>> So my name is
Connor Buckley and I'm here with Sarah Ernest.
We are here interviewing Anne Sullivan.
Today's date is October 12th, 2016.
We're at the location of
Sans Souci Women's Club in Adairsville, Georgia.
>> So if you could just please state
your full name and when and where you were born?
>> My full name is Anna Valova Shaw Sullivan
and I was born on April 9,
1960 in Floyd County.
I was born in Floyd Medical Center now.
It was Floyd Hospital at the time.
Growing up, we didn't have physicians here.
We either went to Calhoun, Cartersville,
or Rome for health care,
and a lot of people went to Rome for the hospitals there.
>> So what did your parents do for a living?
>> My mother was a full time parent,
and she took care of my two sisters, my brother,
and me, and along
with my grandparents and my great aunt.
And my father was
a forester with Haas Land Company in Calhoun.
And also we lived on family property that
my great uncle had purchased and then
my father had purchased from his estate.
And my dad had blacanus cows,
and a garden,
and big giant garden
that we had to spend time in in the summer.
We appreciated in the winter.
>> So why did your mother move to Adairsville?
I know you said she wasn't originally from Adairsville.
>> No. My mother was born in
South Georgia in Brunswick and lived there.
And then her father got a job with Arco in Texas,
working with the oil industry.
And they moved out there and that's where she grew up,
but she still had family here in Georgia.
Some of them were here in Adairsville.
So after she had graduated
from North Texas State University,
she got a teaching job and came to Adairsville.
>> And so what was life like growing up in
a dairy school for you as a kid. What was that like?
>> Well, I didn't live in town.
So our family was out on a farm.
And so we still had dirt roads,
that beautiful fine red clay car went by.
It would just be this cloud of dust that
would just come rolling up the hill towards the house.
And we lived across the road from my father's parents.
So I knew my father's family,
my mother's mom and dad.
My mother was an only child.
And my grandparents would
come from Texas to visit us at Christmas time.
We would go there in the summer
or they would come to us in the summer.
But it was a small town.
So people we went to church with,
we went to school with, we bought groceries with them.
You saw the people
all the time that you
lived with and that you were friends with.
And that was good and bad, I guess.
You knew a lot about everybody.
>> How long was your father's family in this area?
>> They came to
Northwest Georgia in the 1800s, like mid 1800s.
I'm not sure exactly when
they came to Adairsville proper,
but they had come to Dalton first and then moved here.
And it was my great uncle and his wife,
Charlie and Jule Shaw who lived here in
Adairsville and he actually was
the County Tax Commissioner and he
had taken over that job after my great great grandfather,
who was the tax commissioner died.
My Uncle Charlie took
over that job and started doing that job.
So they knew a lot
of people in Bartow County and lots of families.
>> So what would you do for fun as a kid.
Did you ever come in town?
>> Yeah. We spent a lot of time just out.
There were a lot of woods around us,
and so we spent a lot of time outside playing.
In the summertime, that's where you wanted to be
was outside and most of the time barefoot.
When we came into town,
my mom would come in on Fridays and
get groceries and she would
drop us off in this building
because this was the public library at the time.
The San Suci Club had started as a women's social club,
but part of what they did was that they encouraged,
we would say, literacy today,
but they encouraged reading and they
encouraged a lending library.
And this was one of
my favorite places because I was that kid that was
if I could have a stack of books in
the summertime and I could take a book and
go outside somewhere and be left alone
and read all day, I was happy.
So this was my place.
Miss Rod was the librarian and this room that we're
sitting in was filled
predominantly with children's books,
different levels, obviously.
And then the room in there was the grown up books.
And I think there's so much desk
was back over here near the door.
And so eventually,
I worked my way through all the kid books.
And I think I read every biography that
she had and it was
just huge when she let me
start reading out of the grown up books section.
And she was just a lovely person.
She loved to see kids come in
and they
did the summer reading program
where you would have a sheet,
you'd fill out every book you read,
and you'd get gold stars or something.
I don't think we ever got any big huge prize,
but you get gold stars.
And it was always a challenge
to see how many books you could read during the summer.
And if you could fill up more than one of
those little pamphlets that
they gave us, that was a big deal.
So my mom was probably glad because it probably
kept us out of trouble a bit.
>> So what do you
remember about the train depot growing up?
>> I would think about that a lot
because we did not go in the train depot.
I do remember at one point,
there were some businesses in there.
I think an insurance company was in there.
It was not until I was older that I
think some of us
really even thought about it
having any historical significance.
But when Mr. Penfield started
working to try to protect it, and save it,
and preserve it, that's what
really made people more
conscious of the value of keeping it.
>> Who was Mr. Penfield?
>> He was a former mayor in Adairsville and his wife,
Pansy Penfield was very well known.
I believe miss Pansy worked at the bank
and they were very
active in wanting to preserve what we had here.
