Longtime KC Educator Fred Heine Dies

By Joyce Tsai, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Aug. 18–Fred L. Heine, a longtime educator and former Kansas City school board president, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his home in Platte City. He was 89.

Heine was an educator for 40 years before he ran for the school board in 1982. He served as principal at Van Horn, Northeast, East and Humboldt high schools, and the Technical Education Center. He also was a mathematics teacher at Northeast.

He was 67 when tapped to be board president in April 1984.

Past board President Sue Fulson called him “a consensus builder” who was always willing to hear people out during the difficult years of dealing with desegregation in his district.

As a new principal at East High School in 1970, he presided over a period of turbulent racial relations, when violence between blacks and whites broke out daily.

“He used to meet the buses and kept things calm,” Fulson said. “He was willing to work with people from every neighborhood. He stood up for what was the right thing to do.”

Virgil Leibold, a guidance counselor at Van Horn during Heine’s tenure as principal, remembered him as so student-oriented that he moved his office to the reception area where the secretaries sat to be closer to the students.

Michele Anderson, his daughter who has been a Kansas City School District teacher for nearly 30 years, said her father instilled in her a love of education and a respect for the students he served. “He would always listen to their side of the story,” she said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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