Clarendon County native James Dingle has served as a municipal and magistrate judge; a football coach; a high school athletics director; an industrial arts teacher; and as an assistant high school administrator.
But when asked about his long career, he just smiles and has a simple answer.
"I was just a down home country boy who went off and made good and came back home to work in my community," he told The Manning Times in 2016.
Dingle attended Midlands Technical College in Columbia and South Carolina State University in Orangeburg before returning to his hometown of Manning. He would end up spending more than 30 years at C.E. Murray High School, just a few miles down S.C. 261 from the community where Dingle's name would become ubiquitous with "service before self."
His former school honored him over the weekend, naming the school's gymnasium after the longtime educator.
Alumni, faculty and staff placed a plaque at the gymnasium on Sunday. The dedication reads, "Williamsburg County School District (has) renamed the C.E. Murray High School Gymnasium (the) James Dingle Gymnasium upon request from members of C.E. Murray Alumni, in honor of his 31 years of dedicated service to the students and district."
Superintendent Dr. Rose Wilder approved the renaming. As former superintendent of Clarendon School District 1, she frequently worked with Dingle on various community projects and fundraisers.
Dingle became one of the first black magistrates in the state when he was appointed as such in Clarendon County in 1983, just weeks after his retirement from the school district. Due to a South Carolina law that requires all state judges to retire at 72, Dingle had to leave the position in 1999.
"I really didn't want to leave, but I didn't have a choice," Dingle said in 2016. "Fortunately, the city had a place for me."
Dingle became a municipal judge for the city of Manning, bypassing the state law, which had no effect on local judges. Dingle also held concurrent duties in Summerton for about a decade.
See this week's lManning Times for more, including comments from Dingle and Wilder.
