Where band and life lessons were taught: Glades Central music hall named for Willie, Estella Pyfrom

BELLE GLADE — Schools were still segregated when Willie and Estella Pyfrom began teaching in The Glades. The couple dedicated their lives to educating children in western Palm Beach County, where they became role models with every lesson and tune.

Now their names shine over the music hall at Glades Central High School.

“I felt humbled,” said Willie Pyfrom, 86, who served as the school's band director for 37 years. “I didn't teach because I had to. I taught because I wanted to. I had the joy of teaching some of the best kids."

Flanked by his children, grandchildren and hundreds of former students, Pyfrom unveiled Dec. 9 the silver lettering on the brick wall of the music building. Willie and Estella Pyfrom taught at the Belle Glade high school for four decades and in other classrooms around the county for almost 60 years.

“It doesn't get any better than this,” Willie said at the ceremony. The only thing missing was his wife. Estella, the founder of Estella’s Brilliant Bus, a mobile computer lab that served students in rural and under-connected parts of the county, died two years ago.

“It was long overdue for both of them,” said Juan Pyfrom, their youngest son. “He was the first bandmaster when schools integrated, and he was there for 40 years after.”

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The new members of the band honored Willie with a performance by blowing trumpets, beating drums and marching down Glades Central's courtyard. Robert Mitchell, who was their student, petitioned the county's school board to have their names in the building.

“Most of us don't relate to them as teachers. We relate to them as family,” said Mitchell, who calls them "Mom and Dad," like most of their students. "They have a lot of stepkids."

“A lot of the principles and values that they taught us actually have saved a lot of our lives,” he added.

'Separate everything'

Willie and Estella Pyfrom were born and raised in segregated Belle Glade during the 1940s.

He was raised by his grandmother and worked in her restaurant. Estella was the daughter of migrant farm workers and began picking crops at 6 years old. Back then, Belle Glade was a different town.

“It was very much the Jim Crow South,” said Juan, an attorney who owns his own West Palm Beach law firm. “With separate everything.”

At the time, The Glades was mostly inhabited by farmworkers. Housing, hospitals, and schools were segregated.

Willie attended Belle Glade Elementary Colored School and became the first in his family to finish high school, graduating from The Everglades Vocational High School for the Colored.

“I don't know what color it was,” Willie said laughing. “It’s kind of funny now but, that's the way it was.”

He and Estella met in high school when they were in 11th and ninth grade, and became sweethearts. They married in 1958 and soon had their first son, Gene.

"The bean fields, for me were a playground," said Gene. He saw his mother pick the rows of beans and peas during the day and study at night.

They were both first-generation students at Florida A&M University, a public historically Black institution in Tallahassee. Willie pursued a degree in music and Estella in education. Willie played the trumpet and joined The Marching 100, FAMU's prestigious band.

After graduating, he served in the Army for two years, and in 1960, got his first job teaching music at East Lake Elementary, a school for Black students in Pahokee. Estella started nine years later, as a home economics teacher, at the now-closed E. O. Douglas High School in Sebring.

In 1967, Lakeshore High School, the only one serving Black students in the area, hired Willie as a music teacher and band director, Estella joined him shortly afterward. Over the next 40 years, the Pyfroms became influential teachers and pillars in the community. Willie directed the band and Estella coordinated the auxiliary.

Willie, who is a former Boy Scout, said their goal was to prepare their students for life.

"My goal was to be sure that my kids were going to graduate," Willie said. "And that they could hold their own with anybody, especially in music."

After integration, music curriculum diversified

Schools integrated during the academic year of 1970-1971. In Belle Glade, Lakeshore became an elementary school and Black and white students were to attend what is now known as Glades Central High School.

“When schools integrated, I integrated my curriculum,” Willie said. He added Jamaican, Puerto Rican and Cuban songs to his repertoire that reflected his student’s backgrounds. Soon, the couple had "stepkids" from every color and nationality. Gene was part of the first integrated graduating class of the school. For the Pyfroms, their family portrait had just grown and integrated.

“America is not like the one I grew up in,” said Willie. “I am happy to be living in this America now.”

