The Urban-Rural Divide

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Just north of Montgomery and just south of the small town of Wetumpka lies the Tallapoosa River, a narrow body of water that crawls through the central Alabama pines and oaks like a snake through tall grass.

            The Montgomery side and Wetumpka side of the Tallapoosa are connected by a bridge that spans no more than a few hundred feet. Physically, the divide between the two sides is easy to cross.

            Socially, economically, politically and culturally, the same cannot be said. The bridge represents a divide between the two cities that is more similar to the Grand Canyon than the slight part in the land where the river runs. It is one that is not unique to this place in central Alabama. Instead, it currently permeates throughout the country in a fashion that has rarely, if ever, been seen before.

            Simply put, the divide between rural and urban America has reached full-blown crisis mode, and it shows no sign of slowing down or reversing itself.

            “It’s a tough problem to solve,” said Larry Lee, an expert on education in Alabama. “I don’t know if we can do it.”

***

            Steve Lee lived in the city for most of his life.

            He was a United States postal worker for more than 30 years before his retirement, and he decided to reward himself by moving into a rural area. Lee and his wife, owners of more than 10 horses and avid riders, enjoy the serenity of the country life, one that gives them space to roam and room to breathe.

            “Our favorite thing out here is the trails,” Lee said. “You can go just about anywhere and find a trail to ride.”

            Lee’s exodus from big-city living to a more laid-back, slow lifestyle is but one example of one of the biggest factors dividing urban and rural dwellers.

            In interviews with those from both sides, it became apparent that there is a fascination with the way of living on the other side by most everyone.

            Urban residents don’t see the good in being so far away from many modern conveniences and consistently living such a slow life, while rural citizens often wonder how “city folk” survive packed so tightly in such a hustle-and-bustle environment.

            “I’ve lived in the city my whole life,” said Lincoln Bell, a Montgomery resident. “I don’t mind the country, but I’m not sure how I’d feel about living there.”

            The sentiments from those in rural communities were similar.

            The difference in cultures between the two places, even though they are separated by less than 30 minutes, provides one of the biggest wedges between the two sects of the American culture. As long as rural residents stay in rural areas and urban residents stay in urban areas, the chances of narrowing the divide seem slim.

            “I don’t know (if the divide can be closed), man,” Lee said. “That’s a tough question. I do know that the type of people are just so different. Out here, you go to the gas station and sit in the booth and have a cup of coffee and eat a biscuit and talk to the locals for an hour. In the city, that would never happen.”

***

            Bell likes to say he grew up with a drug problem. As in, his parents drug him to church each time the doors were open.

            “That’s just kind of the way it was,” Bell said. “I never really thought much of it, honestly.”

            It’s not as if Bell and his three siblings had much of a choice. He grew up the son of a pastor, but when it comes to religion in urban areas, he is somewhat an exception to the rule. Statistically, people in urban areas are less likely to be religious and attend religious services than those in rural areas.

            A 2016 study concluded that 11 of the 12 states with the highest percentage of church attendees in their population were in the Deep South, most of which is rural area. Some states with the lowest percentage of church attendees included Massachusetts and New York, states where large urban areas make up a significant portion of the population.

            The divisiveness between rural and urban areas when it comes to religion in the Deep South isn’t as bad as other areas of the country, because even the urban areas in the region have a higher percentage of religious people than elsewhere in the United States. Even so, Bell said religion is still a dividing line between rural and urban areas, even in the so-called “Bible Belt” region.

            “I obviously grew up in a religious household, but I definitely had a lot of friends whose families didn’t go to church or didn’t really identify as religious people,” Bell said.

            Due to the higher percentage of religious people in rural areas, Bell said many people in urban areas feel looked down upon if they are not religious.

            “Most of them probably don’t mean to come across like that, but I feel like people from the country who go to church do sometimes kind of look down on cities as immoral places overall,” Bell said. “I don’t notice it as much because I’m also a Christian, but I have talked to people who feel that way.”

            Lee agreed that many people from rural areas don’t mean to come across as looking down upon those from urban areas, but the high priority those people place on their religion makes it appear so at times. It can even blend into other walks of life, such as politics.

            “People here in the country care deeply about their religious beliefs, and that can come across as intolerance of people with other beliefs or different beliefs,” Lee said. “You see religion seep into all areas here, whereas I didn’t see that as much living in a city. I do feel like it’s probably a dividing line.”

