Betty King - on teachers as role models at Orange County Training School (clip)
Interviewed by Bob Gilgor on January 18, 2001
RG: Do you still remember your teachers from Orange County Training School?
BK: I remember, not back too far. I just went to one of them's funeral. She passed. Ruth Hope, I went to her funeral. One teacher, Miss Eziel ? Smith. She was my teacher. There's another one that's still alive and lives in Creedmoor, Miss Rogers, who was a ?? I guess I remember just about every one of my teachers.
RG: Did you feel that they were your friend or that they were for you?
BK: They were my friends. They were for me. They helped me. They were always just like, to me, they were like another set of parents. They would help me. I knew, that was my inspiration, I knew I wanted to teach.
RG: When did you find out you wanted to teach?
BK: I think I always kind of had it in the back of my head, but I guess it was when I was, really determined I was gonna teach was a teacher named Miss Davis..?..She's still alive. She was pretty and young. I wouldn't tell anybody she taught me. But she's still, she's in - down east. They gave her an award in Raleigh, and we all went over there. But she came, and she was an inspiration to me, she just was really someone I wanted to be like.
RG: What was the relationship of your parents with the teachers?
BK: Like a business relationship, I mean, it was not, it was like a business relationship. They didn't socialize. They knew them. My principal, who lived on the same street that I lived on, they were friends. That was the MacDougals, you know the MacDougals? They lived right down the street from me. They still were friends like a next door neighbor.
RG: What about their relationship with the teacher, say, when you would have parent-teacher meetings? Did they ever go to the school to have those meetings, or were they always at home?
BK: The only time that I can remember my - 1 can't even remember my father ever going. It was understood that when you went to school, that you had one purpose goin' and that was to learn, and they didn't want to hear anything that you misbehaved in school, and if they did, what you had to deal with, is that if you misbehaved in school and the teachers got in touch with the parents, then you would get it double - you'd get it in the school, then you get it at home.