>> So what do you remember about
the stores facing the train tracks?
Have they changed or stayed the same?
>> They've definitely changed.
When I was a child, we had a five and dime on the corner.
There was Culbersons like a hardware and feed store.
There was a pharmacy
and Doctor Mason was the pharmacist there.
So there were little dress shops and
other shops just all along Mainstreet.
And after the interstate was finished,
things just drained out of downtown.
It was hard to keep businesses here.
The city hall was not down,
was not where it is now.
So the bank moved out closer to the interstate,
the post office moved closer to the interstate.
So a lot of the reason for people to come downtown moved.
And it languished for a while.
It started to look really sad and deserted.
And over the years,
various individuals in town saw the value of trying to
encourage growth and trying to keep
businesses here and it's been an up and down process.
It's hard, we're not a county seat,
so we don't have a courthouse where people can
have to come here for whatever legal means,
they go to Cartersville for that.
So trying to figure out,
what is that one thing that will bring people
to downtown and get them to
continue coming back? That's been hard.
>> And now, was there anything like
hangouts there for growing up that you thought?
>> Actually, I was looking at
Facebook today and it wasn't really downtown.
We had a Dairy King down at the corner of 41 and 140,
and it was just a hamburger place
and it wasn't Dairy Queen, it was Dairy King.
And I really don't remember when that disappeared,
but I remember that being the place where
teenagers Would go and hang out and
one of the people had posted
a picture on Facebook and she was
talking about how many kids
in the [inaudible] could get a job there.
That was it as far as a fast food restaurant.
There was no McDonald's or Wendy's
or we didn't even have a traffic light.
We had a flashing yellow light down at
the intersection of 41 and 140,
and it was a big deal.
Well, we got a traffic light.
Now we've got several, so
now we're working with modern times I guess.
>> But you talked about those community efforts to
revitalize this railroad section.
Can you speak specifically to some of
those efforts that you know of?
>> Well, I know that one of
the big things was
getting the downtown revitalization grant.
I believe Eden King was
mayor at that point when that happened.
And that made a huge difference because what you see now,
we didn't have a little gazebo and some
of the really charming things that are there.
The rock walls weren't there.
There was more utilitarian feel to it.
So some of the more artistic types of
things that have been added have come along
later to enhance what we already had.
But there have been lots of people over time,
Linda Bass was very active in it.
Rose McCrany was very active.
She is a former member of the San City Club.
So Susan Hobson Gilmore
has been active in those efforts, Mary Carruthers.
So we've had a plethora of people, Joyce Culberson.
Lots of people have been very involved in trying to
figure out what we need to do and what
can preserve the town.
>> Switching direction, talking about the school.
So what was it like starting out at a school that
had kids in 12th grade when you were in first grade?
>> It was actually cool.
If you think football players are heroes now,
football players were really the heroes and as a kid,
you were around older kids.
So you're a first grader and elementary kids,
we didn't go up and hang out with older kids or anything,
but we saw them off time.
So people like Diane Mitchell or Johnny Gulch,
names that people would remember.
You would see them and they were ahead of you,
and you would look at what they were doing growing up.
And that was almost like having a template for yourself.
Diane Mitchell was a basketball player.
And she was probably one of the first girls
that I really saw
as someone that I thought of as a role model,
because she was doing something that I thought was great
and people recognized her in the school for that.
They were different ones that you would
recognize because they would win awards
or they were speakers or class leaders.
So as a kid, it was a big deal to be able to see
plus your older siblings of
your friends too. But it was a big deal.
You could see other people in the community and they were
far enough ahead of you that when you're 16 or 17,
you probably don't recognize how
much a six year old is going to look up to you.
They were the big kids.
And we would have discussions at home about
the big kids at school and what the big kids were doing.
And I don't know if everybody did,
but we did in our family.
And how well they were doing or it was a big deal
when Johnny Gulch went
to college on a football scholarship.
Those were big things.
>> So how was it growing up with
the same students in your class every year?
Was that a good thing?
>> Well, you
go through those years where you have a crush on someone.
[LAUGHTER] And if you have done
the unfortunate thing of
either sending them a note like kids do in class,
later on when you're a
senior or even after you've graduated from college,
you think, I hope they don't remember that.
But the good part was that there
are people now that I see in
town when I'm shopping or
when I go to a football game and my kids are there,
their kids are their grandkids,
if they got married really early,
we started our family late.
My children around them and we know those families.
And when I think
that a lot of what we're founded on or a lot of what
we try to teach our children is
that it's important that
when people need help in this community,
that's something that's just something you do.
I grew up in that era where if someone died,
people brought food to the house and someone would come.
When my grandpa Johnson died,
my mother and I were talking about this today,
I was probably in around fifth grade.
And I know some of
our friends came out and helped to clean the house.
My grandparents were visiting us from Texas when he died.
