What: Adult Basic Education (ABE) and General Education Dipoloma (GED) graduation at Haywood Community College
When: Friday, Jan. 23, at 7 p.m.
Where: HCC auditorium
Who: Local businessman and author Jim Joyce is the guest speaker

She’s an 80-something-year-old nursing home resident, and instead of spending her precious days playing gin rummy or watching Oprah, she’s hitting the books so she can earn her GED. If she stays on track, and there’s no reason to believe she won’t, this time next year she may be donning a robe and mortar board and crossing a stage at Haywood Community College to get her diploma.

When I hear about adults who take on such challenges, it sure makes coming to work everyday and sitting in front of a word processor seem like trivial stuff. Those are exactly the thoughts that were running through my mind as I spoke to Deborah Gaddy, the coordinator of Haywood Community College’s Adult Basic Skills program. We had just a short conversation, but I hung up the phone with several stories of courage and inspiration. Gaddy and her partner, Kelly Teague, along with many volunteers, help people raise themselves up and gain a kind of dignity most of us had forgotten was valuable.

Think about it. What if you had trouble reading even a children’s book, or if you had plenty of smarts but had to travel through life suffering the indignity of being a high school dropout because of a decision made when you were still a kid.

Before you get the holier-than-thou attitude toward a bunch of people because they dropped out of high school, think a bit about this world we live in and how it was different 30, 40 and 50 years ago. Sure, many people drop out of school for all the wrong reasons, but many of these students left when quitting in the tenth grade was not as significant as it is today. Nowadays, when even a college degree isn’t a guarantor of economic success, this seems a strange concept. Not so long ago it was just a fact of life. Men quit school to earn money for their families or to join the military, women dropped out when they married and began having children and taking care of a household. Some quit because they already had good-paying jobs, and others because way back then schools did not have all the remediation that could get a student caught up if they fell behind.

If you’re thinking the people who teach adult basic skills leave home each morning and drive to their classroom on a comfy campus somewhere, think again. Because many of the students who need this kind of teaching feel more than a little awkward about their situation, HCC helps them overcome that problem by setting up satellite learning centers throughout Haywood County. That means going to places like Fines Creek or Cruso and setting up classrooms in community centers and any other place that might be convenient — like a greenhouse.

That’s right. The department at HCC that helps people earn these certificates and diplomas also helps immigrants learn English. For a long time they had tried to set up classes for migrant farm laborers and their families who live in the Bethel area. Because of the long hours worked by the migrants, communication problems and other barriers, the efforts had proved fruitless.

This past summer, though, everything came together. Farmers who employed the migrants saw the benefits of the workers learning more English and realized that the folks from the college would come out and do everything for free. Local churches arranged childcare for the children, and Canton’s Catholic Church even prepared meals. Through the work of many, they helped these migrants learn English.

“It was just a neat partnership,” said Gaddy. “They even want to have us back next year.”

Then there’s the story of Jim Joyce. The Waynesville resident recently had a book published (Pucker Factor 10) about his experiences learning to fly and his time as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. Joyce was asked to come and speak to a class of adult high school students, and so he did. Afterward, several went home and began to read his book.

“Some of these people had probably never read an entire book in their lives,” said Deborah. “He inspired those kids.”

Joyce will speak at the graduation ceremony this weekend, and if I know Jim he’s probably more nervous than those who will be getting their certificates and diplomas. But he’ll summon the courage, stand before those students and find something meaningful to tell them.

And that — courage — is really what these programs are all about. It’s about people taking on their regrets and working to vanquish them. The ceremony Friday night may serve as an example to people who may have thought about going back to school and have not yet arrived at the right time and place in their lives to do it. If you know some of those folks, contact Gaddy or Teague and find about their offerings. Or better yet, talk them into going to HCC Friday night. They might leave with enough inspiration to sign up.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)