When Hal Reasby retired as Monroe School District superintendent in 1993, he modestly summed up a career that spanned three decades and saw huge changes in society and education.
“I guess I’ve seen it all at one time or another,” Reasby told The Herald in March of 1993.
Reasby, once a social studies teacher at Seattle’s Ingraham High School, came to Snohomish County in 1980. By 1976, he had risen through Seattle Public Schools’ administrative ranks to become associate superintendent.
From 1980 to 1988, Reasby was superintendent of the Edmonds School District. His first retirement came after the Edmonds district’s 30-day teachers strike in 1987. By 1989, he’d been lured back to take the helm of the Monroe district.
Reasby was the first African-American superintendent in both the Edmonds and Monroe districts. He brought from Seattle a background of working to desegregate that city’s schools from the late 1960s through the 1970s.
“He wanted everyone to know that all kids count,” said Bill Prenevost, who took over as Monroe’s superintendent after Reasby retired. “He treated everyone with such dignity and respect.”
Reasby, who lived in Seattle with his wife, Ruby, died Nov. 30 of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 78.
He is survived by his wife of 35 years, Ruby Lavert Reasby; his son Garth Reasby and daughter-in-law Heather Reasby; mother-in-law Margrett Lavert; sister-in-law Barbara Lavert; and nephew Jerod Lavert and his wife Inderjit. He was preceded in death by his parents, Ruth Patterson and Harold Velton Reasby Sr.
Reasby was born Jan. 18, 1931, in Waterloo, Iowa. He attended Iowa State Teachers College, and in 1955 earned a master’s degree in education.
In Seattle, Reasby’s close friend Richard Dyksterhuis remembered when the two were teachers at Ingraham in the early 1960s. After the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968, Dyksterhuis said Reasby was recruited by Seattle schools for an administrative intern program that led to his doctoral studies at the University of Washington, where he earned a Ph.D. in educational administration in 1973.
Seattle’s road to desegregation was long and sometimes troubled, Dyksterhuis said, “but we did it without a court order. Hal helped with all that.”
Jackie McKee, who was president of the Monroe School Board during Reasby’s tenure, said that when he came to the district, “we needed someone who had educational stature both locally and statewide.
“He had a fabulous reputation and he met and exceeded all of our expectations,” McKee said. “He had been in the classroom and had empathy for teachers.”
Prenevost, now retired as Monroe’s superintendent, said Reasby rode school buses and went to school events. Prenevost said his wife, Lucille, then an elementary school teacher in Monroe, had Reasby visit her class and sit down and do classwork with the kids. “He was incredibly visible in classrooms. That seemed to be what drove him, what the kids were doing and needing,” Prenevost said.
In the Edmonds district, Penny Peters was director of labor relations during the bitter 1987 strike. “That was not an easy time,” she said. Despite that, she said, “Hal was well loved by people in the district. He was in classrooms all the time.”
Peters also said Reasby started the Public Education Foundation, which provides small grants for teachers and financial help to some students in the Edmonds district.
“Hal was just loved by everybody,” said Sheri Straight, a former member of the Edmonds School Board. “He just spent so much time knowing and caring about the children.”
Ruby Reasby was working as a secretary at Seattle’s Garfield High School when she met her future husband. When he first invited her to lunch, she told him she ate with the students. His reply, she said, was that he’d eat with the kids, too.
After retirement, the couple moved to Las Vegas in 1996. In 2007, they returned to Seattle.
Hal Reasby spent his free time woodcarving, bird-watching and learning about photography.
He and his wife took trips to Deception Pass and to her parents’ cabin on the Skagit River.
“He was an avid reader. He still had books from college. And he did the crossword every day,” Ruby Reasby said. “He really had a great love for kids. He believed any child could succeed.”
Dyksterhuis cherishes the friendship he’d had since their teaching days in the 1960s. “With the love we all had for Hal, I hope we can share it and keep the light burning,” he said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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