Albion Interactive History / People / Public Schools

William F. Head
AHS Principal
 
    Died

With the departure of Eugene Riker as principal of Albion High School at the end of the 1916-17 school year, the board appointed William F. Head, a 1909 graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University, and graduate of the University of Michigan to fill the position. Head had come to Albion from Ann Arbor, where he was a member of the high school faculty. One former student, Rae S. Corliss remembered him this way:

We remember William F. Head as one of the most outstanding principals of Albion High School. He could be most severe when occasion demanded, but also the epitome of kindness and understanding. As students we were somewhat afraid of him, and yet knew instinctively he was a good friend. Guess most of the otherstudents felt the same way. At least there was never any “horseplay” while he was principal that wasn’t nipped quickly – and with painful humiliation to the offenders.

As class president, we remember the time Mr. Head came to our desk in the study hall, leaned over and said, “Rae, I understand the seniors are going to skip school tomorrow. If they skip, you won’t graduate.” We were terrified for two reasons. First, because we hadn’t heard of plans to skip and second, because we felt we had not enough influence to stop some of the fellows from skipping if they had planned it. But we called a class meeting after school. No one skipped the next day, and the following week Mr. Head gave us permission to be absent from school an entire day on which we spent an entire day which on the occasion we spent at Vandercook Lake, then a popular resort south of Jackson.

Head remained until the end of the 1923-24 school year, when he left Albion to become principal at Arthur Hill High School.

Source: Frank Passic. A History of the Albion Public Schools. Albion, Michigan: E. Weil Publishing Services. 1991.