And it was right after Christmas and people came
and helped to clean the house
and they brought food and they took care of our family.
So that was [inaudible]
>> So you mentioned that everyone knows
everyone especially in the school.
And so did that ever affect
the teacher-student relationship in a good way?
>> I think so. I guess
it depends on who you are and
your family as to whether or not it would be good.
If you have siblings.
Don Hobson taught my older sister
who's two years older than me,
me, my younger sister,
who's three years younger and
my younger brother, who's six years younger.
So by the time
one teacher has taught every kid in a family,
they're pretty well acquainted with that family.
And if the majority of the kids are troublemakers,
or the majority of kids are like
to make funny comments in the back of the room,
then I can see where that could set an expectation.
But I never felt like my teachers thought of me
as a clone of my sisters or my brother.
They all knew my family.
And they would they could tease you and they
certainly if how you
conducted yourself at school would have
an impact on your siblings.
And there's those conversations you
have after the bus lets you out of in the driveway.
I'm telling mom, well,
if you want to tell mom,
what can we do so that you won't tell mom.
[LAUGHTER].
Well, my sister and I had some of those conversations,
so and she likes to remind me about that.
But I think it was good.
GD James taught my older sister and me in Home.
And I'm pretty sure that Linda Bass had all four of us in
French because French was
our foreign language for college admission,
and we did college prep courses.
We didn't have AP classes
or some of these other classes. It was just college prep.
And so two years of
foreign language in high school was still required.
And misses Bass was our French teacher.
>> So how involved were you in
school or extracurricular activities?
>> We were pretty involved.
My older sister and I,
in particular, that we
all were involved in different things.
My older sister was in band.
One of the big things we did was four H. We
spent a lot of weeks during
the summers at different four H camps.
We competed in four H competitions.
My sister, my older sister went
on and measured in home economics,
which I guess is called family and consumer sciences
now because she was involved in four H,
and that was something that she wanted to do.
I was active in basketball.
My younger sister was in band.
My younger brother played football.
And then there were lots of
other just clubs within the school.
When it's a small school,
there are a lot of opportunities to do a lot of things.
And I think that's still true now.
The kids that are
involved tend to be in
a lot of cases highly involved. There are a lot.
They have diverse interests,
and you get a chance to really have hands on.
It's hard to just show up and just be a placeholder
when it's a small school
because in order to get
stuff done, you've got to step up.
>> So was there any person in
Adair school that helped you further your education?
>> Lots and lots of people.
Every single teacher that I had from I had miss
Farner in first grade and I had because of circumstances,
we started off with Miss Grubbs and then we
had miss Farner and Miss West who came in as substitutes.
Miss Grubbs was the methodist minister's wife.
And when he was assigned to another church,
she had to leave partly through the year.
But Miss West taught us Spanish in second grade and,
you know, at 56 years old,
I still remember some of
the Spanish that she taught us in second grade.
Miss McKibben, I mean,
we had wonderful teachers that.
Because we were small,
I think they were able to
spend time with us and our classes weren't always small.
I remember having classes with 36,
38, 42 kids in them.
But I do think
that there was kind of a different attitude,
maybe in the classes.
We had kids who were wives guys,
but I don't think we had any big huge behavior problems.
So, there there were a lot of people.
Malkin Karnes was my basketball coach
all the way through high school.
And he played such a big role in
encouraging me and I wasn't really the most confident kid
and he really worked hard
to help boost my confidence in my ability in basketball.
And I think it It probably pained him that I
didn't have the killer instinct that
he would have liked for me to have.
But if it hadn't been for the for his encouragement,
I probably wouldn't play.
Judy James' anh husband,
Richard James was
my first basketball coach in middle school.
And the fact that
he let me on
the team and was patient enough with me was a good thing.
Coach Karnes was he had children in the school,
but he played such a big part for
me in encouraging me and helping me to look
outside of where I was that he was my star teacher
and really played a big part
in helping me get
my scholarship and move on into other things.
>> Were you attending school here during integration?
>> I started school 50 years ago this fall in 1966.
So at that point,
the county was not fully integrated.
We still had a Blacks only High School,
which is just right up the road here,
Noble Hill Academy still existed.
But the classes that I went to school
with had already been integrated.
So Charlotte Curtis and Pam McConnell and
other people were in school with me and
it was no big deal to me,
at least, that they were just they were not kid.
So I never really knew anything differently.
We did not start we
started integration a lot later that I had
realized I did I was part of a class last year that
looked at some of the history
of different parts of Bartow County.
And when we toured at Noble Hill,
I was really surprised to realize that we still
were not fully integrated when I started school.
And it was a couple of years
into my education before that happened.
And I just as a child, I guess,
I wasn't really aware of it being anything
else and I never had really thought about it.
>> Were there other areas outside of
the school where you were conscious of any,
you know, divisions based on the color of people's skin?
