campus in Fredericksburg to begin his first year as a teacher and coach.
Fifty years have passed since then, but for Dupree, August still means the beginning of school, and it's still an exciting time for the veteran educator, who now serves as vice president for development at San Marcos Academy.
“Fifty years has gone by pretty fast, and each year seems to go by faster than the last one,” Dupree said. “Luckily I have enjoyed working all these years, and I still enjoy it. I like to be around young people and still want to be at all the school events. I don't want to miss anything.”
Dupree recalls his first year of teaching back in 1960-61 as one of the busiest times in his life.
“I taught junior and senior high math and coached all the sports in junior high as well as doing high school scouting,” Dupree said. “It was hard. I was brand new and had all those assignments. I remember sharing a room in a rooming house with the ag teacher, but I don't think we ever saw one another because we were both kept so busy.”
During that hectic year, Dupree received a call from one of his mentors, Owen Goodnight, who was then the football coach at San Marcos High School. Goodnight had not only coached Dupree, a 1956 SMHS graduate, but had also been his student teaching supervisor.
“Coach Goodnight called and said he had an opening for a baseball coach at the high school and wanted to know if I was interested. It took me all of two seconds to accept the offer – I was crazy about Coach Goodnight.”
So after one year in Fredericksburg, Dupree headed back to his hometown of San Marcos.
The following year, Dupree married his junior high and high school sweetheart, Duane Smith Dupree, and was then drafted in 1963. He and Duane headed to Rhode Island where he attended Officer Candidate School, but after a few weeks he received a medical discharge due to a bad knee.
“So there we were, without jobs, and not sure what to do,” Dupree said. “We decided to have a little adventure, so we headed to Colorado. Duane got a teaching job, and I substitute taught until I got a job coaching at the largest school in that district.”
But once again San Marcos and Owen Goodnight came calling. “At the end of our second year in Colorado, Coach Goodnight called me and asked me to come back to San Marcos to be head baseball coach again,” Dupree said. “I really worshipped the ground he walked on; he was so successful and he just knew to how to work with kids. I couldn't turn him down, so we headed back to Texas.”
During the next three years at San Marcos High School, Dupree had the chance to teach and coach several students who are now his colleagues at San Marcos Academy.
“I coached Peter Garza in baseball his junior and senior years,” Dupree said. “Peter was just a great player, and we had one of our best seasons ever his senior year. We won 20 games in a row and then went to the playoffs.”
Garza, who serves as the academy's assistant principal, head baseball coach and assistant football coach, recalled the excitement of those years. “Coach Dupree really turned the baseball program around,” Garza said. “He knew baseball and how to run a practice, and he understood game situations. His discipline and charisma got us working together. We were a diverse group, different ages, but he helped us gel and come together as a team.”
Dupree also had the opportunity to coach Harold “Snuffy” Smith and Bill Wyatt as high school freshmen. Wyatt is now transportation and safety director at the academy, while Smith is assistant vice president for enrollment management and athletics.
“Coach Dupree was my freshmen football coach in 1965,” Smith, a 1969 SMHS graduate, said. “He gave me at least one lick with a paddle – it hurt if I remember correctly. He is the reason I joined the staff at SMA. He hasn't given me another lick, at least not yet.”
Wyatt, who graduated in 1968 from SMHS, said he recalls Dupree as a “fabulous coach” and said his freshman football team team had an almost perfect 8-1 record. “He was very demanding, and that's what made us so good later on. He didn't put up with anything. Coach Dupree was the kind of guy that if you weren't doing right, he would meet you about 10 feet before you got to the sidelines and get up under your chin. But he also would meet you there to praise you if you did something well.”
Yet another colleague Dupree taught was Manuela Guerrero, whom Dupree hired nine years ago to be the administrative assistant in the Academy Admissions Office.
“I had Mr. Dupree for freshman home room, business math and typing,” Guerrero said. “He always had something funny to say and kept the classroom interesting.”
By 1967, Coach Goodnight was set to leave coaching and become the assistant principal at the high school. Dupree said he had talked to Coach Goodnight about joining him in an administrative capacity in the school office. But that spring at the sports banquet, Coach Goodnight collapsed and died of a heart attack. With his mentor gone, Dupree decided to take a position offered by Dean Jimmie Scott to become principal at San Marcos Academy.
“I liked the size of the school and the control we had over our students,” Dupree said of joining the Academy staff. “I also liked the military program, which I thought was great for the kids. I really enjoyed working at the Academy and was glad to remain in San Marcos.”
As an administrator, Dupree said it wasn't easy to leave coaching. “I missed coaching quite a bit,” Dupree said. “I guess I got over it after about a year, but I was certainly a frequent visitor to all the sporting events."
Dupree served as principal at the academy through the 1970s, a period he recalls fondly.
“I suppose my favorite time of all was the 1970s,” Dupree said. “I was really close to a lot of those students, especially the senior classes. Duane and I would travel to games and other events on the bus with the students and just got to know them really well. I still keep up with many of those graduates today.”
After a short leave of absence from SMA in the 1980s, Dupree returned to the school to work in the admissions office. As a recruiter, Dupree made about seven overseas trips to places like Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei and Bangkok, as well as several trips to Mexico.
At one point, in 1996, Dupree left the admissions office to serve for a year as principal at the request of then President Paul Armes. “I actually enjoyed being principal again,” Dupree said. “I had a good time being back where I was closer to the students on a day-to-day basis. I have never forgotten the advice Dr. W.C. Newberry shared with me when I was in his class at the university. He said that the best way to keep problems out of your office as a principal is to stay out of the office yourself. I always tried to follow that advice and be as close to the students as I could. I liked being where the kids could see me and talk to me.”
So is retirement anywhere in the future for this veteran educator? Someday, Dupree said, but he's in no hurry.
“I told my wife not long ago, that if I were a little younger, I wouldn't mind being an assistant principal again even now, just to work more closely with the kids. I just enjoy working. If my health will let me, I'll stay here as long as I can. I love being at the academy. Duane and I have always gone to everything here and we still do. We certainly wouldn't miss a high school football game, since my grandson is in the band now.
“I especially enjoy the people I have been able to work with over the years, and I've enjoyed everything I've done here at the Academy and in education in general. Fifty years has definitely gone by fast.”
