Lloyd Wofford — who served for nearly three decades as principal of Golden West Elementary School on North Main Street — is still going strong at age 94.
In fact he’s so active that his grandson Brandon said he still has to get on him for getting on the roof to fix the air conditioner.
“He was a soldier, a peach and grape picker, a carpenter, a cabinet maker, a house builder, a real estate salesman and an educator,” Brandon said proudly, noting his grandfather also built a modern home in Ripon.
Wofford was the first principal of Golden West School when it opened in 1961. He had been in the Army infantry in Okinawa during World War II ready to go into the sure death invasion of Japan when the atom bomb brought the war to an end.
Lloyd and his wife Letha were born in farm houses in central Oklahoma seven miles apart. They are separated by some six years in age. They did not know each other until they met in California 26 years later. They were married within five months.
Wofford first taught at Lindbergh School in 1953 under half-time teacher/principal Alice Coon for three years. He taught students in a fifth-grade class. He then taught seventh and eighth grade mat at Lincoln School under Principal Mrs. Paysen until she retired and was replaced by James McGlynn.
Lindbergh and Yosemite schools were both K-5 schools and Lincoln Elementary was the largest as a K-8 elementary school. Teachers did all the recess yard duty and being the only man on staff at Lindbergh, Wofford drew the noontime recess where he was charged with organizing playground activities. He remembers having noontime recess for three years with no time for his lunch.
His wife Letha taught for 20 years in first grade for Principal Ken Shaw at the rural Nile Garden Elementary School located south of Manteca. Letha said the children of her day were “well behaved and gave me no disciplinary problems.” She had an average of 28 to 30 students in her classroom.
“They would respect you no matter what and their families were right behind them,” she added.
Wofford was instrumental in urging his brother Ralph, his wife and two nieces and a nephew to go into education. Ralph served as the Collegeville School principal that’s now part of the Escalon Unified School District.
Wofford grew up in Pie Flat, Oklahoma and visited what was left of his old school with his grandson Brandon on several occasions. There was little left of that school except for a pile of bricks.
The replacement school is still standing, but without its roof, near the family farm between Butler and Hammon. When he and his five siblings attended Pie Flat they either had to walk three miles or use rickshaw style one horse drawn carts – with a total of 17 of those carts on the dirt roads at any one time.
He said there were many smaller elementary schools spread out across the country serving children from 160-acre plots of land – just about one farm family for each section. He noted that when one of those schools dropped to a certain number of students, they would close the school and transfer the kids to another campus to balance the attendance numbers. When he went into the third grade, he was sent to the Anna Womble School – a one room school with one teacher and eight grades. In his fifth and six grade years he went to Union School – another one room school with one teacher.
“The teacher was also the custodian,” he added. “We went to school from 9 to 4 and when the kids went out to recess, the teacher stayed in the classroom where she would be available to help students with their studies as well as mentoring them on the lunch recess.”
There were one room schools five miles apart in Oklahoma, he said. In 1937 Wofford would go on to the consolidated Stafford High School that served students from first grade to seniors in high school. The schools didn’t have school buses until that year. They hired high school seniors at 17 to drive those buses. Prior to the purchase of that modern transportation, they used small trucks with tarps over the beds to protect their student passengers.
“When I worked at home, we farmed with plow horses,” he added.
He wouldn’t meet his future bride for nearly three decades when he traveled to California to meet up with a couple of his buddies in Castro Valley after he had been drafted into the Army. As he entered their home on the pretext of going to a party, he spotted a “lovely young lady” standing on the other side of the room with her mother – that was Letha -- and it didn’t take long for them to make a life-long decision. They were married in May of that year on May 5, 1955 after meeting in January. In May they will have been married 63 years.
He opened Golden West
School in 1961
In opening the new Golden West School in Manteca in 1961, he had 16 teachers in the kindergarten through eighth grade elementary school located on North Main Street south of Louise Avenue. There were 500 students overall.