***

Though not as stark of a divide as the culture and religion, another dividing line exists between educational experiences in urban and rural areas.

Larry Lee and Dr. Joe Sumners, two education experts in Alabama, said in their travels around the state, the divide has actually been made three ways — rural, urban and suburban.

“Rural and urban are actually more similar than either of those as compared to suburban,” Sumners said.

The divide between rural and urban educational experiences, Lee said, comes when children finish life at home. Children in rural areas who receive opportunities in higher education don’t often return to those rural areas after graduation, because there are better opportunities in cities. Because of this, a significant portion of rural populations have been there for their whole life and have never crossed the divide.

“I’m not sure it can be (fixed),” Lee said. “You’ve got what we’ve always called the brain drain. All these kids grow up in rural areas and go off to college and don’t come back. I call it selling our best heifers.”

***

Though close in proximity, Montgomery and Wetumpka is separated by a dividing line that is physically smaller than in other walks of life.

“I’m not sure why we don’t cross the divide more,” Lee said. “We can all learn from each other, but you don’t see it much anymore. People tend to live in their own bubbles.”

JRNL 4470 Story 4

       TUSKEGEE, Ala. — While preparing for a keynote address at Tuskegee University back in early 2013, Dr. Joan Harrell read a quote that she immediately knew would change her life forever.
She was reading comments from Ernest Herndon, the last survivor of the infamous U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, when one particular line struck her.
       “He referred to himself as a nobody, and he also referred to the other man in the stories as nobodies. That really struck me to my heart,” said Harrell, now the associate director of community engagement for the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Healthcare at Tuskegee University. “At that very moment, I can still visualize the physical space where I was. I became extremely saddened, but at knew at that point a part of my work should include a method to help the descendants realize that they had to tell their stories. At that point, the stories were only being told from a clinical, medical, public health ethics perspective. There was a need for their voices to be included in the public discourse.”
       Since that day, Harrell has made it her goal to give them that voice.
       As part of her duties in community outreach, she has changed the face of the media operation that seeks to benefit the Tuskegee bioethics center. She helped launch a website that now houses photos, videos, history and stories from the descendents of victims of the study.
       “She does a great job and is very professional,” said Dr. Cesar Fermin, the associate dean for graduate studies and research in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health at Tuskegee University. “(She is) true professional who has done much good work for the Bioethics Center.”
       Among the most difficult parts of her job, she says, is getting the descendents to open up to her about their personal experience with the study. Such openness is required, however, to promote the story and keep it alive to increase awareness.
       “It is critically important that people don’t think, ‘Well, this is something that happened back in the 1930s, and it was revealed back in the 1970s.’ There’s still descendents,” Harrell said. “There is a descendent who is a granddaughter who was born with syphilis. There’s a woman who cannot have a descendent who is a daughter who cannot bear children, because her mother contracted syphilis from her father. People are still living not just with emotional and mental angst. They’re living with physical scars.”
       Harrell, a graduate of Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, has the heart of a story-teller, as she later received her Master’s of Journalism from Columbia University. She’s now also an ordained Baptist minister after graduating from the Chicago Theological Seminary.
       All of the skills she’s fostered and developed over her career in communication and ministry have now found a shared purpose in her work today. As long as she is around and there are stories to tell of the effects of the Tuskegee syphilis study, Harrell will be the one doing her best to tell them.
       “I can never feel what they’re feeling,” Harrell said. “I’m devastated when I hear their personal stories, so I can’t begin to imagine what that sense of pain must have been. It’s still very prevalent, very fresh.”