>> Not really.
The the church that we attended was all white.
So I know that we we were divided,
but my parents never kept us
from going to school or doing things with other people.
And so, you know,
I guess if if they had other opinions about it,
we never really were aware of it.
>> So overall, how would you say that growing up in
Anders Mill affected your education
later on in life throughout college?
>> Well when you grow up in a smaller town,
and you get to college,
it is a whole different world.
I realized that there were some things
that we just haven't had that other people,
you know, different textbooks,
different experiences,
I don't think that was unusual because in Georgia,
it was pretty pretty diverse.
I think that the more urban areas had
obviously bigger schools and
more resources and some of the smaller schools didn't.
And we were art still is a very rural county.
And so it takes a long time to move the needle with that.
I was a little intimidated when I went
to to college when I started
talking to other people
and they had had different experiences
in their classes
much more advanced chemistry and things like that.
And we had because we were small,
you know, your teacher allotment
is based on the number of kids you have.
We didn't have a lot of advanced level, things like that.
>> So what is one of
your fondest memories of
being in the Anders Mill school system?
>> I think that is just that's a hard hard thing.
You know, one of my fondest memories is
just having the friends that I did,
being around the kids that I did.
I just I always felt like
the kids in my class were really nice people.
Were we nice to each other all the time?
No. Because we were kids.
But even years later after after I got out,
someone said something to me about
I'm the apologized because they said,
I used to tease you for a lot and
I really felt bad about it.
And when they said it,
it was shocking because
I just I didn't remember that at all.
I never it was never done in a mean way.
It was just you know kids being kids.
So but my best friend was Gwen Worthington.
And I had had a really close friend Angie Barrett,
whose father was the pastor at A Derf Baptist Church.
And they moved away.
Right before we started middle school,
her father was a chaplain in the army,
and they moved to Germany.
And so it was devastating to lose
my best friend and Gwen,
there was a gap in there where I was at loose ends and
then Gwen started coming
to Adairsville and for whatever reason,
we hit it off.
And she just had this great laugh.
And she was just a great person to hang around.
When we graduated, I
was valedictorian and she was salutatorian.
And so we kind of pushed each other academically.
She was phenomenal in math and probably could have
done anything that she wanted to do smarts.
And she stayed home after we graduated and started
working in a law firm and got trained as
a paralegal and has had a great career.
We we actually are still Facebook friends and she
has a son who's about the age of my youngest.
And so we I guess we
lurk and keep up with each other through Facebook.
You know, we haven't had
any big reunion or anything like that,
but, she was really
a great friend to me all the way through high school.
>> Can you tell us about the school building itself.
You've shown us a picture of the Jerry.
>> When I started first grade,
the section that I started in had been
built probably around 1955,
and that was the first second and
third grades were there.
And then there was a bigger section
that you when you came out of the first grade section,
you would go up these big stone steps
and there was a little temporary trailer
that misses Marion Lacy
was one of the first grade teachers
and so she was in that trailer.
But you go up the stairs and that would take you
into this section where the fourth and fifth grades were.
And that building had
these really dark painted wooden floors
and plaster walls,
they looked like these and big windows.
And as over the course of time,
that I guess the part that I went
to in first grade was built first.
And then a portion of the older building was torn
down and that's where
they put more of the high school classes.
And it was built into the hill
that the old school site was on.
Eventually, the oldest section
that was right in the middle was torn
down and they did it in phases,
so that when my older sister graduated in '76,
we had a new auditorium,
and then a couple of years later, let's see '74.
My last three years of high school,
we had the new gymnasium.
I remember that because I played basketball.
And it was disturbing
because it didn't smell like the old gym.
The old gym smelled like popcorn
and tennis shoes and basketball leather,
and the new one just smelled like a new building,
and it was just the weirdest experience to play in there.
Even after years later,
it still had not acquired that,
I don't know if everybody would have liked the smell,
but to me, that was the best.
>> Did it affect your playing?
>> No. The first half when I played,
seventh, eighth, and ninth grade,
girls played by different rules than boys.
The boys played five-on-five, girls played six-on-six.
So you had two guards who
stayed at one end and two
forwards who stayed at one end,
and then two rovers who ran the length of the court.
So at any one time,
only four members of your team could be on a half-court.
So right before my sophomore year
is when they switched over,
and girls started playing five-on-five,
and we went to more boys rules.
We didn't have smaller basketballs at the time,
so we still played with the big basketball.
But that was a big switch in those days.
And then I remember having conversation with
Linda Bass because she didn't play basketball.
And I think she told me that when she played
, it was three on three.
And the rules were completely different.
So I'm glad I came along when I did.
I was a rover, and so it was easier, I think,
to transition into that five-on-five
than it might have been for some of the other kids.
> How many people attended the games?
