Editor’s Note: The Annual Bridgeport High School Alumni & Friends Foundation, Inc.’s Hall of Fame Dinner will be held on Saturday, October 20, 2018 at the Bridgeport Conference Center. Social hour/reception will begin at 6:00 p.m. with the dinner program following at 7 p.m. This year’s Hall of Fame inductees are Alan Dye, Jane Conley Riley, Laura Stevens Aliff, and Norman Tolley (posthumously). Tickets are $30 and may be purchased HERE. Below is our first inductee, Norman Tolley.

Mr. Tolley was an educator for 47 years with the majority of those served in Harrison County. He retired as principal of Bridgeport High School and was the first principal to serve in the ‘new’ high school building on Johnson Avenue. He attended both Glenville State and Salem Colleges, but graduated from West Virginia University where he also received his Master of Education Degree. In 1985, as a retired BHS administrator, he was honored by the Harrison County Board of Education for ‘contributing significantly to the education of students’ and ‘bringing honor to all Harrison County Schools.’

 

Referred to as “old school” by some who remember him, Mr. Tolley was known as a disciplinarian – but without a mean or vindictive tone. His very last hire before he retired may have been to hire the Foundation’s very own, Alice Rowe, who started her career at Bridgeport High School in 1969 and taught until her retirement in the spring of 2018.

 

He was very active in community affairs and his church – where he also taught Sunday School. He was a member and past president of the Bridgeport Lions Club, going on to serve a term as a Lions’ District Governor.

 

He was married to Lucy Hall Tolley from Lost Creek, and they had two children. His daughter, Mary Ellen Burris, is senior vice president of consumer affairs for a 99-storesupermarket chain, Wegmans Food Markets, and headquartered in Rochester, NY. His son, Joseph C. Tolley (now deceased) had one daughter, Kimberly Krein, who lives with her husband, Paul, and their two sons in Leesburg, VA.

 

Mr. Tolley was born on Feb. 8, 1901 in Mingo, Randolph County and died Feb. 26, 1987.