JRNL 4470 Story 3

       TUSKEGEE, Ala. — It’s a warm spring day, but Ralphine Harper, now in her 90s, has a heavy, white sweater on as she wanders around the third floor of the Legacy Museum on the campus of Tuskegee University.
       She’s quiet, for the most part, as she roams the room checking out various artifacts — newspaper clippings, medical reports and official government documents — commemorating the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. Toward the end of her tour of the spacious area, Harper’s frail frame stops in front of an enlarged picture on the wall.
       “There’s Daddy,” she says.
       Sure enough, the biggest picture in the exhibit features her father, Charlie Pollard, an unwilling participant in the Public Health Service syphilis experiment, front and center, his arms raised toward the Heavens as if he thought, in that moment, he might be able to touch them.
       In the photo, Pollard is sitting in front of President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and then-Director for the Center of Disease Control David Satcher. He was one of only four participants who lived long enough to make the trip to the White House in 1997 when Clinton issued a formal apology from the nation to the victims of the study.
       “It made me feel good, and it made me feel sad,” Harper said.
***
       Amy Pack remembers the exact feelings that swept over her body when she was told of the syphilis study in the early 1970s, shortly after an Associated Press report revealed the extent and horror of the scientific experiment performed on human beings in rural Alabama.
       “Anger, pain, humiliation,” Pack said. “Some of the other families said they felt stigmatized. I never felt that. I just felt betrayal.”
       Pack’s great uncle, Seth Barrow, was in the study, but she soon discovered she was far closer to the experiment than just having a relative as a participant.
       Pack had just graduated from nursing school when she went to work for the Macon County Health Department. One of the first nurses she dealt with in the field was Eunice Rivers, the controversial and somewhat mysterious coordinator of the study on the ground.
       “Being a nurse, I have treated so many people with syphilis, and I can’t imagine somebody having something like that and just letting them die from the complications and not helping,” Pack said. “It’s truly painful that they had to die like that.”
       The study, which studied the effects of untreated syphilis in African-American males, even after a cure was developed, tarnished the reputation of the medical community in the Tuskegee area and other rural, predominantly African-American areas throughout the country.
       “At the very beginning, it offered hope,” said Dr. Cesar Fermin, the associate dean for graduate studies and research in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health. “Because there were a lot of people who the pretense was that this was a true study for treating syphilis, but it ended up being not that, but rather a study of following the progression of those infected by the bacteria. In the typical way of doing things in the South, the conspiracy was to keep everything secret.”
       The last participant in the study died in 2004, but the legacy and skepticism live on in the eyes of many.
***
       The Tuskegee syphilis study came to light in 1972, Clinton apologized on behalf of the nation in 1997 and the last of the survivors died more than a decade ago, but the study continues to live and breathe in Tuskegee and around the country.
       Understandably, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment led to an erosion in trust of the medical community that has not been regained.
       “I think the Tuskegee study actually impacts the whole country, including this area,” said Satcher, who went on to become the 16th Surgeon General of the United States under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. “I think the whole idea of having people volunteer to participate in very important studies and to trust the ones who are controlling that study to look out for their best interest has become much more difficult. We’re still trying to get over it.”
       One of the driving forces behind the study, a lack of availability of quality healthcare options in rural areas, has not changed 45 years after it came to light.
       Most men agreed to be participants in the study because they were under the impression that they would be used to find a cure for the ravaging disease and be treated when a cure was found, treatment they’d never have access to on their own due to financial constraints.
       That, obviously, was not the case.
       “There’s still a lot of mistrust of the government,” Pack said. “A lot of them don’t really rely on anything that is totally said to them about medical information regarding themselves.”
       Tuskegee residents must also deal with the stigmatization that comes with having been through a study that grabbed national headlines for its cruelty.
       “Because of the study, there is a social, economic and political negative stereotype for the community,” said Dr. Joan Harrell, a visiting scholar at the Tuskegee Bioethics Center. “For example, oftentimes when my colleagues and I are invited out to address academic bodies and communities, people immediately want to know, ‘Are there still people living with syphilis?’ There appears to be a negative stereotype that Tuskegee, Macon County is an unhealthy place. It is very tainted.”
***
       While the Tuskegee syphilis experiment was a horrible event that still affects the community in negative ways today, there are those who now seek to turn it into some form of good. Pack views that as a positive thing.
       “From this bad experience, we don’t have to forever live our lives stigmatized from the devastation that it caused in everybody’s individual lives, even in the descendents,” Pack said. “We can make something good come from the ashes.”
       The Voices for Our Fathers Legacy Foundation was founded in 2014 to provide college scholarships for descendants of the study.
       One of this year’s five scholarship recipients awarded at the 20th annual commemorative banquet and luncheon for the descendants of victims was Kimberly Whitley. She is a doctoral student at Tuskegee who is a third-generation descendant of the study. She is studying bioethics.
       Total healing will never come to the area. There will always be those who do not trust the government or medicine. But with more constructive dialogue and education, Satcher believes Tuskegee, and other areas like it, can move forward.
       “We’ve got to talk about it more than we do,” Satcher said. “We’ve got to explain it more to make sure people understand that there’s a high-level commitment to seeing that nothing like that ever happens again.”

