Longtime Modesto schools chief remembered for intellect, unwavering dedication to kids
James Enochs was a man of conviction who had the smarts — and did the work — to back up what he believed. That’s one way those who knew him remembered the Stanislaus County educator whose career spanned 50 years, including 21 as superintendent of Modesto City Schools.
Mr. Enochs died Monday, April 20, at his Ceres home, just a month shy of what would have been his 85th birthday. The native of Glendale moved with his family to Modesto in 1945, when he was 10.
His first teaching job began in 1957 at Patterson High School, and he moved in 1963 to Modesto’s Davis High. Jim Autry, a member of Davis’ first graduating class in 1964, had Mr. Enochs as his government teacher and called him a “huge influence” on his own career as an educator.
“I wasn’t the only student awed by him,” Autry recalled. “He was so knowledgeable, so witty and so well read. I would put up with the rest of my school day for just that hour in Mr. Enochs’ class.” A very accessible teacher, Mr. Enochs would talk with any of his students about anything, Autry said, “but they better know their stuff. He didn’t suffer fools gladly.”
When he was fresh out of college and Mr. Enochs was vice principal at Roosevelt Junior High, Autry was hired by his former teacher in the parking lot of the McHenry Village shopping center, he said.
Autry, who also taught at Modesto and Downey high schools, said Mr. Enochs was a “very radical” administrator for the time, always open to new ideas and bringing in people from everywhere to teach. “He wanted to get away from the old boy network and get fresh blood in.”
Roosevelt was Mr. Enochs’ alma mater. He graduated from Modesto High in 1953. He went on to graduate from Modesto Junior College, earn a degree in political science from what was then San Jose State College, and earn his master’s at the University of Colorado.
It was in 1968 while working at Roosevelt that Mr. Enochs met Harry Bakker, a teacher there who became a lifelong friend. Bakker, whose career later included serving as his resource teacher when Mr. Enochs was principal at Mark Twain Junior High and his associate superintendent in the Modesto City Schools administration, said his mentor was a “phenomenal role model.”
Mr. Enochs had considerable influence among great thinkers in the area of education around the country, Bakker said. In 1975, he was put in charge of curriculum at the district office. He crafted the district’s “Fourth R: Responsibility” program, which included a set of academic expectations and a conduct code for students.
The “Fourth R” program made national headlines, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson used it as a blueprint for his “Ten Commandments for Education.” In his September 1986 report on elementary education in America, titled “First Lessons,” U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett wrote that there was “a real necessity” to promote Mr. Enochs’ ideas.
Reagan administration offered position
Mr. Enochs twice was named “one of North America’s Top School Executives,” his family wrote in his obituary. And in 1982, President Ronald Reagan’s advisers asked Mr. Enochs if he wanted to serve in the administration’s Department of Education. But the superintendent stayed in Modesto, largely because he believed a key problem with many school districts is frequent turnover of administrators that disrupts the continuity of leadership.
In a 2007 Bee article on his retirement, Mr. Enochs said he was proudest of his decision to help craft Modesto City Schools’ comprehensive anti-discrimination policy. He headed a set of meetings in 1996, called the Safe Schools Project, after he heard the high school-age son of a former student describe being tormented at school for being gay. “I listened to that boy talk and I’ll tell you that was one of the most emotional things I’ve experienced,” Mr. Enochs said in the article.
As an administrator of a large school district in which lie various interests, a strong superintendent is bound to have allies and adversaries, Bakker said. But when Mr. Enochs took a position, it always was on solid ground and with the best interests of students at heart, he said. “He carefully thought out situations and looked out four, five, six steps ahead at all the implications.”
Among the times he found himself embroiled in controversy was when Mr. Enochs fought efforts by conservative parents and church leaders to ban books including Shel Silverstein’s 1974 collection of poems, “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” In 1991, many decried his decision to ban all hats worn on school campuses in order to curb the influence of gangs. Enochs said shortly after the decision, someone shot twice through his office window. “I always took that as a vote of confidence since they shot on the weekend,” Mr. Enochs said in The Bee’s 2007 retirement article.
Toward the end of his career, Mr. Enochs was criticized by parents who said he was out of touch with the problems facing the district’s African-American and Latino students.
