Many Dublin students will remember Mr. Weldon Whitehead’s ag class. Whitehead worked at Dublin High School for 42 years. “I taught ag, but my main goal was to teach my students about life, and to learn how to be successful in life,” he said.
Whitehead graduated from Dublin High School himself in 1953 and went on to Tarleton for two years (back then it was still a junior college) before transferring to Texas A&M.
“I graduated from there in 1957 and went straight into the Army with a commission, because I was in the Corps when I was in college,” he said. “The first thing I did when I was in the Army, I went to the transportation officers school.” He served for a few months at Fort Eustis, VA, and later he returned home on reserve.
Back home, Whitehead took a job as the Dairy Herd Information supervisor for Erath County for a year. “Then I started milking cows for my father-in-law, and I bought some cows of my own and put them in the dairy,” he said. “I was going to dairy. I wasn’t planning on teaching.”
He worked as a dairyman for two years, until one morning, the week before school started, Whitehead was out milking when the principal and ag teacher at DHS came up to him. They told him the science teacher had taken another job.
“They needed a science teacher real bad, and that was back when science and math teachers were in shortage,” he said. “So I thought, ‘Well, I’ll teach two or three years, pay for my cows, buy some more cows.’ I hadn’t thought about teaching as a career.”
Whitehead soon found he enjoyed teaching, and after his first year as a science teacher, the ag teacher left to go to grad school. “I started teaching ag and I loved it, so the next thing I did was sell my cows,” he said. “I taught one year [where I kept the cows], but life’s too short to do that very long.”
As he approached his third year of teaching, one of his supervisors told Whitehead, “If you teach three years, you’ll never want to do anything else.”
“I guess he was right,” said Whitehead, “because I taught for 42.”
During his first years as an ag teacher, Whitehead trained several judging teams that qualified for and placed at the state competition. “I loved that, and I loved showing,” he said. “And I got hooked on the kids, so I stuck with it for 42 years and never regretted a day.”
Over the course of those years, Whitehead loved seeing his students learn and progress. “We had some real successful times in showing livestock, and I think I had 86 teams that qualified for state while I was teaching, and we had two national teams, and we placed as high as third,” he said. “I never looked at it about what I was trying to accomplish. It was what I wanted the kids to accomplish. The accomplishment of my students is the main thing I felt was my greatest accomplishment, just seeing what they’ve done.”
Whitehead’s students have gone on to be doctors, broadcasters, engineers and dairymen.”I’ve got former students that could have bought me many times over, time and time again, but teaching is not a money deal,” said Whitehead. “There’s lots of ways you can make more money with a degree than teaching, but I don’t know anything more rewarding than helping young people find themselves and set goals and make careers.”
Whitehead retired in 2003. Just a few days after he retired, his wife of 47 years, LaNell Whitehead, passed away. “For a while, I was kind of lost,” he said.
Eventually he reconnected with his friend from high school Mary Ann, and they married. “Mary Ann and I have been married 21 years,” said Whitehead. “We’ve been ranching ever since we retired, and we travel a good bit. We’ve been to places around the world — we’ve been to different countries in Europe, we’ve been to Alaska, we’ve been to Australia and New Zealand. We just enjoy life.”
Whitehead stays involved with livestock. “We love raising livestock, I go to a lot of livestock shows. I’ve got great grandkids that are showing livestock, and I follow them.”
Other great grandkids are involved in athletics, so Whitehead and his wife stay busy attending games and spending time with the family.
In the summers, the Whiteheads usually travel to Ruidosa, New Mexico, and spend the rest of their year working on the ranch near Dublin. “Mary Ann owns a 400 acre ranch here,” he said. “We sold the cows about two years ago and leased the place, but there’s stuff to do all the time. There’s always something. We stay busy, and I think that’s why we still keep going at our ages. We don’t sit down and do nothing.”
Throughout his life, Whitehead has found inspiration in his family, especially his two wives. “They’ve always supported me in everything that I’ve done,” he said.
To future Dublin graduates, Whitehead offers the following advice: “Do your best at everything you go to do, regardless of what it is,” he said. “And, a little thing that I’ve always told kids: every day is a good day, but some are sure better than others.”
Whitehead’s positive outlook shaped his career, and the careers of his students, too. “Instead of looking forward to Monday being over, look at the opportunities you have beginning on Monday,” he said. “Don’t look downhill, but look uphill for the whole week.”
— Where Are They Now chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.