>> It's hard to say numbers because the little gym,
enough people came and it felt full with people there,
and the noise would really be tough.
Well, we moved into the newer gym that was bigger,
and so it took more people to fill it up,
and the whole field was
different to switch from
the older school to the bigger school.
So it wasn't just the smell, it was beautiful.
We had showers that were
nice showers and very nice dressing rooms and everything.
And for us, it was luxurious to have something like that.
I guess now, it wouldn't be considered quite so nice,
it doesn't exist now.
So all of those buildings over the years,
a new high school was built,
it's been there for 12 years now.
But when that new high school was finished,
what had been the middle school
and high school became just the middle school.
And in order for it to just become a middle high school,
they had to build a new elementary school,
which is the elementary school
that's down on Hall Station Road now.
So still walking distance to downtown, really.
But it was a big shift.
Now, we're laughing because I said,
we had a big class,
but it was 78,
my graduating class,
and I think this past year,
we had just over 300 in the graduating class.
For us, that's a big class.
And I think one or both you all said,
we had 1,000 in my graduating class.
[LAUGHTER] I was like, we don't even
have 1,000 in high school yet.
So we will probably someday.
So being in school,
even that size changes the dynamic.
In a class of 1,000 kids,
it's easy to get lost.
In a class of 78,
it's a lot harder to get lost,
people tend to know what you're doing.
>> So of all these new schools that have been coming up,
has it changed the way
the community interacts with one another?
>> I think it's changed the way
people think about the schools when they moved.
The new high school and we now have a new middle school,
both of those things are not
so terribly far from downtown,
but I think that moving out was
just another symbol to a lot of
people that things were leaving downtown.
And so part of
the goal with building
the new elementary school that's now
on the drawing table is
that it's going to be located back on that site.
We thought it doesn't make
sense to not utilize property that we already have.
But it was really a bigger deal to make sure that
we continued that heritage
of having the school in the heart of the downtown,
it feels like that's the place where it ought to be.
>> And when will that new elementary school be built?
>> Well, we're supposed to break ground
this year on it, so November,
December is our target date for
the groundbreaking and it'll
take us a while to get it built,
and probably in 2018,
that's when they'll move into it.
So I'm very excited about that.
>> So what would you consider
your role to be in the community?
>> You said you'd ask me that question before,
and I don't know.
I'm a citizen in this community,
it it means something to me
to be here and to be a part of it.
We have a lot of people
who have moved here from other places.
My husband is one of them, my husband
is from Massachusetts.
And so I jokingly call him
a tiger transplant because you're someone who,
you've moved into the community,
but we're a better community and
a stronger community because a lot of the people who've
moved here moved here because they saw something of value
in having a small town
and wanting to be involved in that small town.
And so being a member
of the [inaudible] Club, for example,
it's really strange that people that I looked up
to as teachers are now my,
I still can't think of myself as they're peer,
but we're colleagues and we're working
together to take care of this community.
So maybe a caretaker would be a good way to think of it.
I don't want us to stop change
entirely because I can see
the benefit of a lot of the change that has happened,
but I also want to be sure that we
preserve the good memories
and the good parts of being here.
>> So speaking about the transplants, as you've said,
[LAUGHTER] have those members of
the community been treated any
differently from moving in or they are accepted?
>> Probably a little bit of both.
Like with my husband,
because we're married,
he was talking to me one day and we had gone out,
we were running errands one Saturday
and we went down to Ace Hardware,
and first of all,
my children refused to go grocery
shopping with me at Food Lion because they say,
"Mom, you talked to everybody."
And so they just hate it because
it takes a long time to buy groceries.
Well, I knew how
they felt because we went to Ace Hardware,
and Robert was talking to everybody,
and I was like, "How do you know him? Who is that?"
So because we came here as a family connection,
and he started the business,
he's a doctor, and so he
sees a lot of people and knows a lot of people.
I don't talk to him about
his patients because there are privacy laws.
So a lot of the time, I don't even know that
someone knows him until they bring it up.
But if you just go out with him socially,
it's amazing how many people he knows.
[LAUGHTER] And he's only lived here since 1998.
Well, he came back and forth,
but we built our house in 2001.
So he's made a lot of progress over time.
And we have a lot of people like that.
Patricia Easton moved here
and she's the person who
painted all the banners that are downtown,
and she's a wonderful artist.
So there are a lot of people who are transplants,
but who are transplants and
came here because they loved this town.
And I think that the people
who move here and love this town,
I think that they're accepted with open arms,
and that we appreciate
the fact that other people
see the same things that we see.
>> So what made you want to run for
the Board of Education?
>> Temporary insanity probably.
[LAUGHTER] We planned to move back here with our family,
we looked at our options.
Robert and I knew we wanted to be close to family.
His family was all up in Massachusetts
and we ruled that out because we just like it here.
