By Issac J. Bailey
The Geathers family has a unique place in NFL history, but Debra Geathers?s place is singular even within that clan.
She is the mother of three sons, each of whom expects to be on an active roster of an National Football League team this fall.
She is the daughter of a man who spent years working at the Georgetown steel mill, which more than any other plant in the area, represents the diminished fortunes of the south?s manufacturing industry.
She?s a public school teacher who had to go elsewhere for help when a son was not making progress inside her school system.
She?s the wife of Robert Geathers Sr., a former NFL player who walked out of Choppee High School and what is now S.C. State University mostly illiterate.
She, too, graduated from Choppee and S.C. State.
She was among those who helped spearhead an effort that led to the creation of an integrated Carvers Bay High School when early plans called for Choppee to receive a new gymnasium while Pleasant Hill, a nearby, rival, would get a new school.
She teaches math but has a passion to make sure her students receive intervention for literacy shortcomings.
On a cold Saturday morning in May, while three of her sons and other NFL players took about 160 kids through football skills-building exercises at the annual Geathers football camp, Debra Geathers looked on from the gate of the football field. She admitted she still did not understand the intricacies of the game, but taught her sons to work hard and be great at whatever they attempted.
Then she talked about education, about whether she believes what happened to her husband, who graduated high school in 1977 with a diploma he couldn?t read, was still a problem.
?I believe that ... it may still be happening,? she said. ?But I don?t believe it has to.?
Legacy of illiteracy
She occasionally sees students come into her middle school class she suspects can neither read nor write well; she knows the signs from watching her husband.
?As a teacher, I ask them, ?Can you read? You can read, right??? she said. ?I want to know so that I can try to direct you to where you might need some help.
?They are not going to come out and say it,? she said. ?But there is so much help out there now and parents and children need to know that they need to ask for help... Don?t just sit there and say I?m gonna get by. You don?t have to do that any more.?
At Choppee, she was a basketball player, cheerleader, choir member and pageant participant. Her dad,was a logger, tobacco farmer and cucumber farmer who also raised hogs, cows and horses before working for the Georgetown steel mill. He did the work and provided financially for the family, she said.
Her mom handled the discipline, which included high expectations for her studies and grades.
?During that time, the Choppee family, we were always challenged to rise above every other school in the country, so that was a good thing,? Debra Geathers said.. ?We were second to none. They didn?t make us think that we were any less. They wanted your best.?
She graduated in the Top 10 of her class and then went on to S.C. State, where she graduated with a degree in math. She married Robert Sr. her final year in school.
?He was from one end of the road; I was from the other end,? she said. ?It was .8 of a mile.?
Her husband turned his skills into an NFL career. She turned her education into a successful teaching career in Georgetown, while raising sons who would become professional football players.
Her husband wasn?t the only one who ?fell through the cracks,? she said, of their early education.
Some overworked ?parents didn?t feel the need to track? their kids through school,? she said. ?Parents depended totally on the teachers for success.?
Overcoming obstacles
Illiteracy is not confined to rural areas; it has been an issue for South Carolina throughout its history. Historians have documented that the state had a higher rate of potential military recruits and draftees declared ineligible for service than even other areas in the Southeast for wars dating back World War I.
The haphazard nature of illiteracy -- affecting pockets of white and black residents, skipping pockets of others in the same area -- has been a staple of the region for centuries.
?The Southeast has always, since the Civil War, had a reputation of having poor education,? said Sally Hare, distinguished professor emerita and founding director of the Center for Education and Community at Coastal Carolina University. Now president of Still Learning Inc., she has worked with educators around the world and studied at places such as the Harvard Institute on School Leadership.
The period during which Robert Geathers Sr. was being educated in Browns Ferry-area schools was ?such a complicated time,? she said.
He graduated more than two decades after the Supreme Court handed down its Brown v. Board of Education decision, which began the unraveling of segregated schools in the South. Choppee High, though, remained all-black for almost half a century after that decision, which also had roots in a lawsuit concerning conditions in South Carolina schools.
