The Wisemans: A Gift to Lexington That Just Keeps on Taking

Our view on life is that it's give and take. If you're given much, you try to return that in some manner. Yet there are those who take and take and always seem to expect more. Several who have written us concerning David Clayton Wiseman and his wife Hilda Jane Springer Wiseman have portrayed this couple as feeling Lexington School owes them something. We agree...and we sincerely hope that something is deposited into their checking accounts each month. That should pretty well cover it.

To understand the Wisemans, you may need to go back over 25 years when David was a young band director. Either he had little self control or he felt that he was above the rules, for he began a relationship with a young female student. To say that 25 years ago was a different "era" is probably too much of a simplification. We've known of teachers admonished for inappropriate relationships many years before that time period, but perhaps Lexington under its former principal was worried that it could not replace Wiseman and simply overlooked this peccadillo since David and Hilda were going to marry...despite the 12 year age difference. 

David Clayton Wiseman has just scored his first coup.

Now a married woman, Hilda Jane Wiseman is also armed with a degree in education from Athens State and is looking for a job. Where better for her to teach than with her husband at Lexington? No matter that such arrangements are frowned upon in most school systems, the Wisemans forge ahead with their plan for Hilda's career, and she becomes a fixture at the same school as her husband.

David Clayton Wiseman has just scored his second coup. 

Wiseman must have felt he could do no wrong at this point, but things changed when he was diagnosed with tinnitus and hearing loss. Obviously (according to Wiseman) he needed better acoustics and asked the Lauderdale Board of Education for a new band room. Never mind that such schools as Rogers had sold donuts for years in order to pay for a new band room, Wiseman felt the Lauderdale board should pay to build a new edifice to commemorate his talent.

When the board refused Wiseman's request, let's just say he didn't take it well. If he had expected an easy victory this time, he was not to have it. David Wiseman authorized sound studies of the band facilities and blasted legal threats at the board, going so far as to call them out in public. One reader reported:

It was a constant fight. My problem was his open discussion about private meetings with Principal Joiner and the Board...disdainful comments and an attitude that influenced the kids to have conflicts with their school leaders...

No, it seems David Wiseman doesn't take failure well - another of life's lessons he's apparently failed to learn. Yet for a time the band director still had supporters. Then came the summer of either 2008 or 2009 (we apologize that we cannot narrow this time frame down). Band boosters were called in to discuss the need for an emergency fund raiser. 

Where had $24,000.00 of band booster money gone?

Tomorrow: David Clayton Wiseman takes care of his family.