It’s my great pleasure to chair the state advisory board for HIPPY (Home Instruction for Parents of Pre-School Youngsters). This is a great pre-K program where parent-educators visit homes once a week for 30 weeks where they review that week’s lesson, usually with the mother, who then teaches it to their child for that week. It works wonders for both kids and mothers.
Several weeks ago I attended the Clarke County HIPPY graduation. During the event, director Jane Sellers introduced a 33-year old mother of two who have been HIPPY kids. The mother made a short, but impassioned, speech about what the program has meant to her and her son and daughter.
A few weeks ago I told Jane that I would like to visit this mother and talk to her. So this June afternoon I met Jane at the Wal-Mart parking lot in Jackson and off we went, me following her in her husband’s pickup.
We’ve all heard the expression, “you can’t get there from here.” This afternoon was about as close to that as I’ve ever come.
We drove east for 13 miles, then turned onto a dirt road where the sign said Nub’s Haircuts and pointed the direction we were going. About two miles later we turned onto a more narrow dirt road. Thank goodness for Jane being my guide.
In a bit we happened upon a “settlement” of mostly old mobile homes scattered helter skelter amongst the pine trees and kudzu vines. About the kindest thing you can say about the mobile home our mother lives in is that hopefully it is dry when it rains. Since it is not air-conditioned, the doors and windows were wide open. The “living room” was mainly bare. An old couch, two old chairs, no TV, no dining table in the house. The only thing on the walls were thumbtacked HIPPY certificates.
If poverty comes in shades (and no doubt it does) then I was in the middle of something very deep and dark. This was not the first such mobile home I’ve visited. Still, it was a jolt.
The mother was born very premature and has been troubled with health issues all her life. Illness forced her out of high school midway through the 10th grade. She gets a disability check each month for $560. She does not have a car. (I do not know if she can drive.)
Why is she involved in HIPPY? Because she is praying that her son and daughter will some day have a better life than she has and she wants them to get all the education they can.
And how dedicated is she to this goal? Last October Clarke County HIPPY held a health fair at Grove Hill Elementary. The had hearing and vision screening and lots of other things regarding health. The mother wanted to go and take her children. But she could not find a ride. So with the kids in tow, she set off walking toward Grove Hill, a distance of 18 miles. Even more incredible is the fact that the mother is crippled and walking is very, very difficult. Fortunately, after about a mile or so someone stopped and give her and her children a ride to Grove Hill.
But it is an amazing story. About one mother’s love and dedication in the face of circumstances that few of us can even begin to imagine.
Equally inspiring to me is the dedication of Jane Sellers and her group of parent-educators who are willing to work in such situations and to greet everyone with a smile and a kind word. She was not a stranger in this rag-tag community. She greeted person after person by their first name and asked about their children. A group of four young boys flagged down her pickup to speak to her.
I will never forget this June afternoon in the pine thickets of Clarke County when I came face-to-face with both courage and desperation.
Larry Lee
Education precedes Prosperity
