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In Loving Memory of Mother & Father
Cleo & Mary Helen Coble Harris
In Loving Honor of Mother & Father Grace Chafin & James Rowland Jones
In Loving Honor of Mother and Memory
of Father, Henrietta Hester
Harris and in Loving Memory
of Junie Thomas Hester
In Honor of Mother and Memory of Father
In
Loving Memory of Henrietta Hester Harris and
of
Cleo Harris
My Father Cleo Harris
US Army PFC
42nd Infantry Division
BAR Point man
Wounded German Machine Gun Fire
Near Anzio, Italy November 1943
Cleo Harris was one of a kind. A "Mans" man, a child tempered by the Great Depression, tested in Battle during World War II.
He battled lung cancer and survived eighteen years after having left lung removed. He was further tested by a tractor accident which forced him to have five hip replacements.
Cleo could build or repair anything. He could draw blueprints in his head and build a house from those blueprints in his mind. The furniture he made is rivaled by none, actually his furniture pieces are works of art.
Not once in his life did I ever hear him complain about anything. He was a gentle giant, a big man in stature and in heart. generous to a fault. He is missed by his family in a way words can't describe, but his memory lives on in our hearts.
I have been Blessed in my life with many loved ones beginning with my Parents and Grandparents. I didn't see my Father until I was 23 months old as I was born while He was in Italy during World War II.
One of my major blessings is that I have had the great fortune of having Three Mothers and Two Fathers.
Mary Helen Coble Harris, my mother was a wonderful Christian woman. She lived a simple, kind, gentle and loving life. She never raised her voice in anger, She didn't allow certain words to be spoken in our home. For example, she would never allow the ugly N Word to be uttered and that goes back to the 1940's. She loved all people, red, yellow, black and white. She was ahead of her time in love for all races, colors and creeds.
We lived with my Maternal Grandparents during the War. I bonded with my Grandfather Charles Lawrence Coble and my Grandmother, Julia Edwards Coble. They were more like parents than Grandparents and I honored and loved them very deeply. My earliest memories of them are setting between them on a porch swing listening to all the family and neighbors that gathered on their porch and just talked. There was no TV, only radio and the richness of conversation was abundant.
My Mother went to be with the Lord on April 2, 1967 just one day prior to my parents 25th Wedding Anniversary. Her death left my Father with six year son to rear. Three years later my third Mother arrived on the scene. Her wonderful husband Junie Thomas Hester and my mother both died the same year at age 42 with cancer. Three years later my Dad and Henrietta married and she became Henrietta Hester Harris. *See Biography below Henrietta had three children all at home and in school. My Dad and Henrietta married and a new family was formed and my now nine year old brother had a full family Blessed by God. It gave me the large family I had always wanted, as I was an only child until age 17. Again my Father married a wonderful Christian woman and they had a Blessed 27 Year Marriage prior to my Father's going home in 1996. Henrietta became my second Mother. When she first saw my Dad her first comment was "Who is that Man?"
*Henrietta Hester Harris Bio
Hester's Creative Schools, Inc., is a private school in Greensboro, North Carolina, which according to a national childcare magazine, Child Care Exchange, is " the longest standing privately-owned child care business in North America." For over fifty three years, Hester's has served the childcare needs of Greensboro because of the foresight and dedication of one woman. Henrietta Hester Harris.
According to Henrietta, she got the idea to start a day care from one of her former minister's sermons. One Sunday, that particular minister's sermon was about the newly formed community clubs and their relationship with the community churches. He said that their community, the Bessemer Community, which at that time was not a part of the city, but which is now incorporated into the city, needed a nursery school and a kindergarten. Henrietta sat straight up in the pew and said to herself, "Lord, here I am and I can do that!" After all she had earned a B.S. Degree in Home Economics from High Point College, which had required a course in child development. This course included laboratory experience of doing a case study in a federally funded nursery school in High Point and working in all phases of children's day. She knew what would be required to run such a school and felt led to start one.
Tiny Tot Nursery School was born in 1949 out of a
Sunday morning Sermon from the heart of one woman who had a dream and made a
promise to make this school a place to love, nurture and teach young
children. As the school grew in numbers and knowledge, Henrietta and
her people realized what a special position they held.
" We held in our hands the future; future parents. future community
leaders, future business men and women, perhaps a future Noble Peace Prize
winner of even a future president." The first child enrolled is now a
doctor in Columbia, South Carolina. " We continue to keep in touch with many
of 'our' children." Now some of these first children have their
grandchildren in Hester's Creative Schools. "Their success is our
success and happiness."
During this time society was making great changes. Greensboro continued to grow, offering parents and women a wide variety of positions in the wok place, and with these changes came the necessity for parents to have a beneficial place for their preschool children to spend time when they were away from their parents and their homes. Tiny Tots Nursery School realized that if they were to serve their clientele, they needed to grow and so the first nursery school building in North Carolina was built in 1953. This brought a name change from Tiny Tots to Hester's Creative Schools, Inc. As the city and county grew, Hester's Creative Schools grew by constructing four more buildings, renovating a church and renovating four houses.
Henrietta Hester (Now Harris) and her family have dedicated their lives to making this business thrive through a very successful motto--to be the best, to offer the best, to give the best to young children. Because Hester's has never lost sight of the goal in this motto, they have succeeded and have grown by leaps and bounds.
To keep up with the educational changes throughout the years, Henrietta has continued to sharpen her skills through continued education. She has attended the Graduate School in Greensboro, North Carolina at UNCG, Lausanne Montessori School in Memphis, Tennessee, through the Lausanne School in London, England; summer school at East Carolina University; along with many workshops and short courses. The latest course attended was at the University of Beijing, China, for a China-US. Joint conference on Early Childhood Education, which was by special invitation only through the International Association of Childhood Education.
