Home �� Gift ���� Garden 300 DURDEN STREET We can make your wedding or special event Unforgettable. 585-2561 120 Mill Creek Rd. | Lyons, GA Trust us to clean your most precious possessions! Shuman’s Cleaners Hometown Living At Its Best 127 Steve had worked hard to earn it, he agreed to give the man his stripe. Steve got out of the military on Sept. 6, 1971, and started classes at UGA two days later on the 8th. “I didn’t have time to go out and buy clothes,” said Steve. “All I had was my fatigues. When I walked on campus, I got spit on and called names by protesters. I was treated like crap.” It took Steve only one year at UGA to complete his Master’s degree in Trade Industrial Education, which made him the only person with that particular degree from UGA at the time. When UGA officials asked if Steve would allow them to test him to find out why his GRE scores had been so low and yet his grades in graduate school were so high, he agreed. The result was that Steve was finally diagnosed with dyslexia. “I actually quit high school at 16 because I couldn’t read or write,” said Steve, “but my employer at Winn-Dixie told me that I couldn’t keep my job unless I went back to school.” Steve managed to teach himself to read and write and never failed one course in college. While in the military, he memorized every instruction he was given. “I couldn’t let the rest of them know that I couldn’t take notes. I acted like I was writing it down, but I was memorizing everything.” Steve met Diana at Georgia Southwestern College while working on his B.S. degree. “She was a sophomore and I was a senior. After I was drafted, we corresponded. When I got out, she was teaching school in Camilla, Georgia. We got married in 1972 after I finished my Master’s degree at UGA.” (Steve now has two Master’s degrees, a Specialist Degree, and his Doctoral degree). That same year Steve took a position as Vocational Director in the Washington County school system. At 25, he was the youngest Vocational Director in Georgia at the time. “That school was listed forty-sixth in the state.” In two years’ time, Steve took it from forty-sixth to sixth. After those two years in Sandersville, Mr. Tom P. Hutcheson, Superintendent of Vidalia Comprehensive High School, came to Sandersville and offered him a job as Vocational Director. “The day we drove into Vidalia, I took my wife straight to the ER. She was having a miscarriage.” They would go through seven miscarriages before they had their son Rodney. Even with that pregnancy, they were advised to have an abortion. The problem was genetic, specialists determined. Their son is one of only a few in Georgia with the condition who not only survived but also lives a normal healthy life. On Steve’s first day as Vocational Director at Vidalia Comprehensive High School, the Principal invited him to the Lions Club meeting, which was being held that night. “When I walked through the door of the Southern Cafeteria, the greeter for the Lions Club stuck out his hand and introduced himself. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Kay Stafford.’” The odds of once again crossing paths with Kay Stafford, now an attorney in Vidalia, seemed impossible, but there he was. When Steve took the position in Vidalia, Georgia had 46 comprehensive high schools. “We were the smallest in the state of Georgia. We were also the only comprehensive high school that bussed students across county lines from Montgomery and Treutlen counties. We were doing it way before there was a Career Academy and did it for 25 years.” He hadn’t been here long when he found out about a grant that President Kennedy had put aside with millions of dollars for vocational retraining for the Appalachian and West Virginia coal miners who were losing their jobs. I happened to notice that there was $200,000 left in that grant, so I went after that money for our school. Everybody laughed and said, ‘You’ll never get it.’” But he 300 DURDEN STREET, VIDALIA 912.380.4022 www.memorylanecateringandcakes.com 128 SW MAIN STREET • VIDALIA • 912.537.3212 138 WEST LIBERTY STREET • LYONS Laundry service, dry cleaning, and alterations by a professional, courteous staff!
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