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Once a professor, later homeless

A brilliant scholar had a problem that drove him from academic heights to occasional odd jobs.

By LEONORA LaPETER ANTON, Times Staff Writer
Published October 20, 2007

Lester C Dufford II, left, with Sterling McGee, when they played at Dominoes early this year. After he married, Lester Dufford moved to France for three months to study French. He earned his doctorate in French at FSU.
	[Dufford family]

ADVERTISEMENT [Dufford family] As a musician, Dufford also went through a country and western phase. [Dufford family] Dufford, shown here with the Midnighters, played the drum with several bands when he was young.

There was the brilliant, scholarly Mr. Dufford. Then there was the dark, desperate and occasionally homeless Mr. Dufford.

He grew up in St. Petersburg, the son of a propane truck driver and a seamstress. He had a love for language, and after graduating from Northeast High School, he studied Spanish, Russian, German and French.

At Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd College), his French teacher noticed him at once.

"This boy had an intellect so sharp, so profound without any pretense whatsoever," said Rejane Genz, 83, who taught at Eckerd from 1963 to 1987. "The company of great thinkers was as essential to him as your daily bread was to you and me."

Mr. Dufford wrote poetry and played drums for several groups, including the Dominoes, the first racially mixed band to perform on the beaches for an integrated audience. His future wife Sharon called him "short, dark and handsome."

Shortly after they married, they went to France for three months so he could study French. "When he spoke it, you didn't know he wasn't French," said Sharon Dufford, 64, who is retired from the St. Petersburg Times.

Mr. Dufford earned a doctorate in French at Florida State University. His dissertation was on French poet Paul Valery, who once said: "The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be."

He settled into the life of a French professor at Eckerd and a home in Lakewood Estates with his wife Sharon and their two children, Christie and Vincent.

Then his wife left him.

He was laid off.

He took odd day labor jobs.

He worked construction. Made pizza. Delivered bread. Worked as an electrician's helper. Managed a 7-Eleven store.

At times, he lived in the woods behind a night lounge and a veterinary hospital.

He was not ashamed of being homeless.

"He often said it was his finishing school," said Donna Edwards, 58, Mr. Dufford's companion of the past eight years.

Twice, he tried to get back into teaching, once at a Catholic high school and another time at a college in North Carolina. Neither post lasted a year.

That's because, through both chapters of his life, Mr. Dufford drank too much.

He tried to fight it, again and again, but he always succumbed.

He was caught driving under the influence twice, and spent several days in the county jail.

He got so muscular from riding a bike everywhere that Ms. Edwards called him Popeye.

He spent much of the last decade on a bar stool at Wilson's Lounge in St. Petersburg. There they called him Lucky.

"He used to play Santana on the jukebox and say he was learning Spanish," said the bar's day manager, Hazel Bain. "He had his own views on things. We used to call it 'Luckyology.'"

Once, as he sat on at the bar with Ms. Edwards, he said, "Oh yeah, 1981. That was the year I got my doctorate and went to Paris."

"Oh, yeah, 1981," Ms. Edwards replied. "That was the year I gave birth."

"I always refused to call him Lucky," Ms. Edwards said. "As one friend at the bar said, he was happy go lucky."

"When he was drinking, he was happy and he could forget all the bad choices he'd made in his life."

When Mr. Dufford died Oct. 12 at the age of 66, he was sitting in his armchair in front of the TV. His belt was unbuckled, his TV tray pushed to the side. His favorite snack, a salted banana, was uneaten. It was like he just went to sleep.

He'd recently been sober a few months. He'd taken antibiotics for the flu and had a polyp removed from his colon. There was concern that he might have prostate cancer.

He left behind boxes and boxes of French books, the tent and the sleeping roll he used in the woods, an old trailer and an $83 bar tab. His family is giving his trailer to a down-on-his luck blues musician who lost his home in a fire.

Mr. Dufford, who always wanted to go to France one more time, will get his wish. A family friend is taking her father's ashes to Paris in December. She has agreed to take Mr. Dufford, too.

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

Biography

Lester C. Dufford II

Born: June 12, 1941.

Died: Oct. 12, 2007.

Survivors: daughter, Christie; son Vincent; and sister Shirley.

[Last modified October 19, 2007, 22:51:12]