And so by coming back here,
we wanted our children to be part of the community,
and I already knew that the best way to
be a part of the community was to be in school,
get to know people, form friendships,
have relationships with people,
understand what it means to live somewhere,
I mean, really live somewhere.
The downside of that is that people know a lot about you,
which is good and bad.
But the good news is I know a lot about you,
so if your family is hurting or something is going on,
people can help you cope with that or help take care of
you in ways that just being anonymous somewhere else,
you will never have that emotional support.
So as my children went to school,
I felt very welcome in the schools.
I would volunteer and help in the classrooms.
I got to know the teachers that were teaching my children
and I don't hang out with their teachers,
but I feel comfortable
knowing them and my children are friends
with children of teachers and
they go back and forth to our houses.
So I think that's been a good thing.
And there had been
this Mantra for a long time
about failing schools and how terrible schools are.
And I'm still not
sure I really understand
where a lot of that has come from.
But that was not my experience.
I was sitting outside the elementary school a
day and I was hearing this rant on the radio about,
these terrible schools and I just
thought that's not the world I live in because
the people that I knew
and know are people who went into education
because they wanted to
help children learn and they have a passion for it
and they love it and it makes
them happy to see kids doing well.
And so when a position came open on the school board.
We had someone who didn't finish his four year term.
There was one year left on that term and a friend of
mine called me up and
said you should think about applying for that.
And I said, no,
I'm not going to do that.
I'm not a politician. I'm not cut out for that.
And a couple more people saw me in the store,
talked to me and said you should really think about that.
And so I did.
We had to that there
was a process that was laid out in the paper and I
called the voting board
to make sure that I was filling out
all the paperwork and doing
everything all the affidavits and
things that you do when you run for public office.
And that year, I had to run
a political campaign for the four year term,
plus I had to run a political campaign
simultaneously for the one year term that
I was serving but had to finish
because the voters had to elect me to that position.
State law says that you can appoint someone,
but you also have to have an election.
So you have to be certified by the voters to do that.
And I had never done anything like that.
I had never volunteered with a political campaign.
And I think that I was very
lucky that I did as well as I did.
The person that was running we weren't running mates.
He was also running for the same position
with someone who had attended school in
Adairsville and had previously
served on the school board and had
had a couple of
terms of gap between the time they had served.
And it was a huge thing
to me that we not attack each
other because he is an amazing story himself.
He's a self starting
entrepreneurial guy and he had a really compelling story.
And we've had conversation since.
I consider him not a best buddy,
but he is a colleague
and someone that I have a lot of respect for.
And I think that's partly because we both
went to the same school and we both
know what this community is like.
So probably a lot of
insanity because I just didn't know what I was getting
into you're naive when you run for a political office.
And that's probably a good thing.
But I wouldn't trade it for anything.
I love being on the school board.
I want to see us have
really good schools. I feel I can cry.
>> I think that's a good thing.
>> I think it's so important for our children in
this community to get the best education they can.
Bartow County has a lot of families
who live just above the poverty line,
if not at the poverty line and
Adairsville itself has a lot of kids the same way.
And I just remember that as we were growing up,
there were kids who never considered going to college.
They never considered doing
anything other than going to work in the textile mills.
And that's not a terrible thing.
Having a job like that that's secure
that allows you to
take care of your family is a good thing.
But they are really smart kids here.
And for this community to thrive and grow,
we need for all of our kids to be able
to have the same opportunities that other kids do.
Our kids are not less able or less talented.
But sometimes they don't always
realize the opportunities that are out there.
And I think that if we can help them to do that,
then it creates a better life for them,
and I think that's what my job is to try to find
those opportunities and create ways for them to have
those opportunities and to be able to have a better life.
>> So what do you think it
is about Adairsville specifically
that has allowed it to survive throughout
the years and other small towns have it.
>> A lot of people will
probably or if you
don't live in Adairsville you might pooh pooh this.
But I just think that
Adairsville has a very unusual quality.
It is not perfect by any stretch of imagination.
We have our challenges just like any other community.
But I do think that there is
this sense of real community here.
The idea that my destiny is
linked to my neighbor's destiny,
which is linked to the next subdivision over.
And when I was a kid,
there weren't a lot of subdivisions around us
and now it's mind boggling the number
of communities that are all part
of Adairsville not necessarily within
the city limits proper but in
the surrounding area that all consider
themselves part of the community.
It's just a very unique quality.
It's people things probably move a little bit slower.
It's not unusual to see people with their car
pull over having a conversation
with somebody who was out in their yard.
And it's not unusual to see women in
the grocery store with
their car of groceries off to the side and talking.
I think those are good things.
I think it reminds us
that the reason you live in a community
is because we're social creatures
and we need connection to other people.
And I do think you can have as much or as
little of that by
your own design when you live in a smaller town.
