Text by Michael E.C. Gery | Photos by Duane Salstrand
- Introduction
- The Legacy
- “There's Nothing I Can't Do”
- Restoring the Core Values
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In the early 1950s when Frank D. Hendrick was a student at Warren County Training School, his teachers encouraged him to continue hisI
education past high school. “They said I should go on to med school,” Mr. Hendrick said. “Well, I didn’t even know what med schoo was!” He pursued his education anyway at Norfolk State and then Virginia State universities and a career in educational administration, teaching and government in Virginia. Today he is retired, and as president of the Warren County Training School/North Warren High School Alumni Association, he is bound and determined to give something back to the school and community that served him well.
“The key concept is to recognize the inspiration that we received here,” Mr. Hendrick said recently at an alumni meeting inside the school’s former cafeteria. “It’s to recognize the heritage of this school, the culture that was established here for many years to benefit the black people of this area.”
He’s talking about a $3 million project that would preserve and restore the Warren County Training School buildings and grounds as a beacon for cultural enrichment in the communities that surround it.
Charles Jefferson, who graduated with Mr. Hendrick in 1955, had a similar experience. He attended elementary school in a one-room schoolhouse where Marie Hawkins Thomas taught all six grades. After high school, he went into the U.S. Air Force, “and I was proud and blessed to wear that uniform back here to Warren County Training School.” After attending the Norfolk division of Virginia State College, he moved to New York and a career with New York state government. Now he’s retired and returning his energy to the old school. He serves as the alumni association’s caretaker.
Doris Terry Williams (’69) and Larry Sledge (’67) attended school here during the times just before public schools were racially integrated. Today they are grateful for the attention the black teachers paid to students like them. Ms. Williams, who works with the Rural School and Community Trust and whose mother graduated from WCTS in 1935, went on to earn advanced degrees at North Carolina Central and Duke universities. “Many parents of these students did not go to school,” says Doris Williams. “But they knew that education was the only thing that would help their children. The teachers here knew that what you brought to the table was all you had, and they pushed you to do better no matter what your level was. That was the culture here. We hope to preserve that legacy and recapture those priorities.”
“They taught boys to become young men,” Larry Sledge said, “and girls to become young women. The communities and neighborhoods had a religious base, they looked after all the families, and the school was part of that culture. Your learning did not stop at the school. The touching of hearts, learning right from wrong, learning respect, it all made a significant difference in who we are today, to be a valuable asset to society. We are trying to bring back that spirit that somehow got lost.”
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