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Glades Central quickly became known for producing football stars, but inside its music hall, Willie and Estella formed some of the best musicians in the state. Their students describe them as disciplined, structured educators who were easy to talk to.

For Mitchell, the Pyfroms didn’t teach: They mentored.

He said Willie patiently sat with each pupil and hear them play to find their musical strengths. Estella sewed all of their student's uniforms and mended loose threads without them asking.

“You had the element of the music and the auxiliary,” said Mitchell, who runs the Muck City United nonprofit. “But it was the life skills that he was teaching, the affirmations.” One of them that Willie said every day is one that Mitchell never forgot: "If it is to be, it is up to me."

Mitchell was raised by a working, single mother, so Willie was his father figure. He still remembers the day he was chosen to be the drum major.

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With the Pyfroms at the helm, the Red Raiders' band became known for its excellence. It won state and national competitions and the children traveled to perform around the nation and abroad.

“We were like two peas in a pod," Willie said, remembering Estella and all the years of rehearsals and performances. "When you saw one, you saw the other, and that's how we lived our lives."

Willie earned the nickname “the godfather of band directors” for teaching most of the ones who later led musical ensembles in the county and throughout the state. He learned of his biggest honors during his career from an unexpected phone call in the early 2000s.

“Willie, did you know that every section leader in the FAMU band is from Glades Central?” Julian White, the director of The Marching 100, asked him.

“You know damn right,” Willie quickly responded. “I know who I sent you.”

The Rev. Kenneth Jackson Jr., a pastor at Glades Covenant Community Church, learned to play the trumpet from Willie at the age of 9 and also served as his band leader in high school.

“He insisted that you got the information that he had given because it was more important than the test that was coming at the end of the week,” he said. “He was preparing you for something so much greater.”

He said Willie gave them music to challenge them, always made corrections and encouraged them in the progress of every tune until it was the best it could be.

“He developed leaders on the other level," said Jackson. "If he had to miss for whatever reason, the substitute didn't have to work because the students ran the class that day and practice went on even when he was not there."

The Pyfroms opened the door into the world of music and his future, said Jackson. He also attended FAMU, joined The Marching 100 and became a music teacher at Lakeshore Elementary. "If we worked hard, we could be as good as anybody,” Jackson recalls Willie telling them in class. “It didn't matter where we were from.”

Family and band are synonymous

The couple had four children during their year almost 70 years of marriage. All of them played in Glade Central’s band and later in The Marching 100.

Mia Pyfrom, their youngest daughter, says that for them, family and band are synonymous. She remembers how involved her parents were with their students.

“My dad, if you went to him, he might try to talk you through it,” she said. “My mom is going to see how she can help. What can she do? Who does she know? And that's kind of how they worked together.”

But music isn't the only way their kids took after their parents.

Mia teaches English at Indian Ridge School, her older sister Karen is the principal of Pahokee Elementary, and Gene is now retired from a long career of coaching gymnastics in Leon County.

Estella taught in multiple schools around the county, joined community boards and began a food pantry program. When she retired, she spent $1 million of her life savings to start Estella's Brilliant Bus, a mobile computer lab that brings technology and internet connections to children in the poorest areas.

Her bus was a success. It was featured on Oprah Winfrey's TV show and won a grant from Microsoft. She and Willie were even invited to have dinner with President Barack Obama.

But, Mia said, nothing compared to seeing their names in Glade Central's music hall. “It was a little surreal,” she said to see them get recognized for all their years of service. “It was a lot surreal.”

For Wille and Estella's family and all their band kids, the names commemorate an era of musical and human excellence in The Glades that cannot be forgotten.

“It's kind of like having a statue,” said Gene. “No matter what happens, whenever people walk through that school, they will always see Mom and Dad’s names on that building. So the legacy lives on.”

Valentina Palm covers Royal Palm Beach, Wellington, Loxahatchee and other western communities in Palm Beach County for The Palm Beach Post. Email her at vpalm@pbpost.com and follow her on Twitter at @ValenPalmB. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Glades Central renames music hall for teachers Willie, Estella Pyfrom