U.S. Rep Wm. Lacy Clay sent a smoldering letter this week to Darnetta Clinkscale, president of the St. Louis Board of Education, taking up a cudgel in the case of legendary Coach Floyd Irons of Vashon High School. Clay said he had caught wind from some incensed constituents that “certain administrators have isolated Coach Irons in a non-existent job at district headquarters in order to physically remove him from the Vashon Campus.”
Seeing these alleged actions as “the first step towards termination,” Clay got steamed and urged that Irons be granted full access to the Vashon campus, even going so far n so far beyond his jurisdiction, one might say n as to recommend hiring the coach as the school’s principal. It was a hard, heavy play by a congressman on the home court.