>> So how has living in Adairsville
impacted your kids lives and they as safe. [LAUGHTER]
>> Oh the fact that they to go road for shopping.
[LAUGHTER] Every one of my kids is so different.
But my oldest son,
was able to be involved in band and music lessons.
My second oldest son found his place of
belonging in JRTC and that group of kids,
as well as I think he tried
every sport in the school
with the exception of maybe baseball,
I think is the only one that maybe he didn't try.
But he did everything else.
And my daughter is coming along the same way,
doing a lot of different things and my youngest the
same I think the ability to be
involved in a lot of different things
and it's small enough that they can
try things and if they don't really want to pursue it,
they don't have to, but
there's enough variety that they can
each find their own place and foster their own talents.
And even though the school is bigger,
they still know their teachers,
and their teachers know them and recognize them in
the halls and I think that's a good thing.
>> So what does being a part of
this community mean to you today?
>> See, that's what making me crying too, everything.
I think I was a lucky kid.
My parents gave me a good start.
But there were a lot of people
who were directly involved in helping me grow up.
And thank goodness people like
Linda Bass and Judy James
could just go, they'll get over it.
[LAUGHTER] And because having people involved in
your life and who are willing
to give you opportunities and who really see you.
And I think that's the biggest thing,
is that as a kid,
I go back to this idea of not being anonymous.
As a kid, I'm sure I was a weird kid.
[LAUGHTER] But I felt like my teacher saw
me and my pastor at the church saw me as a person.
I wasn't just another kid.
And I think that because our classes were smaller,
I think that at least from my perspective,
I had a sense of self
from being here and being a part of it.
And it was the thing that was
probably the biggest gift for me,
and it was the gift that I want my kids to have.
And it's the thing that
I want to pass on to other kids in the schools now,
because I know that
we have kids that feel like they don't really exist.
And I think that when adults take
the time to spend time and talk to
kids and really see them.
And I know that
they're acting out or doing bad things or whatever,
but if kids can
have that sense that there is
someone that they can connect with,
I think it makes a difference
for them as they're growing up.
And I think that we have that a lot here.
I think that when you talk to people,
when you go in the restaurants here,
or you go into stores here,
people will look at you, they look you in the face,
they look you in the eye and they'll talk to you.
And it's pretty easy to strike up a conversation.
If you really want to strike up a conversation,
people will talk to you.
And I'm just not sure that exists everywhere.
So I think that's a huge advantage to being here.
>> Well, that's about all
I have. Do you have anything else?
>> I would just like to go back to you,
you had an important meeting
yesterday while being on the board.
>> Yes, I did.
>> So I would just like for you to
talk about that and explain that to us,
especially with the taxes and seniors.
>> Yes. Well, the naive part about
being on the school board.
I think you assume that
everybody agrees that education is important.
And you rapidly realize that not everybody agrees,
but I think that in
this community because we
were hit so hard in the recession,
and it's taken a long time
economically for us to come back.
I think that Bartow County is on
that brink of explosive growth
that Cobb and Cherokee went through several years ago.
We know it's coming,
but and there are
a lot of opinions about growth both ways.
Some of it is good and some of it's bad.
But the school system has had historic cuts.
The state has never fully funded education.
And in particular, over the last several years,
some pretty big cuts have been made in education.
Where that affects the local school board is
that if we're not being funded at the state level,
our job on the school board
is to figure out how we make it work.
And that has involved
having to make some hard decisions
about cutting programs,
having to make decisions
about letting people go from jobs.
In my case, the sad part about that is that
you know the people that are being let go,
and you know what impact
that has on their lives and their families.
We've tried as much as
possible to not have mass cuts and things like that.
We have a superintendent who has
done a very difficult job and
a very good job in trying to
balance so that positions have been not filled,
we do more or less.
But a part of the growth is that
as the economy is starting to come back,
property values have been reassessed.
And for a lot of people,
they're not at that point,
economically themselves, but
the properties have been reassessed.
And so we have people who are on fixed incomes.
And we have people who are doing very well,
and they would be
able to pay their taxes without any issues.
So when the property values are reassessed,
that means they get a bigger tax bill.
And there's the portion on
your tax bill that says county taxes and then school tax.
And people have seen that amount
go up because their property values have been
reassessed to make up for the state cuts that we had.
We had to raise the millage rate,
which was something that had not been done in 20 years.
So that was a shock to people.
And then all of the counties around us have done
away with senior citizens paying taxes for schools.
And for us, we haven't done that.
We have a partial tax abatement for senior citizens.
But over the last maybe a year and a half, two years,
there's been a growing number of people in
Bartow County who want to
see a much larger tax abatement.
Some people, I think probably last night,
the vast majority of people in
the room would like to see a 100% tax abatement.
At age 65 or 62,
they would like to pay no more taxes.
For me, I believe that some of
our young families and
new professionals are in just as
precarious at financial situation
as some of our senior citizens.
