Two good people passed away last week. Dr. Noah Langdale died in Atlanta after a short illness. I only met him once when my father invited him to speak at the annual dinner of the local chamber of commerce in Phenix City. Lifelong friends from college, Dr. Langdale played football at Alabama while Dad was working his way through college waiting tables at the athletic dorm. Dr. Langdale was an interesting man. Physically, he was a big bull-necked individual, the prototype offensive tackle, his position on the team.
Dr. Langdale graduated Phi Beta Kappa as an undergraduate, something not many football players do even at the best of schools. He then received a MBA and law degree from Harvard. After school, he practiced law in Valdosta for many years until he was asked to assume the presidency of Georgia State in Atlanta. When he arrived, Georgia State was a small business school offering one degree in two campus buildings. When Dr. Langdale retired, GSU was a 22,000 student university offering 50 degrees in over 200 fields.
He was a erudite man, one of those people with scary intelligence, but he was also funny and a great raconteur. The one thing I remember about that chamber of commerce speech was him stopping and asking someone at a front table if they were going to eat the roll on their plate, then stepping off the podium and helping himself. After the speech, he came to our house and he and Daddy talked until late that night.
The obituary in the Atlanta Journal said that after he retired he and his buddies would ride around town in a convertible and that they loved to eat at the Varsity. People from Atlanta will realize that living to be 87 after a lifetime of eating at the Varsity is quite a feat. Dr. Langdale lived a good life, a life that touched many people and made their own lives better by providing them with educational opportunities they might not have had.
The second person who died was Johnnie Carr. Her name might not be familiar to most people, but most people know the name of her best friend, Rosa Parks. Ms. Carr died last week at the age of 97. I got to know Ms. Carr through an outfit called One Montgomery, a weekly lunch group that sought to improve race relations in Montgomery. I joined the group in a crazy effort to get Montgomery to adopt the Birmingham Pledge and had a chance to see her every week for several months before moving back to Birmingham. Knowing her role in the civil rights movement, I made sure to sit at her table every week and listen to the stories she told, and she told plenty.
Ms. Carr was president of the Montgomery Improvement Association from 1957 till her death. She succeeded the first president, Martin Luther King. The MIA was the group that led the bus boycott in 1955. Rosa Parks was chosen to be the person to challenge the segregation law, but it easily could have been Ms. Carr.
Ms. Carr lived a full, active life until her death. Until she suffered a stroke a month before her death, Ms. Carr still drove herself around Montgomery. She also tutored young people and urged them to do great things. She was never famous, but to me she was the epitome of what a good person with high standards can do if they find their life’s purpose and work toward their goals. Johnnie Carr left this world a better place through her efforts. We all owe her a debt of thanks.
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