Earl Moore learned what it takes to be a guardian — to be responsible for the futures of others — when he was a child, a day after a tornado ripped through his neighborhood.
He didn’t know about the storm. He and his younger sister were asleep.
But his parents weren’t.
So when Moore woke up to see raincoats, boots and blankets on his parents’ bed, he asked his father why they were there.
Then, he saw the damage outside.
“What they had done through the night, the both of them had sat up all night and let us sleep and they watched over us, but they never ever woke us up,” Moore said. “We would have been nervous. We would have been afraid.”
And after 20 years of watching, of guiding generations of students to their next step, of protecting them, of fighting for them, and yes, of loving them like his own, Charles B. Aycock High School’s principal, “Daddy Falcon,” is leaving the nest.
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Moore characterizes his job as a “spiritual assignment.”
He sees himself as a father figure, leaning often on his own childhood to guide him.
That is, after all, where it all started — that dream to be in a classroom.
Moore’s journey to the CBA principal’s office began with that same little boy — his younger sister in tow — playing school in his backyard with other children from the neighborhood.
He was always the teacher.
But it was at the dinner table, with his parents, that Moore discovered his path, his calling.
Moore’s father told his children that they would serve their community — dedicating their lives to preparing young men and women to make positive contributions to the world.
All of them, their father said, were going to be educators.
“And when I was growing up, you listened to what your parents told you to do. Period,” Moore said. “My dad said that you are going to college and you are going to be a teacher. Teachers were revered and respected in the community. You could make a difference.”
Moore would find that from the moment he stepped onto the CBA campus some 43 years ago, he did just that.
His students became role models on campus by living up to the lofty expectations their teacher set for them.
“I expected excellence. I expected students to look their best and be their best,” Moore said. “I expected the ones in my program to be good role models because others were looking at them.”
But their peers weren’t the only ones watching.
Businesses, particularly those housed at Berkeley Mall, were so impressed that they offered Moore’s students jobs.
And after graduation, many of those same students became educators, too, modeling their own classrooms and expectations after those Moore taught them.
Two of them, Gary Hales and Kevin Smith, are currently Wayne County principals.
Moore is proud of the professionals they have become — like a parent who is touched that a child, someone they worked with, inspired and directed, chooses the same path, the same goals.
“Those people, for me, it’s special and personal, too, because you’d like to think you left your handprint on the direction they went in their life. It makes me very proud. It’s almost like I’m a proud dad,” Moore said. “For me, it’s my legacy. You see that what you were doing, you passed on.”
But Moore’s impact goes beyond creating the next generation of educators and administrators.
As Aycock’s principal, a role he has held since 2007, he was at the helm of a school that consistently performed at a high level — even receiving a bronze medal designation on the U.S. News and World Report’s “America’s Best High Schools” list in 2012.
Moore would say that the school’s success was not all about him — that it took a community effort and dedicated staff to pull off the achievement.
But it could be argued that his educational philosophy set the foundation that ensured such feats were possible.
His school, he said, was simply an extension of the home he grew up in — the safe space that all the neighborhood children were drawn to.
And in this increasingly fractured society, having that educational family was critical to any success his students would hope to have.
“Back in the day, there was a mother and a father in the home. In the afternoon, you would sit down as a family, with the mother and the father and the children, and you would have a discussion about what happened at school today and what is your homework. We don’t have that now,” Moore said. “So, because of that, we are a family here. And I take my role as the leader of this school very serious and always equate it to the head of household and being the father. The thing that the father is supposed to do for the children, I’m going to do.”
And he sticks to that mission, no matter what storm is brewing outside the Aycock walls.
That is when he thinks back to that lesson learned when the tornado swept through his neighborhood.
“You take the knocks and you take the blows so the students can focus on learning. I always remembered that (tornado) when I became a principal. It’s my job to make sure in whatever way possible that these children know that I care and I’m here for them and I’m going to protect them,” Moore said. “When you are in charge, you have to maintain the calm so there will be normalcy in this facility. My job is to educate children. That’s my job. And as long as I’m educating children, I’m fulfilling what I’m supposed to do. I can’t lose focus and lose sight of the reason why I’m in this building.”
The majority of the students shared that feeling, too — even when they heard stuff they did not want to hear, even when their principal told them the truth about how life works and what behavior would be expected of them.
Aycock was their house. Their peers, their family.
Just ask any Aycock graduate what they remember about their commencement ceremony and most will have one answer in common.
They will say it was Moore, standing on the stage and referring to himself as “Daddy Falcon.”
He tells the students that they are his baby falcons and that it’s finally time for them to leave the nest.
And as he closes his remarks, he says “Fly, Falcons, fly,” and releases doves from a cage.
It is a fitting end to four years in a school that was so much more, so special.
It was their safe space — one they know, whether they loved Moore or didn’t, that he created.
Moore’s voice cracks when he talks about this year’s commencement — and how he won’t be there to set this latest crop of fledglings on to their new horizons.
Every time he has been on that stage, he has had the same rush of feelings that a parent has when he has to say goodbye and let his children find their own lives.
“When I have to release them, it’s like your child leaving home, and the hardest thing for me about this decision is knowing I won’t be saying those things to them at graduation,” Moore said. “But I don’t know that emotionally, if I knew that this was my last graduation, that I personally could handle saying this is my last class. Not only would they be leaving the nest, but their Daddy would, too.”
So, he will walk the Aycock halls one final time Feb. 28.
Doing so before Graduation Day, he said, is one more opportunity to protect the young men and women he sees as his own.
He wants their achievement, their moment to be about them.
“People would have been like, ‘This is his last year,’ and the children wouldn’t be able to receive the respect and the dignity and the honor that they truly, truly, truly deserve,” Moore said. “The children deserve to be in the spotlight. Not me.”
But there will still be a chance to honor the county’s longest tenured principal.
A retirement celebration will be held at the Maxwell Center Saturday, March 7, from 2 to 5 p.m.
There, those Moore has touched over his four decades of service to Wayne County schools will have a chance to send him off to his next chapter — as a Baptist preacher.
“I am excited about the direction that I feel the Lord is leading me to,” he said. “There are a lot of hurting people and a lot of people who are searching for answers. So, in order to help them, I’m moving on from one ministry to another.”
But don’t think Moore’s exit will be without tears.
Deep down, he knows a piece of his heart will always be at the school he has dedicated so much of his life to — that it will be hard to wake up without knowing that the majority of his day would be spent on the CBA campus.
“To leave, it’s like a death, almost. So how am I going to leave? I’ll let you know after Feb. 28, but it’s going to be very difficult to leave a place that you love and you care for,” he said. “But for me, I know I was here for a reason and for a season. And I was on an assignment. And my assignment was complete. Period. The bigger picture is, it was a spiritual assignment and the mission was complete at this time. But still, I don’t know how I’m going to walk out of here my last day because for me, this has been my life.”