And if that tax burden somehow some way,
we have to have a working balanced budget.
And for a long time, we operated in the red.
We've worked really hard to try to
get back to a balanced budget.
For our younger families,
if they have to bear a greater burden in taxes,
that's going to make things harder for them.
So the question that's
being pushed out there right now is,
can we figure out how to answer that question and create
some tax abatement that could
help people in some cases are truly in need,
healthcare costs are huge.
There were some hard stories last night from people.
And I think what I don't want to see happen
is for this to become
a grandmothers against grandkids fight.
And it felt like it was
moving in that direction last night.
It's an auditorium full of people who were very vocal.
In a couple of cases, but not all cases,
not very kind in their comments.
I have a whole other opinion
on why we've gotten to the point in
this country about why it's so hard for us to have
a real dialogue about common issues.
But I think this is one of
those issues that highly emotional.
It has a huge impact both on the children,
which means and the school system,
so the future of the community,
as well as for the senior citizens who in
many cases have had
no children in the school system for years.
I know that from me growing up,
there were people who were paying
taxes into the school system that helped me get
an education and they had
not had children in the school system.
So we're at this point now where it's,
for me, I think it makes sense to
have a well educated population.
And for me, the idea of paying
taxes makes sense to support the schools.
The better educated we are, the better we can do,
the better businesses we can bring in,
which means we can bring the millage break down,
which means we actually all end up paying less taxes.
So we all do
better if we're willing to support each other.
I just think the economic
situation that we've gone through
has made that harder for people to appreciate.
And so last night was a really tough meeting.
I guess the hardest part of being
on the school board for me has
been those times where it
feels like the value of education is not recognized,
where it starts to feel like
you're in a bunker
and no matter what you say and what you do,
nobody really wants to hear it.
We're doing better now in
Bartow County schools than we have in a long time.
And that's in spite of budget cuts.
And in spite of some of the hits that
we're continuing to take
financially in the school system,
I would like to be able to balance both,
the people who live here and who
have put a lot of their financial resources into
educating the community with those 14,000
kids that are currently in
the school system and who frankly,
won't do well if we don't
offer a good high quality education to them.
It goes back to that whole issue
of you don't really realize what you don't have
until you get outside
and you start talking to other people and you realize,
I'm going to have to work really hard now
because other people have
had opportunities that we didn't have.
And so closing that opportunity gap is big for me.
I don't really know what's going to happen.
I suspect that our legislative delegation
will one way or another bring this to a vote.
I think what made part of it hard
last night is that there were people who thought,
we're going to have this town hall meeting and three of
our five delegation were there and they said,
well, we'll get this done tonight.
And it's a longer process than that.
All five have to meet and they have to have a proposal,
the resolution has to be presented,
and then it has to be dealt with during the time that
the state legislature is in session,
January through March.
And then it comes to a public vote.
So it's a really long process.
And there were people there who are really hurting
now and who were really truly angry.
That it's going to be a long process.
And so that's the hard part of being on
the school board is trying to figure
out when people I know,
people that I see in the grocery store, my own parents.
My dad's 95, my mom's 86,
they're still paying school taxes.
They haven't had kids in the
school system in a long time.
And we all are living or
a lot of people are living on
less and costs have gone up.
So you have to figure out
how are we going to make a decision that's
going to do right by everyone and be fair.
And you just know walking away that
you're never going to make everybody
happy with no matter what you decide.
I understand that not everybody would be happy,
but I wish that they would walk away and feel satisfied
that we have tried our best to be as fair as possible.
And I'm not even sure after last night
that a lot of people in that room feel that way.
Now, that's Bartow County as a whole.
It's not just Adairsville
but there were digital people there.
And when I looked out in that audience and you see people
that you know and you care about, it's hard.
You want to do the best thing and you have to
be King Solomon to come up with the best decision.
>> Well, I think that's all the questions we have,
but I think we both want to thank you for your time.
>> Thank you. I talk about
this community and I
just think it is just one of the best places.
And obviously, my husband does
and I appreciate what we have
here because over time I
have growing up and watching
Town Center develop and watching Barrett Parkway explode.
I think you take a breath and you go oh.
You hope that's not going to happen here.
And you hope that you're ahead of progress
and growth and you
hope that you can preserve
the good parts of the community.
And I think the big struggle is,
especially when you're someplace like where we are,
it'd be easier to preserve it if you
lived somewhere that was a little bit more isolated.
But the problem then is that you have the brain drain
of your kids grow up and there's nothing there.
So we're at that point where there's a lot here,
but there's a lot surrounding us.
So there's a lot of value for our kids if we can have
those opportunities and have jobs and have
things that they might go away for a little while,
it'd be nice for them to go away and
then come back and bring all that back.
All that experience and put it to
work here and continue to build the community.
To me, that's really what it should be.