EDUCATION

I graduated from Huntington East High School in Huntington, West Virginia in 1970. I never really liked school, because I was not a very good student. I did not like the cliques in the school. I guess all schools are like that, even the homeschool support group to which I now belong. The kids are more in cliques than the adults, but we all tend to have our own little niche.

In high school, there was the popular crowd or the "in" crowd, there was the "smart" crowd not quite "in" but sort of; some of the "in" crowd was "smart" as well. There were the "athletes" of course - mainly football and basketball players. (We only had male teams, no female teams in basketball. ) There were the "hoods;" they mostly hung out in the "trade" school. These were all the " smoking and getting into trouble" kinda kids. I wasn't in any of those crowds. I had a group of friends that really weren't in any of the above mentioned cliques. I guess our "clique" was really the largest part of the school. We didn't do real great academically, but we did ok. We weren't athletes, we weren't popular.

I wasn't sad at graduation like a lot of the girls. I remember girls crying and carrying on and I was thinking, boy am I glad to get out of this school.

I enrolled that very summer into college and took my first college course: English 101. I went to Marshall University also in Huntington. My freshman year was very traumatic for the whole university. One week before Thanksgiving, the varsity football team was coming home from an away game at East Tennessee State Univerisity. They were flying into the local airport which is located on the top of a mountain. Something happened and the pilot missed the runway and crashed the plane into the side of the mountain. There were no survivors. The only football players who survived, had been injured in an earlier game and did not go on this trip. It was a very sombering experience to go back to classes and see empty seats of players that had been there only last week. It really brought the whole town together. I remember that my future brother-in-law was the Student body president that year and he had a very prominent role in trying to hold the academic body together and it was very difficult. He presided at one of the many memorial services that were held. The one I remember most vividly that was televised was held in the Memorial Field House. It was the same place that my high school graduation had taken place. It was pretty much packed with the community. One hymn that was played was "God Our Help in Ages Past." I always remember that year whenever that hymn is sung.

On the bright side, they are now making a major motion picture about this event. The movie is called We Are Marshall. It is mainly about the challenge of the coach that was hired after the crash to rebuild the football program. Right now Marshall has one of the best football progams in the country and several of its players have gone on to play professional football.

I took 5 years to finish 4 years of college, because I changed my major after my sophmore year. I knew I wanted to be in education, but I wasn't sure what area. I started out as an English major with a minor in Spanish. I changed to Home Economics. I am not sure why. Mainly, I think that I had in the back of my mind that learning how to run a house and the ability to cook, sew and take care of children would be good for me. I was already reading and studying Titus at the time, both books of Timothy, 1 Peter, all the passages that talk about the roles of women. While I was reading those passages, I was immersed in a very feminist society in the university setting. Get a job, go to work, learn how to take care of yourself, you don't need a man in your life. I was going to Christian bible studies, but while the bible was being taught, these particular passages were not being taught to women. We were still trying to make God's Word fit into society, instead of trying to mold our lives/society/culture into what God would have it to be.

I remember a history class that I took my freshman or sophmore year. We had a women professor who was very feminist. She was not married and had her doctorate. I don't think that she ever got married either. I don't think that she ever wanted to get married. Some discussion came up in class about marriage and I remember vividly sharing what God's word said about women's roles and about marriage and she shot me down with a verbal whip that still stings to this very day. I don't remember what she said exactly, but you have to know it wasn't in support of biblical womanhood. I still was not a very good student. I got a D in that class. I think that I probably didn't study as much as I should have, but I always said that I got the D because I disagreed with the Prof!! It seems that I did get C's on all of my papers and things, so I don't know if I really deserved the D or not. I did not fight it; what was the point.

Anyway, I never really wanted to be a career woman. I always wanted to be a wife and mother. I guess that is why I decided to major in Home Economics because it centered around the home. I knew that was biblical. I graduated from Marshall in 1975. I began taking some graduate courses that next year and was employed in a daycare center. My degree was in vocational home economics, and I did think that I might teach in a vocational school one day. In order to teach you had to have so many hours of field experience in the particular area - child care, foods, sewing, etc. I worked for a year and then I decided that God wanted me to further my education so I went to seminary for my masters program. I enrolled in Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the fall of 1976. SBTS is located in Louisville, Ky. I loved Louisville, still do and still have good friends there to this day. I graduated in December of 1978 with a Masters in Religious Education and stayed in Louisville until June. I got a position as a Youth Director in a church in Roseville, Michigan. I moved back to Huntington on New Year's Eve and started back to Marshall in the spring of 1980.

OK, that is all for now. I could go on and on and on and on.............................