Betty McNeal Wheeler, who founded a high school that became one of the best in the country in a humble five-room Quonset hut in St. Louis, died May 19, 2011 of multiple health issues. She was 79.
Mrs. Wheeler founded Metro High School, the “school without walls,” in 1972, based on innovative schools that she’d read about in Chicago, Philadelphia and Brooklyn, N.Y.
The school focused on college-bound juniors and seniors. In addition to its shortage of walls and classrooms, it didn’t have bells announcing class changes, athletic facilities or many other resources.
Mrs. Wheeler also founded a culture that surrounded the school. There was the “Metro Hug” that she gave students, or Metroites. There was an informality-she asked students to call her by her first name and many teachers followed suit. She also gave students her home phone number.
But she also could be fiercely protective.
In 1995, while trying to keep four “street punks” and three students apart, when one of the punks reached around her to try to hit a student, she hit the attacker in the face. “I don’t let anybody treat one of my students wrong,” Mrs. Wheeler said about the incident in a 1996 profile.
In that article, Mrs. Wheeler said, “I’ve always told everyone that Metro is my life.”
Mrs. Wheeler told students: ” ‘You were hand-selected to be here. You will not fail,’ ” said Steve Hinchcliff, a member of the first graduating class and past president of the alumni association. “And it was true. Very few people failed.”
“We were a family,” said David Silverman, a 1987 graduate.
“I’ve always called her a visionary,” said the school’s first secretary, Rose A. Williams, who also cared for Mrs. Wheeler at the end of her life. “Betty could see a future. Gather what she needed to implement getting us to that goal.”
Mrs. Wheeler retired as principal in 1997.
The school, now known as the Metro Academic and Classical High School, still leads the district and often the region in high school achievement test results, scholarships, ACT and SAT scores, merit finalists and college placement.
Mrs. Wheeler was the daughter of the late T.D. McNeal, Missouri’s first black state senator, the first black president of the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners, the first black curator of the University of Missouri and the first black nonalumnus trustee at Washington University.
Mrs. Wheeler attended Sumner High School, where she was in the National Honor Society.
She attended St. Louis University in the 1950s-one of the few black students at the time.
Mrs. Wheeler was married to Sam “Boom Boom” Wheeler, a member of the Harlem Globetrotters, for 32 years until his death in 1989. They met at a game in St. Louis, which Mrs. Wheeler was attending with free tickets. She wound up giving directions to the team, which had gotten lost on the St. Louis University campus.
Mrs. Wheeler began her teaching career at Gundlach Elementary and also worked at the Northside Reading Clinic and Yateman Elementary School, and she coordinated the district’s work-study program at Ralston Purina Co.
Visitation and the funeral will be held Friday at Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church, 5515 Martin Luther King Drive, St. Louis. Visitation is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. The funeral begins at 11 a.m. Burial will follow at Calvary Cemetery.
Among the survivors are her daughter, Gayle Wheeler-Williams of St. Louis; two brothers, Ted McNeal of St. Louis and Philip McNeal of New York City; a sister, Kathryn Bingham of St. Louis; two grandsons and one great-grandson.