Jim Jacobs was his first vice principal and he became the unofficial trainer for other future principals in Manteca. Those serving over the years in that capacity included Cedric Benjamin, Bill Corley, Rick Mello, Don Halseth, Bob Wallace and Kent Hinton. Wallace would become the superintendent of Escalon Unified School District and later worked in the county office. Wallace is now a member of the Manteca Unified School District board.
Then, there were the original “Hafley Boys” who had been hired by the Manteca Elementary School District Superintendent Neil Hafley – who always referred to them as “My Boys.”
They included Wofford, Jim Minacci, Bill Pinto, James McGlynn, Bill Johnson and Jim Thomas.
Wofford retired at 65 in 1988 and found retirement created too much time on his hands, so he went to real estate school and worked under real estate broker George Dadasovich selling houses for some five years at Yosemite Realty on East Yosemite Avenue at Washington Street. Not busy enough, he went to the adult school and took classes in auto mechanics and guitar while still selling real estate.
From there he was hired by the Chapman College satellite in Modesto supervising some 15 student teachers. That’s where he met longtime fourth grade teacher Judy Lowder who then taught at Shasta School in Manteca who would later become a master teacher. He remembered having other student teachers from Escalon, Oakdale, Manteca and Ceres.
Wofford subsequently took on a position with Danny Costa Farms in Escalon where he became the shipping and receiving supervisor on the loading docks – loading semi-trailer rigs with fruits and vegetables bound for customers back East and throughout California. He was dock foreman as recently as five months ago.
“As I got older and the boxes got heavier, Danny gave me helpers because I finally got to a point that it was too much for me,” he said. “Now I work for eight weeks at harvest providing produce for the smaller fruit stands in the area – the little customers.”
Wofford recently attended his 75th high school reunion – an original class of only 13. Hee was the only surviving graduate student to attend after the school had closed in 1962. He reunited with his fourth-grade buddy Carl Shepard there some 87 years later.
He lauded his eighth-grade teacher Talbert Watson and 9th grade high school teacher Avis Ticer for urging him to go into education.
“Those are the two who really inspired me to become a teacher. It was my main focus,” he said.
After attending Southwestern State College for one semester he went back home to help on the farm when he was drafted into the Army – that was September of 1944.
Army sending him to
Ft. Ord prompted him
decide to move to
California after the war
In February of 1945 he shipped out to Fort Ord in California and rode a train all the way to San Francisco with other draftees. Seeing the green hills of California made him realize he wanted to make California his home rather than the sandy plains of Oklahoma. He would be shipped to Seattle following his basic training and then onto the Scofield Barracks in Hawaii and sent to Okinawa where he saw live action for four to five months.
He would receive a Purple Heart for a shrapnel wound that failed to take his life.
The troops were getting organized to make a landing in mainland Japan when the peace documents were signed at the island of Mindora allowing him to return home.
Wofford said he needed a vacation when he got back to California – something to clear his head – so he went out into the farmland and picked peaches, tomatoes, worked in the grapes and went to the Maler Barber College in Sacramento for six months. He had to intern for 1,000 hours in a barber shop – going to work in Olivehurst for a short period of time.
“That was not my dream,” he said.
He went back to college on the GI Bill and on weekends worked in a barbershop for his dad – also a barber. His sister Emma would teach first grade at Shasta School in Manteca for 25 years, he added.
The reason he went into teaching was the fellow students he witnessed struggling in classes over the years and thought it would be a worthwhile profession to become a teacher and be able to make a difference for students who were otherwise failing. And, as it happened, he later realized he could be more effective as an administrator.
“I always told my teachers – you are the experts – I am only here to be the facilitator to help you do your job in the classroom. And in order to do your job, you have to have parent support – and we did,” he said.
“The secretary is the key to every successful principal,” he stressed. “And the custodian is second in importance who can make or break a successful principal and a successful school.”
Wofford singled out secretary Ann Bird Owen who worked for him for 26 years as a staffer who made a difference at his school along with Jimmy Jacobs and custodian Tom Buchner.
To contact Glenn Kahl, email gkahl@mantecabulletin.com.
1ST GOLDEN WEST PRINCIPAL
Wofford served for nearly 30 years

