After a 40 year career as the physical education teacher at Prestonwood Elementary in Texas, Dale Irby, 63, leaves behind a consistent legacy that started as an accident and progressed as dare.

Irby tells Dallas News; “I was so embarrassed when I got the school pictures back that second year and realized I had worn the very same thing as the first year.”

But his wife, Cathy, dared him to do it a third year. Then Dale thought five would be funny. “After five pictures,” he said, “it was like: ‘Why stop?’”

So he just never did, right on through this, his final year as every kid’s favorite physical education teacher at Prestonwood Elementary in the Richardson school district.



Dale and Cathy, 62, met in 1973 as first-year teachers at Titche Elementary in the Pleasant Grove area of Dallas. He remembers getting the announcement that school-picture day was coming and that teachers should “wear something nice.”

“He took his job so seriously in teaching good sportsmanship — both in athletics and in life,” Prestonwood principal Pam Aitken said. “He taught a lot of kids to be fair and respectful of others. That’s a great legacy to leave.”