JRNL 4470 Story 2

       TUSKEGEE, Ala. — When walking down the road packed with a fine-gravel-and-sand mix under the beating Alabama sun, one can almost imagine what it must have been like. Just more than 70 years ago, cadets in the United States Air Force walked the same steps, only with much different surroundings.
       Then, there were planes whizzing down the runway to the left that seems to stretch all the way to the horizon. Tools clanged and engines revved in the repair shop straight ahead. Trucks roared as they traveled over what is now hallowed ground, the gravel, dirt and sand that covers the plains of eastern Alabama.
       It was here where more than one thousand of the nation’s greatest pilots and tens of thousands of other airmen came to train to fight for a country that refused to accept them as equal human beings. It was here where young men came to put their lives on the line for freedom that they knew would not be their own. This, a few buildings strung together in the middle of an airfield in rural Alabama, is the home of the infamous Tuskegee Airmen.
       “This is definitely one of the key jewels of Tuskegee,” said Edward Pennell, a park ranger for the National Parks Service stationed at the museum commemorating Moton Field. “The success of the airmen and their international status, it brought a lot of attention to Tuskegee. Airmen came from all over the country, but it took some of those greats that were from here to get things going to make this a real historic legacy not only for the airmen, but for Tuskegee, the city itself. It’s definitely one of the key attracting points and notable points in terms of the history when it comes to Tuskegee.”
       When it comes to the entrance thousands of young, and surely, to some extent, unsure cadets walked through decades earlier, little has changed. A red metal frame saves the spot where the guard checkpoint once stood, and the gate — two arching brick structures that house a statue of Dr. Robert R. Moton, the Tuskegee University president that inspired the airfield — still stands.
       Through these gates walked exuberant and hopeful cadets who hoped to one day become pilots at the now-infamous airfield where the 332nd Fighter Group, also known as the “Red Tails,” trained. Most knew the incredible challenge ahead of them, a challenge that demanded the utmost physical and mental endurance, all in the face of social injustices.
       “There was a great desire to be a part of the flying program. Many of these gentlemen, they wanted to fly, and so this was an opportunity for them to fly,” Pennell said of the airmen, who were the first African-American aviators in the United States armed forces. “Also, with the barriers that were placed against them and before them, that made the struggle and the desire to achieve what they wanted much more profound for them. They came in knowing we have some big obstacles we have to get over, so they came with the right attitude. Because of that, they had the skills, the right attitude and the ability to see beyond all of those blocks.”
       Upon entering the base, cadets would have quickly dropped their packs in the barracks just to the left of the entrance which are now, like the entrance checkpoint, simply red metal frames and reported to Hangar No. 1, which still stands in its original, if restored, state. Inside Hangar No. 1 today is a museum with a plethora of exhibits that include an authentic, deployed parachute, war maps and interactive, educational displays that give visitors a glimpse of what it was like back in the mid-1940s.
       Flanking the hangar are smaller rooms where officers kept records, received war reports and waited to send potential pilots out for training, but the main attractions, especially for aviation nuts such as Rex and Bernice Bohannon, sit squarely in the middle of the main room in Hangar No. 1. Two full-size replicas of World War II-era training planes now rest permanently in the hangar where planes of their kind were stored when not in use back in the 1940s.
       “It’s just incredible to think of what they did in similar machines back then,” said Rex Bohannon, a Tennessee native and self-proclaimed plane nerd visiting the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site for the first time. “It was great, new technology at the time, but I’d bet those machines got pretty shaky in tough conditions compared to what’s today.”
       Just half a football field away is another hangar, still in its original spot but a nearly completely rebuilt version of Hangar No. 2. Whereas the exhibits in the first hangar focus mostly on the many positive circumstances surrounding the Tuskegee Airmen, Hangar No. 2 paints a darker picture.
Many of the exhibits in the second hangar focus on the terrible discrimination and racism the Tuskegee Airmen faced, even during their time in the military fighting for the same country that refused to grant them equal rights.
       “Racism, segregation and prejudice that took place in the world outside the military actually took place in the military, as well,” Pennell said. “It’s important to know that those men and women who were here and that served the country had those same struggles and that, through the military, they were able to defeat a lot of the norms or ways of thinking that the military had against blacks.”
       Many times, that racism was not an abstract idea. The military often kept black pilots, many of whom trained at Moton Field, from contributing to the war effort because it deemed them “inadequate and unable to do certain things,” according to Pennell.
       “They trained here for the purpose of being able to fight,” Pennell said. “They didn’t get really get an opportunity to fight until late in the war, but when they did, they were proven to be some of the greatest pilots. The work that they did just to become a pilot was so difficult, strenuous. The program was designed to be a washout for most, because they wanted the best. They did get the best.”
       For many, the treatment of the African-American airmen in Tuskegee and across the nation comes as a bit of a surprise. Many know the gruesome details of the Civil Rights Movement, but Hangar No. 2 commemorates the struggle for equality that ensued within the ranks of the military, where some assume it already existed.
       “It’s really quite remarkable what they did,” Bernice Bohannon said. “I just don’t know if I could’ve had the courage and strength to do the same thing if I was in their shoes.”
       Racial discrimination aside, the accomplishments of the Tuskegee Airmen are vast, and they are all commemorated within the museum that was commissioned by federal legislation in 1996 and drew more than 31,000 visitors last year. Widely considered one of the best-trained fighter groups in the Air Force at the time, or perhaps ever, the Tuskegee Airmen flew more than 1,500 missions overseas and lost only 84 men in combat.
       A book sits just inside the entrance to Hangar No. 2 and contains the names of all Tuskegee Airmen. It is approximately four inches thick and is full of thousands of military personnel — from pilots to cooks to repairmen to officers — who etched their names in history by overcoming the physical, mental and social demands that came with training in Tuskegee.
       From the original control tower that still stands over the airfield, one can look over the expanse of land and see the airstrip where the pilots trained, the barracks where they slept and yes, the gate where they entered for the first time. Little did they know at the time they would be stepping into history.
       “You very rarely hear about anyone else,” Pennell said. “They were an anomaly. They were unique, and they stood out. They did something at the time that was unbelievable.”

