SPECIAL COLLECTIONS SPOTLIGHT
Dr. Daley A life of academic rigor, generosity and truth by BRIAN GRIBBEN
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photography by FHSU ARCHIVES
ne of the pleasures of working with Forsyth Library’s Special Collections comes from the discovery (or often rediscovery) of materials that hold mysteries, prompt yet unanswered questions, or, as I have found within the University Archives, reveal notable figures from FHSU’s past who have escaped current memory or whose contributions to the university have been overlooked. I believe there are countless university employees (both past and present) consigned to either category who merit recognition. However, at least in this issue of ROAR, this “Special Collections Spotlight” casts its attention on the late Dr. Billy C. Daley, formerly of the College of Education and its Department of Advanced Education Programs. A deep dive into the University Archives’ collection of Master’s Theses (also available online in the FHSU Scholars Repository) reveals that Daley directed the M.S. theses of more than 230 graduate students during a career that spanned seven decades exclusively at Fort Hays State. The majority of Daley’s advisees came from the Advanced Education Programs Department and AEP’s earlier incarnations, as well as Nursing and Social Work students who benefited
from his knowledge of measurements and statistics. While impressive, the volume of theses completed under Dr. Daley’s direction represents but part of his story, one that began in the hardscrabble countryside of the Tennessee Valley Divide. Born July 14, 1928, in Hardin County, Tenn. to an oft-absent, raconteur father and a mother whose husband’s capriciousness had stymied her ambitions of becoming a nurse, a more talented writer would describe Billy C. Daley as the youthful archetype of the Faulkneresque South. It would be sufficient to observe that the Great Depression compounded a childhood already challenged by his parents’ unconventional relationship. After relocating just over the state line to Waterloo, Ala., the Depression and his parents’ deteriorating relationship soon took its toll on Daley’s family when its patriarch left the home in 1932. The elder Daley would become a sporadic presence in the lives of Billy and his younger brother, Luther, while the boys’ mother found work cooking in the cafeteria of Waterloo’s only school. Now raised in what was effectively a single-parent household, young Billy, upon enrolling in grammar school, supplemented his mother’s income by working as a custodian after school in ROAR
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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. 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
FALL/WINTER 2020
