D. Ray Hill says he grew up in a small vicinity about three hours south of Atlanta, whose declaration to repute is its title as the Peanut Capital of the World.
That’s no longer true. He grew up in the back seat of a brown 1976 Caprice Classic. Every 12 months, Hill’s family — dad Frank, mom Frankie, Hill, and his dual sister Fay — piled into that Caprice Classic for another adventure. The global awaited them. Frank became a truck driving force with the most effective 8th-grade schooling. Frankie made it through 11th grade. “But they had been smarter than what everyone figured,” Hill stated Thursday morning. “It turned into simply the times that they grew up in.”
Frank wanted Ray and Fay to look what he noticed — a world plenty grander than their place of birth of Sylvester, Ga., a world of beauty, sites, and wild variations. Today, D. Ray Hill is the brand new superintendent of Anniston City Schools, in which lessons began this week. “I won’t say my dad and mom have been poor. However, I can inform you that I don’t suppose we have been wealthy,” Hill giggled. “But we did things. My dad and mom stretched. We were given inside the car; we packed sandwiches, drove to one-of-a-kind locations, and took holidays out of the nation. It’s stuff like that; that’s how we divulge our children.”
Fueled with gasoline, homemade sandwiches, and truck-forestall visits, Frank and Frankie took the twins anywhere roads would move. The options were endless. And, “I’ll never forget (that Caprice Classic) because that changed into my vehicle in excessive faculty,” Hill stated. He laughed once more. “I recollect having an 8-music tape player in there because my dad loved the track.” They drove to nearby locations like Florida. But they also traveled to faraway websites Frank saw while using his rig. And they by no means flew. Distances didn’t count.
They drove to Mexico. They went to the Grand Canyon. They went to the Hoover Dam. They went to the Petrified Forest National Park. They went to look at the redwood forests in California. After Ray and Fay left for college, Frank and Frankie took their youngest son, Robby, to Alaska. That’s proper; they drove from Sylvester, Ga., to Alaska. And returned. That’s 8,000 miles, round trip. The quantity of time the Hill children spent in the back seat of that brown 1976 Caprice Classic is extraordinary. “I don’t forget they might wake us up and say, ‘Hey, what’s up, good day, let us show you all this — look, look, appearance,'” Hill said. They offered a blanket on one of their journeys; Frank and Frankie saved it for decades. Hill, then a toddler, bought a sombrero while in Mexico; Frank and Frankie didn’t discard it until years ago.
The recollections — the education of a teen’s mind — haven’t dwindled. “It showed me there was a lot extra out there than I became aware of seeing each day,” Hill stated. “Think about it. “It’s accessed. If our kids don’t see anything but the borderlines of Anniston, what do they have?” If you need to realize whatever approximately the man now piloting Anniston’s often-criticized schools, that is it. He values transparency, openness, civic partnerships, and empowering his principals and teachers. He isn’t a non-traditionalist. He desires more algebra and foreign-language classes. He would like to add a violin application to the essential colleges. He wants to ramp up the machine’s work-schooling packages for college kids hungry for paychecks. He hopes to revive the high school’s drama software.
If you care for Anniston and its college students, pray that the metropolis’s political headaches don’t beat him down. But it’s studies and possibilities, instructions that transcend and remodel, that he firmly values. He’s never a ways from the returned seat of that Caprice Classic. He recollects that his mother and father “simply desired us to be exposed” to the sector, to seek what’s there and feasible. He sees possibilities while acknowledging the roadblocks — Anniston’s poverty, Anniston’s racial divisions, and even the concerns about the system’s financial balance.
Years ago, as important at North Clayton High School in Georgia, he helped arrange a journey for 35 students to wait for President Obama’s presidential inauguration. You can consider him these days climbing into an Anniston City Schools bus, filling it with students, and taking them on their adventures; adventures fueled by utilizing economic partnerships from a commercial enterprise network reinvested in Anniston’s schools. Schooling for existence goes with an education in the classroom. “Exposure is my biggest thing for our youngsters,” he stated. “I even have so many things I need to do.”
