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He led Head Start in Pinellas County for 35 years, molding it almost from its inception.
To his family, William Sylvester Fillmore Jr. was "Mr. Head Start."
"It was his life," said nephew Nathaniel Woodard, who recalled sitting at Mr. Fillmore's dining table as he wrote speeches about the program that he would deliver in his booming voice.
"He would go to work every day until he got sick. And he tried to go then, too," recalled niece Betty Joe Bell. "He loved his job, and he loved working with kids."
Mr. Fillmore died on Feb. 22. He was 80.
Born in Tampa, he served four years in the Air Force before earning bachelor's and master's degrees in Atlanta. There, he became involved with stalwarts of the civil rights movement, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Vernon Jordan, Andrew Young, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Julian Bond.
He was invited to the White House twice, the first time to celebrate a Head Start anniversary, and the second to witness the signing of the Head Start Reauthorization Act by President Bill Clinton. He sat on federal advisory committees for the program.
To four nephews and a niece, he was a lifeline.
"When my mother passed away, he actually helped my grandmother support us. He helped take care of my mom's five kids, because my grandmother, she didn't want to split us up as kids," said Bell, 54, who was just 4 when her mother died at age 32.
"He did everything for us. He gave me away when I got married about 15 years ago. He's always been like a father figure to me," Bell said of the man who never married and had no children of his own.
"And he actually raises us and then steers the program of Head Start and builds it into what it is," Woodard said.
Pinellas County's Head Start was launched in 1965. Mr. Fillmore — after whom one of St. Petersburg's Head Start centers is named — was recruited to run the program in 1967. One of the challenges he faced was finding affordable sites, said M. Juanita Heinzen, who succeeded Mr. Fillmore as executive director in 2002. She said he often lamented that Head Start, a federal program for low-income children and their families, was sometimes not understood.
"In the beginning, it was a real struggle for Head Start being accepted as a meaningful partner in childhood education," said Heinzen, who became one of Mr. Fillmore's closest friends.
When he became too ill to commute from Tampa to Pinellas County, Heinzen made the daily round trip from St. Petersburg to pick him up and take him home. She did that for two years until he was forced to retire.
"He was a very proud man," Heinzen said. "Head Start was his life and we were his family."
Waveney Ann Moore can be reached at wmoore@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2283.
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