But Bakker said he believes the superintendent was a classic example of “you don’t know when you have a good thing until it’s gone.” In the years following Mr. Enochs’ retirement, Bakker said he would hear wistful comments to the effect of, “This would never have happened if Enochs were here.”
Union leader recalls great respect
One of those people who sometimes found themselves on opposite sides of an issue from Mr. Enochs is Megan Gowans, who was president of the Modesto Teachers Association for 10 years. Gowans, now retired and living in Monterey, said that out of all the district leaders she worked with, “I would say he was the most impressive and of the highest caliber.”
As both a high school teacher and union leader, she said she had great respect for Mr. Enochs because he was honorable. He never waffled after making a commitment and he always was professional “even when we had to come at an issue from different perspectives,” Gowans said. “There was not a single time ever when tempers were lost.”
She said she hopes Mr. Enochs will be remembered for holding himself and those who worked for him to the highest standards of scholarship. He was a strong advocate for arts in education, Gowans said, and of libraries.
Autry agreed, saying that his mentor should be spoken of as a leader in literacy and language instruction who made sure school libraries were well staffed and well stocked.
Mr. Enochs’ home library was the stuff of legend, containing well over 12,000 books. His family said the room was his sanctuary, a place where he satisfied his love of learning. “I haven’t read them all,” he told The Bee in 2006 when talking about his retirement plans.
The superintendent belonged to a book club called the Gutenberg Society, as did Bakker. “Guess who had the most books to recommend,” joked Curtis Grant, another club member who was a history professor at California State University, Stanislaus, and a longtime friend of Mr. Enochs’.
He, too, noted the superintendent’s strong support of the arts and libraries, and that Mr. Enochs “felt that contemporary education often failed to focus sufficiently on those important things.”
Grant admired his friend’s tremendous intellect, integrity and dedication to education.
When Mr. Enochs found failure on the part of his district staff or principals he was responsible for, he would “move and replace people once he did the research and felt it was necessary,” Grant said. His convictions also meant that when addressing statewide issues with colleagues throughout California, “if he felt strongly that their positions were not consistent with quality education, he was quite willing to take them on.”
Enochs was a straight talker, and ‘fearless’
The superintendent possessed a great capacity for expressing his views in direct and sometimes colorful ways, Grant said. In a 2015 article, Bee education writer Nan Austin shared some examples of Mr. Enochs’ straight talk from a 1996 speech he gave at a Rotary gathering.
He noted that TV programming consumed about 5,000 hours of a child’s life just by the time he or she entered kindergarten. And he complained that well into their school years, “after 15,000 hours of this stuff, most of it watched in a prone position while the dishes remain unwashed, the lawn uncut and their room unfit for human habitation, their parents come up to me and ask why the schools aren’t teaching the work ethic.”
Lest someone think that Mr. Enochs was entirely serious all the time, though, Grant noted that his friend had a terrific sense of humor. And in a comment the superintendent likely would have appreciated, Grant said, “It was a delight to be involved in conversations with him on historical subjects and important topics — except where he disagreed with me and was wrong.”
Another Gutenberg Society member, Susan Donker, said she first met Mr. Enochs when they both served on the Stanislaus Partners in Education board. In championing things like the Safe Schools Project that weren’t always in concert with popular opinion, he was undaunted, said Donker, retired regional vice president of human resources for Sutter Health.
He led with courage, she said, noting that the late Sen. John McCain called it “the enforcing virtue, the one that makes possible all the other virtues common to exceptional leaders: honesty, integrity, confidence, compassion and humility.”
On how she’ll remember Mr. Enochs, she said, “The key thing is he was fearless and he believed in the importance of personal responsibility.”
During his tenure as superintendent, which began in 1986, Modesto City Schools enrollment grew from 17,000 to 35,000 students, resulting in the construction of three high schools, a middle school and three elementary schools. Named in his honor, James C. Enochs High School on Sylvan Avenue in north Modesto opened in 2006.
Mr. Enochs is survived by his wife of almost 50 years, Carole; two daughters, Lynn Campama and Juli McManis; stepdaughter Debbie McVay; stepson Dennis Olson; and six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
A celebration of his life will be held at a yet-to-be-announced date. A family burial service will be held in private. Memorial contributions may be made in his name to the Stanislaus County Public Library.
This story was originally published April 22, 2020 at 12:51 PM.
