SC principal who took Walmart job to help students gets state’s highest civilian honor
A Lowcountry high school principal who took on a second job to help his students in need received South Carolina’s highest civilian honor Monday from Gov. Henry McMaster.
McMaster called North Charleston High School principal Henry Darby a “remarkable man,” detailing Darby’s attempt to keep secret his job stocking shelves at the area Walmart to help his students. He said Darby is the kind of man South Carolina can be proud of.
“I don’t know if all of us will accomplish what Henry Darby has, but we can all accomplish something,” McMaster said, before awarding Darby the Order of the Palmetto. “And although we may not all influence the hundreds, or perhaps thousands of young people and others that he has influenced, we can all influence some.”
A Charleston County native and county councilman since 2009, Darby took the part-time night job at Walmart last year, giving his paychecks to low-income students and their families to help with their bills. His dedication to giving back went viral, and Walmart presented him with a $50,000 check last week on top of the thousands of dollars in community donations.
The donations also have spurred the creation of scholarships for North Charleston seniors, the Charleston County School District said.
Though he tried to keep his job secret, Darby said Monday he is thankful he welcomed in the media attention.
“I am honored with a deep and abiding faith in accepting such a gracious award to continue helping those in need,” Darby said. “The accolades I am not used to, but I am intensely appreciative. I am just an ordinary common man who was taught by his family ... that helping others is a virtue.”
Darby’s mother desperately wanted to become a teacher, Darby told the invited crowd Monday.
But because of the times, she could not and, instead, sparked a path for her son.
“’My son is going to become a teacher. My son is going to become a teacher,’” Darby said his mother would often brag.
Times were tough for the Darbys.
He and his mother would pick milk and soda bottles to sell to make ends meet and to save up for college. Darby later graduated from Morris College in Sumter. In one particular instance, Darby told the story about how he and his mother went to the area dump, where she asked him to fetch a piece of cloth.
Darby demurred, but his mother was insistent, he said.
“I saw my mother put her hand in all that filth, and she got that piece of cloth, took it home, boiled it in a kettle in the back yard and made it to a shirt,” Darby said, holding up the crisp, white shirt that he wore from eighth to 11th grade, two to three days a week.
Darby’s mother died of cancer before she was able to see her child become a teacher.
He began teaching in the 1980s. He became principal of North Charleston High School in 2017.
“The sadness is that of all the hardships and of all the sacrifices, she did not live long enough to witness the dream that her son was to become a teacher,” Darby said. “But the dream nevertheless was manifest into reality.”
This story was originally published February 8, 2021 at 2:36 PM.
