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College Stories
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Carolyn 's Story More than forty-five years after finishing Buford High in Lancaster County, Carolyn Summers finally had the opportunity to go to college, something many take for granted. When she was 17, choosing between college and work was not an option for Carolyn and her five siblings. “I came from a working family,” this gray-haired grandmother wearing a ball cap, sweat shirt, and jeans says, her blue eyes twinkling. “My daddy worked at cotton mills and farmed, and we all tended the garden and took care of animals. When you finished high school, you married, went to work at Springs, and raised a family. That was understood.” Working for Springs is exactly what she did. For twenty-seven years, Carolyn Summers served as an hourly production worker, then moved up to manage product development. After that, she became a design coordinator. “I felt successful, secure. After all, I’d been there for 42 years.” But one day, HR informed her that she no longer had a job. Carolyn felt numb. “God, tell me what to do,” she remembers praying, begging, crying that afternoon. “I was angry and felt afraid and alone. I’ve always trusted God to show me the way, and He did.” She entered York Technical College under the WIA Program in January of 2007. “I was scared, but so excited.” Five semesters later, she received a Management Degree in Building and Construction, as well as a certificate in plumbing and carpentry.” There’s little she does not know about hammers, leaky toilets, rotten boards, and more. After graduating in August of 2008, “what to her wondering eyes did appear,” but a teaching job with students to hear. Ed Moore, Department Manager of Building Construction Trades and Air Conditioning, offered her a job. “Ed’s extremely knowledgeable about plumbing and construction and easy to work for. Yes, you definitely have to know all of the codes for building, and, above all, you have to know how to use the code book.” Carolyn wants all of her students to succeed. “Teaching is still scary and challenging, but I love it.” One of her most exciting assignments has been working on the house on Columbia Avenue. She and students are building a new home for a mother and her two children. This is a project which is evolved from a partnership between the college and the city of Rock Hill. “Students have framed the house, completed the roofing, done plumbing and electrical work, and more.” In addition, students, all members of the National Home Builders Association, finished a playhouse for Rock Hill’s Christmasville. Not quite gingerbread and not “a house that Jack built,” the house for the Snow Village enticed young and old alike to remember Christmases past. Carolyn has also completed work for some of her professors. In fact, she and members of “the group,” whom Dr. Frank Caldwell, Manager of the Math Department calls “Carolyn and her posse,” kept the retaining wall of Dr. Martha Macdonald’s historic home on College Avenue from falling down. Carolyn has done remodeling work for friends and neighbors. How does her family feel? “They’re proud. My granddaughters who attended USC—Lancaster thought it was funny that their grandmother was in college at the same time. Kind-hearted, generous, smart, there’s nothing Carolyn Summers would not do for family, neighbors and friends, students, staff, and faculty.
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