JRNL 4470 Story 1

       MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Cynthia Handy stands in the corner of a large room at the end of a hallway at Alabama State University with a full box of cherry-flavored Kool-Aid Jammers in her hands. Temporarily suppressing her gentle nature, she forcefully opens the box and sets it down on the table next to three open plastic containers filled with pencils, Crayons, markers, scissors and glue. She then punctures the seal on a 30-count variety box of potato chips before turning her attention to the Powerpoint presentation that an Alabama State student is loading on the computer behind her.
       School-aged children file into the classroom, some alone, others in small groups, and make a beeline for the snacks Handy has set out for them. Donning a gray three-button suit, she greets them each by name and asks how their day has been as they enter.
       For Handy — the director of ASPIRE, an Alabama State program aimed at preventing dropouts in Montgomery-area schools — so begins another day of fulfilling work. For the students, walking into the classroom marks the beginning of two hours of learning, inspiration and renewed hope for a better tomorrow.
***
       Before there were Kool-Aid Jammers, students or even a classroom, Handy arrived in Montgomery with nothing but a desire to help. Retired after a 30-year career in education from second grade through high school, she knew she didn’t want to return to the classroom. She did, however, want to make a difference.
       “I always wanted to do something to help children,” Handy said. “That’s kind of the only thing I know is helping children.”
       Handy moved back to her hometown with her husband, Rev. Cromwell Handy, who had accepted a job as Alabama State’s director of alumni relations. Cynthia Handy immediately
looked for a way to get involved, and her search started and ended at Alabama State, where she obtained her Master’s degree in early elementary education in 1985.
       She penned a proposal outlining what she envisioned for a program she called ASPIRE, an acronym for Amazing Students Putting In Resilient Effort, and it landed her the job. But while she had earned the position, Handy began with little in the way of resources or help.
       “It was just me in the office, and I had student volunteers. … I wanted something for ASU students to be able to contribute, because I felt like college students, the kids can relate to college students better than they can to me.”
       ASPIRE began in the fall of 2010 as a pilot program at Jefferson Davis High School that focused on ninth- and 10th-graders. Handy had 25 students in her first class.
       The following summer, Handy decided to expand ASPIRE and add a summer program. Thirty-two children signed up for the first summer, and she called it Head Start Camp, a name that reflected the program’s goal of preparing students eighth grade and up for their upcoming year of high school.
       The program now, funded by a federal Title III grant and donations, accepts students as young as fourth grade and has 83 students on the roll. Approximately 50 of them, including an average of 25 per day, attend at least one of the four ASPIRE meetings each week.
       From the beginning, Handy has told every student and parent to come through the program one thing: “You only get out of this what you put into it.” And that remains true today.
       ASPIRE is not for every student. It is not a rehabilitation program for severely ill-behaved children. Instead, it serves as a daily opportunity for encouragement and mentorship for students with untapped potential who may not receive either elsewhere.
       “It’s generally going to be that child that kind of falls in the middle. The one that doesn’t get that much attention or the one that’s really quiet. When they get these mentors, that can kind of wake them up, open (them) up.”
       While Handy and the dozens of mentors, all of whom are Alabama State students working on a volunteer basis, play a pivotal role in the day-to-day academic success of the so-called mentees, ASPIRE doesn’t stop there. From the beginning, Handy has sought to use the program as a vehicle to enhance the students’ knowledge of the world around them and the past behind them.
