Loyd "Buster" Black '62

Each year Stratford ninth graders are taken to "Old Stratford" for Immersion Day, a morning with scheduled tours of Stratford's original campus, group discussions with school founders and teachers, and panel discussions with alumni. Ninth graders learn about how and why Stratford was founded and what student life was like when the school was located in the historic Overlook Mansion, which is now the Woodruff House owned by Mercer University.

Class of 1962 alumnus Buster Black is a regular guest speaker at Immersion Day. Black was Stratford's first graduate and Salutatorian. Each year, he describes how he became a Stratford student. It was the summer of 1960, and he had finished his sophomore year at Lanier High School. His family was in turmoil due to his father's terminal illness. He read in the newspaper that candidates were being interviewed for scholarships for a new school in Macon for those serious students who were interested in a quality college preparatory environment.

Unknown to his parents, Buster would walk, hitch hike and take a bus for several consecutive days to be interviewed and later awarded an academic scholarship for Stratford's first junior class. School administrators, Joe and Sue Hill and Marvin Davis, took the young man under their wings and gave him summer jobs assisting with remodeling projects at the mansion being converted to a school.

When school began in the fall, it did not take Black long to rise in the leadership and academic ranks of Stratford life with achievements such as senior class and student council president, Beta Club member, Honor Graduate and class Salutatorian. Following graduation, he studied English literature at Duke University with later study in a combined law and M.B.A. program at the University of Georgia.

Black says, "My Father died just days after Stratford opened its doors for its first classes. Understandably, my Mother was devastated by the loss of my Father. Without the guidance and motivation of Dr. Joe and Sue Hill and Marvin and Margaret Davis at such a critical time in my life, I surely would have been without so much of the direction which has led me to many of the achievements in my life."

Black went on to practice law in Atlanta with his own firm specializing in the regulation of the financial planning industry. He developed and popularized the legal and business framework used by most financial planning firms in the United States in the seventies and eighties. Moving from the office towers of Peachtree Street to his home office on his farm at Brooks, Georgia, today he specializes in equine law with a nationwide involvement in the equine industry. He enjoys continuing the family avocation of showing Tennessee Walking horses and is active as a trustee for the Methodist Church retreat, Epworth by the Sea, at St. Simon's Island.

He credits a single act of kindness by Dr. Joe Hill following the death of his father with being the initial stimulus for family estate planning for Stratford's benefit. Black says, "Dr. Hill wrote a very kind condolence letter to my Mother at a time when our family was literally shattered and he really didn't know us. His thoughtfulness has never been forgotten. When you combine the quality of character demonstrated by Dr. Hill and the extraordinarily beneficial impact Stratford's faculty had on my development with the simple fact that Dr. Hill's dedication to that spirit of quality to benefit promising, young people has endured as a constant at Stratford for fifty years, how can you not support it?"

Both Buster and his late mother have made significant testamentary provisions for Stratford with estate planning over two generations put in place starting 16 years ago. "We are very pleased," he says, "to try to help see that Stratford is able to continue to provide horizons for young people in the future so that they may be exceptionally prepared to find their own excellence wherever they may go and whatever they may do."