Meet Sumter School District’s superintendent

Family, character and leadership are all important concepts for new Sumter School District Superintendent William Wright Jr.

He worked eight years in manufacturing – six in management – before going into public education. Given his work schedule, he had served initially as a substitute teacher on his days off from the plant just to earn some extra income with a wife and two young children.

Sometime later - in 1998 - a friend who served as human resources director of Nash County Public Schools told him to apply for a business vocational teaching position.

Wright initially laughed at the idea, but – with the encouragement of his wife – he took the interview.

The principal at the time, Clint Johnson, told him that he would love to hire him and thought down the road Wright would make an “amazing school administrator.”

So, he initially took a $13,000 pay cut as a business education classroom teacher, Wright said, but the rest is history.

He credits team and leadership concepts that he learned in manufacturing as being important in his career development.

Here are “7 things” Wright chose to represent himself and tell his story.

1FAMILY Wright considers family “a blessing and a responsibility,” he said. He and his wife, Mary, have two sons, Tré and Deonté.

Both sons have done well academically and are “men of character” and gainfully employed, Wright said.

“I am very proud of that fact and talk about it often,” he said. “Quite honestly, being two African American males growing up in the Southeastern United States, that is a pretty good thing for them to be as successful as they are. My youngest son just bought a house, for instance. I didn’t have to give him one dime down on his down payment. He did every bit of it himself. So, I am proud of those kinds of things.

“My wife and I have been married 33 years. It is an amazing marriage, and quite honestly, we had some folks who said we would not last six months. So, look at us now.”

2CANCER SURVIVOR In March 2020, Wright was diagnosed with a sarcoma, a type of cancer that starts in tissues like bone or muscle. A 10-centimeter growth in his right inner thigh was removed through an excision that June, he said, at Duke

University Hospital in Durham, North

Carolina.

While scanning for the sarcoma, doctors learned he had a 2-centimeter mass on his right kidney. “On Oct. 13, 2020, I had the two centimeter mass removed from my right kidney, and the rest of it remains intact,” he said. “Shortly after that with the scans and checks, I got to ring the bell about Nov. 1, 2020. So, two years later, I continue to be cancer-free and very thankful.”

Cancer made Wright look at himself differently, he said. Before his diagnosis, Wright said, he “had life planned out: I was going to work another three or four years, retire and do what I wanted to do.

“Honestly, being diagnosed with cancer,” he said, “it really made me understand that tomorrow wasn’t promised. And I am trying to rush life away and plan it out. I wasn’t really flexible with that. I have always been a flexible person with others, but not so much with myself.

“What it taught me is to cherish each day and understand that each day you are given is a gift and you need to maximize and make the most out of it. So, now when I am talking about retirement or future plans, I am not definitive with those. I am more of, ‘I just want to enjoy life and maximize the opportunities.’

“And it probably led me to even coming to a place like Sumter. I probably would not have taken the chance on coming here and leading a larger district, had it not been for that challenge because it would have been easier to just ride it out where I was.”

He added that “positivity” and “keeping his faith strong” were important elements in his fight.

Wright said he was never a tattoo person, but he has a tattoo on his right arm that is a result of his cancer survival.

“It is a Polynesian design and so some of the images in that ribbon are symbols of strength and being a warrior,” he said. “So, it’s a very intentional design in my fight to remain cancer free.”

3PODCAST At the start of his career, Wright was also a radio broadcaster.

Fast forward to about two years ago, and he was seeking an outlet for his passion to help aspiring leaders – both in education and other fields – prepare for challenges they will encounter, Wright said.

His wife gave him the idea of doing a podcast.

“She linked it to my former radio background, and said, ‘William, I think you would be really good at it. Why don’t you look into it?’”

He did, and his inaugural podcast of The Wright Experience was in February 2021 with the intention of doing it once or twice per month on Facebook Live.

“Once I started, it gained steam pretty fast,” Wright said. “So now, I am doing it every week – on Thursday evenings.”

He broadcasts it on both Facebook Live and YouTube.

“It’s going better than I expected at this stage,” Wright said. “We have primarily focused so far on educational leaders, but I do have a few podcasts with health care leaders and university presidents. And my goal is to expand it; so down the road, I would look to want to have legislators occasionally and business owners. Some of the manufacturing leaders who I have made contact with here in the area, I want to try to get them on. I am not limiting it to just educational leaders, although we want to continue to spotlight those as well, so people can know what is going on in districts.”

4FRATERNITY Wright is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the largest predominantly African American intercollegiate fraternity and one of the 10 largest fraternities in the nation. He said he was encouraged to join by Bishop William Barber II, who is now a civil rights activist and pastor of a church in North Carolina. A fraternity brother, Kenneth Pittman, who had about a 40-year career in manufacturing management, is Wright’s biggest confidant and mentor.

“Kenny and I play golf together all the time when I can,” Wright said. “He’s kind of like my sounding board as well as mentor.”

5KEYBOARDS/MUSIC Music ministry is a big part of Wright’s life. He has been playing for churches since he was 9 years old and for a total of 37 years. He took 10 years off from it after high school. For about 30 years, he played every Sunday for churches, Wright said. After becoming a district superintendent last decade and given the demands of the job, he decided to back away some, but he still serves one Sunday per month at Union Hill Baptist Church in the other Nashville – small-town Nashville, North Carolina, in the eastern part of the state.

“There is one choir that I have kept, and I have been playing for that church for 26 years straight,” Wright said. “It’s Union Hill Baptist Church Gospel Choir, and that choir sings on fourth Sundays each month. I play keyboarded instruments for the choir, and my wife is the choir director and teaches vocals.” 5 GRILLING Wright is classified, if you will, as “the family griller” on both his mother’s side and father’s side of the family.

He learned at a family reunion about 25 years ago from a second cousin, who was a chef in the Washington, D.C., area.

“He said at the time, ‘Do you want to learn how to cook on the grill?’

“Now, what he was really doing was soliciting a helper because he had all this food to cook. But I learned kind of how to season food and so forth. Since then, I do charcoal grilling, gas grilling, smoking. I have cooked barbecue pigs, smoked turkeys - a little bit of everything. And it’s kind of expected now that when we have family gatherings, I do pretty much all the meats.

“My youngest son is probably going to be his generation’s cook. He’s into it, too, and and does a lot of grilling.”

7BENGALS A big sports fan, Wright has been a big follower of the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals since he was 6 or 7 years old. Why the Bengals? “It’s really this simple,” he said. “It started as a result of a McDonalds contest back in the day where you could win a Big Mac if you guessed the question right. It was a Cincinnati Bengals question about quarterback Ken Anderson, I guessed it right, and so I have been a Cincinnati Bengals fan ever since. There is nothing other than that.”

In November, Wright went to his first Bengals home game with one of his sons.

He had seen them play a couple times before in Baltimore and Charlotte.

“They played the Carolina Panthers, and we won,” he said. “So, I ribbed him all the way back.”