I have never doubted that the educational opportunity that I got as student in North Carolina’s public schools had a major impact on my life.
I am also positive that removing programs like the Governor’s Schools will harm not only students but also North Carolina.
Perhaps I am lucky to be over sixty and long past the days of worrying about education for my children, but I do have a granddaughter who will be turning three soon, and I hate to think the educational opportunities that have made North Carolina a great state are drying up before she has her chance.
I never attended one of NC’s Governor’s schools, but I did get the opportunity in 1962-63 to attend a gifted program run by Forsyth County. I think it made a huge difference in my life.
My mother was raising me as a single mom In Lewisville, NC. The first year I attended Lewisville School, all twelve grades were housed under one roof. I did well in school, and my mother who never finished high school drummed into me at an early age that getting a good education was important.
However, it wasn’t until I was chosen in a countywide search to participate in a year-long gifted program that I learned to really believe in myself. Lewisville in my youth was a very rural spot, and the highlight of our summers was always the two weeks when the ancient activity bus carried us daily for swimming lessons at Tanglewood Park.
The Forsyth gifted program gave me a different summer. We went everyday for several weeks to the Graylyn Mansion near Winston-Salem. That summer I got exposed to some great teachers and very intelligent classmates. I learned to type, and I figured out that I could hold my own in a room of smart students.
When the next term of school rolled around, my mother arranged the schedule at her beauty shop so that she could drive me 25 minutes each way to Oldtown School where I got to attend the county’s gifted class for my eighth grade year.
I learned a lot that year, but mostly I learned that hard work in school was really worth the effort. From that gifted class I went on to the McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and eventually to Harvard.
I managed to graduate with honors from Harvard, and I think my mother was pleased that her son was the first of her family that graduated from college.
Arguments could be made that going away to prep school got me into Harvard, but in my heart I know that the year in the gifted program is what flipped the switch for me. It showed me that learning could be fun and rewarding. It was a great life lesson.
My careers have been a little unusual. I ran a cattle operation for ten years after Harvard, and then worked for Apple for nearly twenty years. Since leaving Apple I have done things as diverse as selling ultra high speed networking and real estate. Through all the career changes, a love of learning first kindled in that Forsyth County gifted class has kept me successful.
For the last few years, I have also been interviewing potential Harvard students from North Carolina. I cannot count how many times graduating seniors have mentioned to me the impact that programs at the Governor’s School have had on them.
As Apple’s manager for higher education in the Southeast, I once had the opportunity to sit down in one of the rocking chairs in C.D. Spangler’s office when he was President of the UNC system. I will never forget his passion for providing a low cost, high quality education to university students. Those high educated students coming out of the UNC system have been critical to North Carolina moving forward.
Mr. Spangler’s belief in the power of education was not any different from my mother’s. Belief in education has been at the heart of North Carolina’s success.
A lot of people and companies have chosen to locate in North Carolina because of our education system. Budget cuts which destroy the Governor’s School and weaken NC’s higher education system are a huge step backward for North Carolina.
Speaking out against those cuts is the least that I can do for the state that gave me such a great start in life. Mother would accept nothing less.