“I was a band kid to start off with. So when I graduated I had a full ride scholarship and Mccord University for music, so I could be a band teacher. Instead, I got married. I was married almost 15 years and had 4 children, and got divorced. I worked at a bank for five years in a loan department, a large band, and I had worked for Dillion’s for 13 years and I was not upper management but definitely middle management. I balanced literally twice a week millions of dollars. I wrote schedules for up to 300 people. I actually went to the board of directors and presented items. So I was definitely in the workforce. After a really bad day at work, a guy threw $5,000 at me because I was a female and he didn’t believe females should be working. I was the only one that could do what he wanted so he threw money. Then I decided I need to change. So I decided again that I wanted to go back and be a teacher. I was a single mom and had four sons and not rich by any means. So I was talking to my mom, and my mother said, you can’t do that. I was 34 years old. Bless my mothers heart. Now she didn’t mean I didn’t have the ability to, she meant that it was going to be really hard to go to college full time, work full time, and raise four sons. But that’s not what I heard. I heard it’s a fate worth dying for. So being me, I  decided I would go parachuting, and if I didn’t die jumping out of an airplane, then it was a sign from heaven that I should quit my job and go to college. I actually fell out of the plane because my hands where to small to hold on and it just kind of took me. I remember thinking, well, this is either the start of a whole new adventure in my life or else im going to be dead, and if I’m going to die in five minutes im gonna make the most of it, I dived bomb birds, did curly cues.I landed happy as a lark jumping up and down. The next day I went and quit my job. Within about four weeks I was in college. I was 41 when I graduated and in my first year out I subbed here at Baldwin full-time and only missed three days out of that school year. Three days before the next school year started Mrs. Wright, who was the principal at the time, came down to the gas station I was working at, at the time. She asked what time I got off and if I wanted a job I said yes and that I got off at 2 and she said good, come in after work and sign your contract. That was 25 years ago, now I’m here.”