Before I ever got into real estate, half a century ago, I worked in education as a teacher and counselor, and I greatly enjoyed that, too. Among other things, that was an opportunity to get to know so many young people and help them get focused on what they wanted to do, at a time of increasing opportunities, in the Fifties, Sixties, and early Seventies.
After receiving my Master of Science in Education degree from Western Illinois State Teachers College in 1952, I was a high school teacher of business—a field that was commonly called “commercial education.” And it included complex matters like accounting and business management, as well as practical skills like shorthand and typing.
I liked getting to know different schools in the area, so I taught at communities like Virginia, Blandinsville, Bardolph, Springfield, Avon, and Macomb. And those schools were of different sizes, ranging from Bardolph High School, which had just fifty students, to Springfield High School, which had 2,000. And there was much to enjoy at all those places.
By 1965 I had completed my studies in counselor education at Western, which was then a rapidly growing university, and I was starting to work in that field as well. Then one day, the Macomb High School principal, C.L. Barrett, asked me if I was interested in being a counselor at our high school, and I was glad to accept his offer. It was a chance to work personally with many local students, to help them plan their future.
At that time, Macomb High School produced many young people who became successful in variety of occupations. Of course, I often dealt with seniors, and back then about seventy or eighty percent of those students were planning to attend college. So, I was glad to explore different aspects of career challenges—and sometimes help them apply for scholarships, too.
