“We are all educators, no matter what our job, no matter what our classification. We are all a part of the puzzle that grows our wonderful children,” said Superintendent Melody Hackney. “I feel personally blessed to have had the privilege of calling you all colleagues during this final chapter of your journey with Hopewell City Public Schools.”
One of the first pieces of that puzzle are the bus drivers, who greet the students each and every morning as they begin their day. Director of Personnel Missy Shores honored the retirements of Dorothy “Momma Dot” Johnson and Mary Jamison, who had a combined 74 years of service, a number that equates to thousands of hours of smiles.
“The first thing they [children] see is the welcoming smile of the bus driver and the last thing they see after a day at school is that bus driver smiling at them again, and making them want to get back to that stop the next day and come to school,” said Shores.
Each of the school’s principals shared stories of the retirees, with some ending in laughter and others tears, but each with thunderous applause.
Carter Woodson Middle School Principal Shannon Royster said that he would miss the “Jolly Ol’ Chap” of the Wildcats, Charles King. Royster said he would often wander into King’s sixth-grade history class during lessons on the Revolutionary War, commenting, “He loved to make history come alive in the classroom.” With that love, though, came confusion from students when King, who is British, would say “we” during the lesson, Royster noted.
“When he would say ‘we’, students were often confused: ‘Do you mean “we” the Mother Country Great Britain, or “we” the colonists of the United States?’” Royster recalled them asking.
While each educator was honored for his or her impacts on the city’s children, those impacts were all different, especially when it came to retiree Brian O’Neill, who served at Woodlawn Learning Center.
Principal Joyce Jones said O’Neill would become whoever or whatever was needed to bring a smile to the children’s faces: Santa, the Cat in the Hat, an Indian chief, or the Easter Bunny, for which he “suited up in a white suit with a cute little pink and blue tail and just wagged it all over the building.”
Another Hopewell retiree who wore many different hats was Robert Pershing, who began his career at Harry E. James in 1977 and over the years served as a head baseball coach, assistant football coach and teacher, to name only a few of his roles.
Despite the years of memories Pershing brought to the division, it was a letter requesting a personal day that he wrote to his then-superintendent in 1998 that sparked the strongest reaction from Principal Judy Barnes. In this letter, Pershing stated that he knew this personal day fell after the Memorial Day holiday weekend but asked that the superintendent still grant it, as he had saved it up all year so he could go to the Norfolk Zoo with his kindergartner, Sarah — now a teacher at Dupont Elementary.
“He’s my hero,” his daughter said after the ceremony.
As Vice Chair Linda Hyslop said, “It came out clear that this is a family. Hopewell Schools is a family, and yes, we are professionals, yes, you are educating students, but above all, you are caring for these students, you are teaching them subject matter, but you’re also teaching them how to be good citizens, good human beings for our community.”
Other retirees honored at the ceremony were Deborah Hunt, Brenda Hill, Vanessa Bond, Brenda Lee, Margaret Henderson and Jane Kern. Others retiring from the division who were not in attendance include Alice Shands, Phyllis Slachter, Linda Traina, Patricia Parker, James McKayhan, Mary White, Teresa Lewis, Carlene Elliott, Melody Bage, and Debra Best.