CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- His father belonged to the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1957, three years after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed "separate but equal" schooling, Samuel Wesley Lynch enrolled at historically all-black West Virginia State College.

"My father disowned me."

But Lynch didn't back down. The first white male graduate who lived on campus, he earned a degree in biology and education in 1961.

Retired and living in Rancho Mirage, Calif., Lynch visited Charleston last week to do some research on his alma mater, now West Virginia State University. The school opened in 1892 as the West Virginia Colored Institute.

He's writing a memoir about the first part of his 70-year life, including details about his reverse-integration role at State. "My time at State was historic," he said, "and I have to be exact about that."

He enrolled there partly in rebellion against his father, he said. "Dad wanted me to be a chemical engineer and go to WVU. I wanted to be a teacher. He said I was on my own. I enrolled at State because it was inexpensive."

Although Lynch never harbored the racial hatred espoused by his father, he did have a mistrust of blacks.

During his early days at West Virginia State, Lynch always sat in the rear of the room with his back to the wall. In class one day, a professor commented that he performed well but didn't relate to the other students. She wanted to know why.

"I told her, 'It's because I'm scared to death of you people. My father said I should never turn my back on you because you would stab me and rob me.'"

That exchange sparked an ongoing dialogue on race relations. Lynch learned that his classmates were "diametrically opposed" to the image portrayed by his father. "I was a poor white. They were from professional families, well-dressed, friendly, outgoing and giving. After these discussions, I no longer felt afraid."

He got along fine with black students, he said. "It was the white students commuting to campus who got on my case."

One night near the end of his second semester, he heard fire engines in front of the small house he rented adjacent to campus. He ran to the window. A cross burned in the front yard.

He made a place for himself at State despite the disparity in skin color. He earned a slot on the cheerleading squad, the only male among eight black females.

At first, the cheerleaders ignored him. They didn't believe their routines suited a male, he said. He won them over when they discovered he could do cartwheels from one end of the gym floor to the other.

"I've discovered that I was not only the first white cheerleader at State, I was the first white cheerleader in the Intercollegiate Athletic Association."

Of all the activities he participated in as a student at State, nothing affected him more than his role in the lunch counter sit-in at The Diamond. "We knew The Diamond department store was the keystone in the arch," he said. "If we could remove that keystone, the arch would fall and Charleston would be desegregated."

To prepare for the sit-in, the group studied pacifism. "If they spit on you or hit you, it would be OK. You were to be non-reactive. We had no weapons, not even shoestrings, belt buckles or jewelry, nothing that could be used as a weapon.

"The cafeteria had 28 seats. We had seven whites and seven blacks. Whites and blacks alternated seats at the counter with an empty seat between them "because we knew no one would come sit down beside a black."

 "The waitress asked me, as a white person, if I'd like to order. I said the person to my right, a black, was there first and should be waited on before me. The waitress went down the counter to all the white students, and they all said they must first serve the black person who was there before them.  They wouldn't wait on the blacks. It was all very well orchestrated and very peaceful. The media arrived."

Eventually, the store manager announced that The Diamond would serve all people at the lunch counter. "It was monumental and very emotional," he said. "We felt we had brought equality to Charleston."

Lynch devoted much of his early life to bettering the lives of blacks. He taught for several years near Washington, D.C., then spent six years in Africa teaching literacy and public health in Toga and Ghana.

The memoir he's writing ends with his return from Africa to work on a master's degree at UCLA. "After that, my life became like everyone else's," he said.

The story starts with his impoverished boyhood on a farm at Trace Fork, a backwoods area close to what is now the Corridor G shopping complex. "I want to show people that just because you are born in abject poverty doesn't mean there isn't anything you can do about it."

He writes candidly about the abusiveness of a father who made his living for a time transporting white lightning from West Virginia to Virginia. He changed occupations after an arrest elicited a vow to forever abstain from running moonshine. He drove trucks and later worked for Carbide.

Lynch grew up with three brothers and three sisters. The first house he remembers had no electricity or water. Later, the family rented a two-bedroom house on three acres where they grew virtually everything they ate, or hunted for it in the woods.

He describes his mother as kind and loving, "so different from my father," a woman who taught by word and example. "She would say, 'We are not poor. We just don't have any money.' There is a difference. That's the kind of mother she was."

His memoir includes a chapter on his reconciliation with his father in 1964. "I called him and told him it was time to call a truce, that I wanted to come home and be with just him. We spent the whole weekend together and buried the hatchet. I left him on Sunday. He died that Tuesday of a heart attack." He was 54.

After the teaching stint near Washington, Lynch wanted to do something more challenging, just to prove himself. "As a white student, I felt I had been given everything. So I bought a one-way ticket to West Africa. They needed teachers. I set up a situation where I didn't know anyone, didn't speak the language, didn't have enough money to live on and didn't have a job. I had taken French in college, but I really learned French on the street. And I learned the five African dialects."

A cholera outbreak hit Ghana, sparing only the six villages where he taught public health. "UCLA sent a representative to find out why those villages didn't get it. I was the common denominator. I was given a full scholarship at UCLA to get a master's in public health."

He followed with a doctorate at the University of Southern California. He taught there for six years. The next step was San Diego as evaluator of a Spanish bilingual program in city schools. Still not fully retired, he continues to work as a financial adviser.

He built a home in Italy and alternated between there and California for five years "until the weather in Italy finally got to me."

He returns to West Virginia with a sense of accomplishment. "Life has always been easy for me," he said. "I was a valedictorian, and I never studied. It was easy. Everything was easy.

"I never saw anything as impossible. I have stretched the envelope as far as it can be stretched. Everything I touch is wonderful. I've had a wonderful life."

 Reach Sandy Wells at san...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5173.