       In honor of Black History Month, the students have studied influential figures in black history ranging from Shirley Chisholm to Muhammad Ali to Booker T. Washington to Oprah Winfrey.
       Handy has also made field trips a regular part of the learning experience, taking groups of children to the King Center in Atlanta, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and landmarks in Selma, Tuskegee and even right at home in Montgomery.
       “You more you expose, you more you know and the more you want to know,” Handy said. “The more you’re exposed, you more you want to see.”
       Over nearly seven years of ASPIRE, Handy estimates approximately 500 children have come through the program. As with all such programs, there have been some failures. But the successes of ASPIRE, headed by Handy all along, have been far more plentiful.
       What does an ASPIRE success story look like?
       “Hmm,” Handy says, “I would say there’s one right there.”
       She points to a golden banner in the corner of the classroom that includes a picture of Camden Toogood. Then a student at Lee High School in Montgomery, Toogood came to ASPIRE for the first time in 2011, the summer before her freshman year. She never left.
       Toogood is now a sophomore at Alabama State majoring in English education with dreams of becoming a high school teacher herself, just like Handy.
       “Mrs. Handy is amazing,” Toogood said. “I love Mrs. Handy, but I think it’s really her passion. … She said she always wanted to open her own school but she never did that, but this is like her own mini-school. She really loves everyone that’s involved in the program, and it’s like her baby.”
       Toogood’s story is far from the only positive one Handy has produced through ASPIRE. In fact, her favorite story involves a student still in the program. Though she declined to name him, Handy identified the mentee as a student at Lanier High and described him as more than a bit hesitant when he first came to ASPIRE in the ninth grade.
       “He was one I really didn’t think would really stick with the program,” Handy said. “Now, if he can’t get here on the bus, he walks. He’s always walked home. I’ve seen a shift in his whole mindset, because he’s in the 12th grade and wanting to go to college.”
       Kendell Lampkin is yet another success story, one that is still very much in progress. Lampkin, a student at Bethany Christian Academy who started at ASPIRE in sixth grade, has seen steady improvement in his grades since enrolling in the program. Now an eighth-grader, he says he plans to stay in the program through graduation.
       “My goal when I came here was to hurry up and get over with. The goal now is to take my time and learn as much as I can as I grow,” Lampkin said. ““You can come here and have fun and learn new things. … (Handy is) a good person and she loves kid and enjoys helping others.”
       For Handy, the success stories far outweigh the few who slip through the cracks.
“When someone comes in and they’re so happy about their grade —‘Look what I got!’ — that’s the bright light that keeps me going,” she said. “Knowing that if I made a difference today with just one child, just one, then I’ve had a good day.”
***
       As the day winds down, Handy sits in a chair near the end of a long table and overlooks the classroom with a black “ASU ASPIRE” lanyard hanging from her neck. She tells the students to pack their things — it’s a few minutes before 5 p.m. — and smiles approvingly as they stuff their papers into their backpacks.
       She slides her knee-high black boots from under the table and rises to escort the children outside, where their parents await on West Fifth Street. Handy stands at the top of the steps just outside Abernathy Annex as she watches over the children, occasionally calling one closer if they venture too close to the street. She then returns inside, gathers her things and slips quietly out the back door.
       Another day complete, another 25 lives potentially changed forever.
       “That’s what I tell these children: All you’ve got to have is a vision, and you keep working toward that vision,” Handy said. “You can’t do anything about where you came from. It’s where you’re going.”