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Transcript from "High School & College"

In high school, I was influenced by a lot of very good teachers. It gave us a wonderful background, and it was a new school. I wrote the school's song, and that's how I met Charlayne. When I went to college and came back to Turner to student teach, she was on the newspaper staff and she wanted to interview me about writing the school song and that's when I met her. When I got ready to go on to college, I was class valedictorian as I had been in elementary school, and I guess you have to get something for studying so hard, even though you like it. And my band director would take, I think, about three or four of us over to Clark College to play, to rehearse with the band. I didn't know, but he was really just sort of gently pushing us toward that – that was his alma mater. I got a scholarship from Spelman, which was an all girl's school, and that didn't appeal to me, and I got a scholarship to Smith College, and I thought…

Up East.

Yeah. I didn't want to leave my mom, because my dad had died, and I thought, you know, I need to be closer to her. So, I chose Clark, because, well my band director had sort of primed me for it. I was in the band there, and I also sang in the choir, the chorus. And I started taking a lot of courses, of course, it was different. I was young, younger than most. I was sixteen when I went. But I was just drawn up into all of this wonderful knowledge, you know, it was….and the teachers really gave us a wonderful education. It was a great place to be.