Schools in surrounding counties, such as St. Stephen on the other side of the Georgetown-Berkeley County line, did as well. Economic and educational hardships have been an even more consistent given in neighboring Williamsburg County.
The white families who could afford to, opted out of public schools and created a private school system. Busing, which was used as a tool in the integration process, disrupted many families, black and white, and reconfigured communities.
A process designed to correct racial wrongs nevertheless left scars that are being felt today.
There were many children, now adults, who ?were wounded by integration,? Hare said. ?In so many ways, they kept it all in. They were the young children, and I suspect the young teachers, too. It was both black and white. Some of those teachers were stunned by the conditions, but nobody knew what to do, or say.?
White coach: ?best time of my life?
Thad Hendley, who coached Robert Geathers Sr., and his younger brother James ?Jumpy,? who went on to win a Super Bowl ring with the Washington Redskins and the Denver Broncos as a pass rusher in the NFL, was one of those young teachers brought in during the integration process.
As a 27-year-old with no coaching or teaching experience, Hendley was hired at Choppee High School to head the football program and teach.
Hendley, who is white, said it was also to help integrate the school.
A black coach, John Spears, was already there, putting the football program together. He became Hendley?s mentor.
?I didn?t know what to expect at an all-black school,? Hendley said. ?They liked me as a football coach, and I liked them as students and players. It was the best time of my life. It was fun.?
It was also a time during which social promotion was just an accepted reality, he said.
Young students, such as Robert Geathers, who struggled with literacy early on were passed along from grade to grade.
?If they tried and they really tried, I gave them a ?B.? And if they tried somewhat, I gave them a 60,? Hendley said. ?Very seldom did I flunk anybody. It was kind of the status quo at that time. I couldn?t teach them reading. I tried. And most of them had given up by that time. I can?t say the whole high school was like that, but there were enough of them to make you wonder why they hadn?t gotten it earlier on.?
David Klee, also white, said he experienced something similar at rival Pleasant Hill High School, where he was the head football coach and a teacher between 1971 and 1976. Pleasant Hill was more integrated than Choppee at the time, but still mostly black.
He was 21 when he was hired, had recently graduated from college and was doing odd jobs in Myrtle Beach. The school district hired him sight unseen after he filled out an application for a teaching position.
His contract showed up in the mail.
?A lot of my students were about my age, if you looked real close,? Klee said.
Maybe a quarter of the students he taught were illiterate. He gave them verbal tests; he?d ask them what they heard him say in a discussion about the Civil War, for instance, and graded them that way.
?You could tell they listened, comprehended some things,? Klee said. ?They just couldn?t get it from the book.?
And he passed some students because they were good football players, he said.
Klee coached one particularly talented player who had so much trouble in the classroom he couldn?t tell his left from his right. The coaches made him wear a piece of tape on his right wrist during the games and direct him on where to line up and run by pointing to the tape.
?That?s just the way things were done back then and probably still goes on today,? Klee said.
Literacy difficulties were not just evident among secondary-level students.
Many graduate-level students preparing to become high school teachers had spotty literacy skills themselves, Hare said.
The heavily agricultural nature of the area complicated matters even further, as did the then-fledgling tourism market of Myrtle Beach, which attracted young people with low-wage, but plentiful jobs.
?They didn?t start school until all the tobacco was in,? said Hare, who was hired by a college football coach to teach a team of white players how to read and write. ?It was hard to get kids, because they were working. The priority was the tobacco crop.?
Contact ISSAC J. BAILEY at ibailey@thesunnews.com or at Twitter at @TSN_IssacBailey.
Source: http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/2013/08/11/3639045/more-than-a-game-geathers-family.html
houston weather the night they drove old dixie down levon robbie robertson the curious case of benjamin button secret service prostitute rich ross
5 Hours Ago 
? 