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Hamilton Henderson, who is retiring after teaching for 40 years at Central High School, receives a hug from Spanish teacher Cindy Pickrel on Tuesday. ‘Ham,’ as he is known to many, was visited by several peers while packing up his classroom.

Hamilton Henderson reserves a place in his memory for the community within the community.

It served as his village, as in the Kenyan proverb that “it takes a village to raise a child.”

His parents raised him in an apartment above the Tapee Fruit Market. But so did adults in the Downtown neighborhood, an ad hoc collection of folks with names like Hershewe and Lipira and Spugnardi.

Upstairs in the 200 block of Edmond, where a Holiday Inn now stands, the youngster could gaze down on the farmers as they rolled in each day at the City Market. And Roy Blum at the corner tavern and Eddie Meyer who ran a Third Street grocery knew him to be Oliver and Mary’s son.

Even though unwritten Jim Crow laws kept him from unoccupied seats in the dining area at Kresge’s, young Hamilton felt looked-after in his surroundings.

Mr. Henderson sits at a student’s desk in Room 126 at Central High School and, with his fingertip, draws the remembered village on the veneer. It is the week after spring semester’s end. Summer has moved in, the classroom warm, the hallways quiet.

The teacher arrives to clean up, not a seasonal task this time. He has retired after 40 years at Central, a tenure unthinkable to younger colleagues.

A mock tombstone sits on a shelf, reading “Here Lies Strife.” Its storage this year will have a permanence.

His mind runs to that village, to his disciplined upbringing. His father, a chef who died when Hamilton was 10, instilled in his son the importance of character. His grandmother, with a third-grade education, impressed on him the importance of learning, of speaking confidently and without slang.

A scene flashes back. He had acted up at a Downtown store, and his mother spanked him on the spot. Her words: “As long as you live, you’ll never embarrass yourself, your heritage or your family.”

Hamilton got a job at age 13, cleaning rest rooms at a hotel each Saturday. Blacks could not lodge there. A hotel cook named Frances would make him pancakes and bacon, which he ate on a counter near the kitchen sink. He was not allowed in the restaurant.

The village defined him, but he took note of the world outside. “I never knew to hate somebody because of their color,” he says. “Until someone points out a disparity, you’re not aware.”

After graduation from Lafayette High School, he attended the junior college and then went to get an education degree at the state college in Maryville. He interviewed for the Central High job in a hospital room, the administrator having just had surgery.

In 1969, Mr. Henderson became a teacher, the only African-American on the faculty. He struggled against the insecurities of every young teacher and also the slights that accompanied a racially troubled time. The encouragement of colleagues like Gary Sprague and Gus Sarris helped him past the tough parts.

Also, the young teacher found a grounding in the classroom. His history classes would begin with a time called “For the Good of the Order,” a general discussion of current events. He implored his students’ questions, begged them to look deeper than the surface.

“It’s that curiosity and that inquiry that kids have that excite me,” he says. “To me, there is a difference between an indoctrination and an education.”

He claims to have never tired of the classroom, never grown weary of working with students as a coach of gymnastics, track, soccer and cheerleading. Mr. Henderson’s interests even led him to help choreograph school musicals.

Jason Callaway, an assistant principal at Central, said Mr. Henderson’s retirement means the loss of a friend, a colleague and a repository of institutional knowledge.

“He’s been a part of it for so many years. This was his home, and he created it as such,” Mr. Callaway says. “He influenced not only our school, he influenced our community.”

Mr. Henderson spoke at Central’s graduation on Sunday, reconstructing that village he knew as a child. He told the graduates about character that grows through hardship. The tough times give you strength, the wherewithal to stand up.

“And then you just smile,” he says. “And they wonder why you’re smiling.”

The teacher then smiled, ready to clean his classroom.

Ken Newton can be reached at kenn@npgco.com.