Pulley Vocational Center

Here follows a history of the school as published on the Fairfax County Public Schools website:

Earl L. Pulley
Mr. EARL L. PULLEY, SR., was born February 7, 1925, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the only son of the late Linwood and Carrie McKisson Pulley. Shortly after marriage, Mr. Pulley and his wife moved to the Washington, D.C. area, where they were blessed with a son and a daughter.

Mr. Pulley received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts Degrees in Education from Virginia State College and spent 30 years in the Fairfax County School system, serving as a principal and as Coordinator of Human Relations (administration). He was twice director of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), In-School Program, and president of the Fairfax County Teachers Association. At age 29, he became the principal of Oak Grove Elementary School in Herndon, Virginia. Later, Mr. Pulley was principal of both the Drew Smith and Lillian Carey Centers for the Mentally Retarded. Then, he was able to demonstrate his superior competence as a principal and his unique and creative talents as an educator to juggle schedules, balance educational programs, and match specialized teaching skills.

Mr. Pulley had an unequivocal gift of relating to students on all scholastic levels, and had the capacity to relate to people of all ages regardless of their intellectual or socioeconomic status. He often said:
"In men whom men condemn as ill and dangerous, I find so much goodness still. In men whom men proclaim profound and good, I find so much sin and blot. I dare not draw a line between the two, when God has not."

Mr. Pulley was also member of numerous cultural, religious, civic, and fraternal organizations. Yet, with all he achieved in the field of education, Mr. Pulley’s greatest joy and fulfillment came from the last six years of his life, where he devoted himself to his prison ministry to the Lorton Correctional Facility and their families. On November 26, 1988, shortly before his death, he and his beloved wife celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary in the prison with their ‘Lorton Sons.’ Mr. Earl Pulley died on Saturday, March 11, 1989, in a place he lovingly called, God's Mountain, the Skycroft Religious Retreat Center, Middletown. Maryland.

It is through his examples of exemplary character, leadership, and commitment to excellence that Mr. Pulley’s memory lives on in our students and in our school. The Earl L. Pulley Achievement Award for students from the Pulley Career Center has been established in honor of Mr. Pulley, the man after whom our center is named.

School History
Founded during the 1984-85 school year as the South County Vocational Center, our facility was renamed in honor of Earl L. Pulley in 1989. Learn more about our school's namesake in this video produced for Fairfax County Public Schools’ cable television channel Red Apple 21:

(Host): The Earl L. Pulley Career Center, located on the campus of West Potomac High School, was named in honor of Earl Linwood Pulley, a former Fairfax County Public Schools educator and administrator. Earl Pulley was born in February 1925 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, to Linwood Pulley and Carrie McKisson. He grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from Virginia State College, now called Virginia State University. Earl Pulley married Shirley Winston in Richmond in November 1953, and shortly thereafter the couple settled in Washington, D.C., where they raised two children, Earl, Jr. and Vera.

(Earl, Jr.): We were at 3401 22nd Street SE.

(Vera): What’s called Parklands and still is Parklands.

(Earl, Jr.): The building is still standing to this day. The bricks are the same. I see where my bedroom window was on the second floor. Where their bedroom window was on the second floor. It’s still standing.

(Host): In August 1954, Earl Pulley was appointed principal of Oak Grove Elementary School located in Herndon. At that time, public schools in Fairfax County were racially segregated, and Oak Grove served only African-American children.

(Interviewer): When you were living in the city and your dad was working all the way out in Herndon was he taking the train out there?

(Earl, Jr.).: No, he drove.

(Vera): He drove.

(Interviewer): He drove out to Herndon?

(Vera): Yes. There wasn’t a Metro then.

(Interviewer): No interstates. No 66.

(Vera): Nope. He drove in the rambler.

(Earl, Jr.).: The rambler.

(Vera): He had a little rambler. Uh huh.

(Earl, Jr.).: And ran that rambler – he rambled the rambler right into the ground.

(Vera): Until the wheels fell off as they say.

(Earl, Jr.).: Rode it till it just went.

(Host): Following the death of Saunders Moon in December 1963, Earl Pulley was chosen to succeed him as principal of the all-black Drew-Smith Elementary School in Fairfax County’s Gum Springs community. In 1965, Drew-Smith and another former all-black elementary school, Lillian Carey, were converted into special education centers as part of Fairfax County Public Schools’ desegregation plan. Earl Pulley served as principal of both facilities concurrently.

(Earl, Jr.): When he was going to be physically at Drew-Smith he had all the files from Lillian Carey in the trunk of his car so if anybody called him at Drew-Smith and said, “look, we’ve got an emergency at Lillian Carey blah, blah, blah… we need to get information.” He could go out to his car. Open the files. Find it.
Address it. And keep moving. Go on back in and go to work. And vice versa if he was at Lillian Carey.

(Host): After the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, or CETA, was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1973, Earl Pulley was promoted to Director of the CETA program in Fairfax County Public Schools. The CETA program provided students from low-income families with employment at schools.

(Earl, Jr.): What it was, was like if you went to Groveton High School or if you went to Groveton…

(Vera): …Fort Hunt, it didn’t matter because he got everybody jobs.

(Earl, Jr.): Then what would happen is he would get you a job – an after-school job – at the same school. Like assisting a janitor, you might do that. If you were a woman or a young lady then you might work in the office filing or typing or doing something.

(Vera): Every year they do a mass reunion picnic. And I’ll meet people. When they see my name tag and see Vera Pulley Strong and they’re like, “Oh your dad gave me my first job.” And you know I don’t have a clue who they are.

(Host): In 1980, after the Federal government cut the funding for the CETA program, Earl Pulley retired from Fairfax County Public Schools. In his retirement, Pulley stayed active, serving the community in a prison ministry at the Lorton Correctional Facility and by volunteering at the South County Vocational Center on the campus of what is today West Potomac High School.

(Vera): When daddy retired, because he dealt with handicapped and mentally challenged children, then when he retired they had a center inside of West Potomac. And he was too active and he wasn’t just going to be sitting at home, so he used to volunteer there. And he would go up there and work there every day and work with the kids. They would do job training. Whether it was, you know, being a waitress or if they were in a wheelchair they would learn how to work like um, like be a hostess or something somewhere, but in various jobs. And so once he passed then they named the school after him as the Earl L. Pulley Vocational Center because that was just his baby and everybody loved him down there.

(Earl, Jr.).: It was a very, very important work. And he loved it so much.

(Host): Earl Pulley passed away in March 1989 and was buried at Mount Comfort Cemetery in Fairfax County

(Vera): But what was so amazing was his funeral. Shiloh Baptist is huge. It was the sanctuary. It was the balcony. And it was so packed that people were outside. And that was so touching to see all the people that loved my father.

(Host): One month later, the Fairfax County School Board renamed the South County Vocational Center the Earl L. Pulley Center in his honor. Today, Earl Pulley’s exemplary character, leadership, compassion, and commitment to excellence continues to inspire the students at the center which bears his name.