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"Busy people don't have time to be bad."
- Elmer Garinger's philosophy on student discipline
"He is a modern man without modern mannerisms...There is no booming laugh, no risque story. You'll find him neither on golf course, at cocktail party nor at wrestling match. He is a scholar-administrator."
- Charlotte Observer columnist Kays Gary
Dr. Garinger was known as a quiet, thoughtful man who would remember students and teachers going back several decades. He was a voracious reader who rarely raised his voice, but was known to exchange "loud and pungent words" over issues important to him.
He was against corporal punishment in schools. "You never know what damage you do," he said. Instead, he believed the best way to handle discipline was to keep students busy.
When he and his wife, Katherine, moved to Charlotte in 1921, they lived in the Jefferson Apartments and enjoyed dining at the old Ivey's uptown, where you could get lunch for 35 cents.
They later moved into a house at 2625 Briarcliff Place, where he would grow flowers, tomatoes, and lima beans in his garden.
After Katherine passed in 1968, Dr. Garinger moved to Queens Towers (later Sharon Towers) and was known for his daily, 6 a.m., 2 mile walks along Queens Road and Selwyn Avenue.
He died August 21, 1982 at Sharon Towers, just over a month after his 91st birthday. He and his wife are entombed at Sharon Memorial Mausoleum.
He is “small and silver haired...wears impeccably matched and slightly baggy clothes.”
He frequently removes his glasses and puts them on again and “speaks in a soft, distant, voice, slowly at first, then as his interest quickens, with great enthusiasm, and he stresses his verbs.”
“When he walks, he rolls slightly from side to side, as if he had spent some time aboard a ship.”
- Description of Dr. Elmer Garinger in a 1962 Charlotte Observer article.
This photo of Elmer Garinger pointing to a map was published in the 1951 edition of Snips and Cuts yearbook, Central High School.
Katherine Thomas Garinger's death certificate. Oddly, it lists her father as Richard Jefferson Garinger. She was 77.
Familysearch.org
Elmer Garinger's death certificate. Cause of death is Arteriosclerotic heart disease. He was 91.
Familysearch.org
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