Dr. Daley

A life of academic rigor, generosity and truth

by BRIAN GRIBBEN photography by FHSU ARCHIVES

One of the pleasures of working from his knowledge of measurements with Forsyth Library’s Special and statistics. While impressive, the Collections comes from the volume of theses completed under discovery (or often rediscovery) of Dr. Daley’s direction represents but materials that hold mysteries, prompt part of his story, one that began in yet unanswered questions, or, as I have the hardscrabble countryside of the found within the University Archives, Tennessee Valley Divide. reveal notable figures from FHSU’s past

A deep dive into the University parents’ deteriorating relationship soon Archives’ collection of Master’s Theses took its toll on Daley’s family when its (also available online in the FHSU patriarch left the home in 1932. The Scholars Repository) reveals that Daley elder Daley would become a sporadic directed the M.S. theses of more presence in the lives of Billy and his than 230 graduate students during younger brother, Luther, while the a career that spanned seven decades boys’ mother found work cooking in exclusively at Fort Hays State. The the cafeteria of Waterloo’s only school. majority of Daley’s advisees came from Now raised in what was effectively a the Advanced Education Programs single-parent household, young Billy, Department and AEP’s earlier upon enrolling in grammar school, incarnations, as well as Nursing and supplemented his mother’s income by Social Work students who benefited working as a custodian after school in the same building he attended classes. During the war, a now teenage Daley took a second job stirring puddles of molten aluminum at the Reynolds Metal Company in nearby Sheffield. Decades later, he still recalled the unbearable heat of the smelting facility.

Born July 14, 1928, in Hardin who have escaped current memory or County, Tenn. to an oft-absent, whose contributions to the university raconteur father and a mother whose have been overlooked. I believe there husband’s capriciousness had stymied are countless university employees her ambitions of becoming a nurse, a (both past and present) consigned to more talented writer would describe either category who merit recognition. Billy C. Daley as the youthful archetype However, at least in this issue of of the Faulkneresque South. It would ROAR, this “Special Collections be sufficient to observe that the Great Spotlight” casts its attention on the Depression compounded a childhood late Dr. Billy C. Daley, formerly of already challenged by his parents’ the College of Education and its unconventional relationship. After Department of Advanced Education relocating just over the state line to Programs. Waterloo, Ala., the Depression and his

With the money saved through toil and thrift and encouraged by a school principal who had become both mentor and father figure to Billy, Daley enrolled at Florence State Teachers College. In one of several coincidences that seemed to foretell the young Daley’s career path, Florence State followed a trajectory similar to that of Fort Hays State. Founded as a normal school, the former would likewise undergo a series of rechristenings before becoming a comprehensive regional state university (the present-day University of Northern Alabama). Graduating in 1951 with a

Bachelor of Science in chemistry and mathematics and with the Korean War raging, Daley enlisted in the United States Air Force. Assigned to the Medical Corps, he spent the majority of his commitment attached to Fort Sam Houston teaching chemistry to medical personnel at the “Home of Army Medicine.” Unbeknownst to Daley but ostensibly another portent that his future lay at Fort Hays State, his assignment coincided with that of his future dean, the estimable Dr. Charles Leftwich, who was stationed at Fort Sam as an infantryman. As colleagues some 40 years later, they would often reminisce about their time in San Antonio, wryly noting that their paths never crossed in the then-segregated city.

Following his discharge from the USAF, Daley enrolled at the University of Texas-Austin on the GI Bill. Earning his M.E. in 1956 after defending his thesis Some Aspects of the Effectiveness of the Teacher Education Institutions in Texas in Preparing Teachers for Public Secondary Schools, he proceeded to pursue his doctorate at UT-Austin. In 1958, just prior to completing his doctoral program, Fort Hays State hired Daley as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology. Shortly thereafter, Daley successfully defended his dissertation, The Development of Public Junior College Financing in Texas (written in only three months to the surprise of his advisor) earning his Ed.D. in 1959.

Over the course of the next 54 years, Dr. Daley taught a variety of courses spanning multiple departments; primarily in research statistics, educational psychology, nursing statistics, and other related courses falling largely under the auspice of AEP and its predecessor ACES (Administration, Counseling, & Education). Additionally, Daley served multiple terms on Faculty Senate during his first five decades on campus. Augmenting his service to the university, Daley worked with countless former advisees as well as colleagues pursuing doctorates at other institutions, assisting them in formulating their research questions and in the writing of their dissertations. As with his own students, this entailed making himself available at unconventional hours and on weekends. Throughout the 1960s, Daley and Dr. Emerald Dechant were instrumental in expanding the counseling program to include vocational counseling, establishing the embryo from which the university’s future educational counseling programs would emerge. His work with Dechant and the staggering number of theses he directed during his time at FHSU, were arguably Daley’s greatest contribution to the university. Professionally, he belonged to the American Psychological Association and the American Statistical Association. In the fall of 2012, following years of service, Dr. Daley left FHSU.

At 6’4” and typically sans overcoat during the Kansas winters (speculatively, a remnant of summers spent working in the Reynolds’ smelting plant), Dr. Daley cut an eccentric figure on campus that concealed a generous spirit and the adamantine principles cultivated during his youth. Though the latter seldom-endeared Daley to some of his colleagues (and several administrations), the decades-worth of attention and guidance Daley provided to student and colleague alike encapsulated his commitment to rigor, his generosity, and yes, his sometimes withering critique. Those who project a complex, contrarian or outlier personality over the course of their lives seldom enjoy a celebrated or universally agreed upon legacy. Rather, it is far easier to write hagiographies of plaster saints. A deeply private man with little use for pomp and circumstance, Dr. Daley would likely have little regard for such niceties. However, his contributions to the university, enshrined in the acknowledgment sections of over 230 theses, merit recognition.