The history of Hester's Creative Schools, Inc. is Henrietta Hester Harris' personal story of long working hours with visual results of seeing the lives of young children unfold as their cognitive ability and physical bodies develop to find their place in this world:
PLANT FOR A YEAR, PLANT RICE
PLANT FOR A CENTURY, PLANT A TREE
PLANT FOR ETERNITY, EDUCATE A CHILD
A quote from Confucius
So today, in 2003 fifty-three years after the then Tiny Tots Nursery School opened its doors, Hester's Creative Schools serves about nine hundred children from infancy through Kindergarten. Hester's offers pre-kindergarten, and kindergarten. Through 1997 Hester's also operated private schools for children from first grade to fifth grade. Henrietta and the people of Hester's are proud of their recognition as the " longest standing privately-owned child care business in North America." She is also proud to recognize forty-four ladies who have been employed at her schools for fifteen to forty years. these women hold various credentials from child care development to master's degrees. Henrietta attributes Hester's Creative School's, Inc., success to all the fine employees and parents the school has had over the years and she appreciates each and every one of them. Henrietta Hester Harris who was honored in March of 1997 as a "Woman of Achievement" by he Greensboro Commission On The Status Of Women" was born on March 9th, 1926. She has three Children, Susan R., Elizabeth A. and J. Thomas Hester, and two step children; Brian K. Harris and Ronald C. Harris. At age 75, she is still active in the day to day business of the school and continues to hone her skills through continued studies in the area of education.
As it ran on June 8.
---"Room with a
view draws woman back home"
Deirdre Conner STAFF WRITER
dconner@hpe.com
Ccity Lake Park is home to fond memories in the
minds of many area residents. Like Jamestown native Henrietta Hester Harris,
they’ll remember Sunday school picnics at the park and swimming lessons in
the pool. But unlike Harris, they won’t have memories of the lake dating
back to the 1930s, when City Lake was one of hundreds of parks built across
the country under a public works program during the Great Depression.
Now, the 77-year-old Harris – whose family actually sold some of its farm to the city for the park – plans to retire to Pennybyrn at Maryfield, where she’ll have an apartment with a view of the lake that reminds her of so many dear memories.
“I got my first kiss on the dam of the lake,” she said. The boy who gave Harris her first kiss later became her husband. When deciding to live at Pennybyrn, Harris said she was focused on one important factor. “I studied the floor plans very carefully,” she said. “I chose it on the basis it would be on the third floor and at the end of the building so I could see the lake. That was the vital point.” Harris said one of her earliest memories as a child also revolves around the lake. “My oldest memory is of my older brother taking me down to the lake and giving me a bent straight pin and a string to fish with,” she said, now laughing at the idea she’d catch anything with it. “But I had high hopes.”
As a child, Harris worked in the family garden and home, but also had a paying job. “I sold the Greensboro Daily News in the fifth grade. I got one penny for every copy. I remember delivering the paper when the big headline was ‘War is declared,’” she said. Harris, who currently lives in downtown Greensboro, said being near the water has been a theme in her life. “I was born a Pisces, you see, so being near the water is very important,” she said. “I was a water-skier, (and) although I wasn’t very good at it, I used to swim. I enjoyed the High Point City Lake. I also love Baden Lake, where I have a house.”
Harris worked to put herself through High Point College (now High Point University) by working at the Guilford Hosiery Mill and a department store. “I had a B+ average in college,” Harris said. “That is, if you leave out chemistry it was a B+.” She went on to do graduate work in child development at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, but her studies were ill-fated. “I was on my last course when the doctor told me that my husband didn’t have long to live,” she said. He had been struggling with cancer for six years. “I turned my thesis in on Friday afternoon, and the next day he was dead,” Harris said. She said with all the arrangements and work to do, she never received her degree.
Not yet 40 years old, she had three children and a business to take care of. “It was some hard times,” she said. Harris later married one of her customers. “We had 28 good years together,” she said. Now she says she’s feeling content about her decision to go to the retirement community when it opens in 2006. Even though her children had originally planned for her to live with them, Harris said, she feels better knowing everything has been taken care of. “Once you leave 75 behind, you know it’s time to start making plans for the future. I have my plans, I have everything worked out. I’m going home to the lake. What more could a 77-year-old ask for?” Deirdre Conner can be contacted at 336-888-3530 or dconner@hpe.com
Deirdre Conner Staff Writer
High Point Enterprise
High Point, NC
PS Henrietta fondly recalls her paper route that paid one penny per High Point Enterprise paper delivered. She would start her deliveries at Granny Bundy's house and finish two miles later at the Pennybyrn Mansion.
She has now come full circle soon to return to her roots. Her career in Child Care and Child Development has touched many thousands of people and her positive influence in their lives will be felt for generations to come.
RCH
|
In Loving Memory of Steve Farrington
STEVE FARRINGTON Wilbur Stephens "Steve" Farrington, Jr., formerly of
Greensboro, North Carolina, died Wednesday, April 21, 2004 at Haven House
Hospice in Atlanta, Georgia. Steve, born in Randolph County, was a 1962
graduate of Greensboro Senior High School. He later attended the Oxford
College of Emory University and received a B.A. degree from Millsaps College
in Jackson, Mississippi. He was self-employed as manufacturer's
representative for finer stationery and paper products. In recent years, he
became an avid collector of Top 40 radio memorabilia. His specialty was
radio programming in the Southeastern United States from the 1950's to mid
1960's. His collection and commentaries may be heard and enjoyed at his
website, wakeatlanta.com and through a larger repository at reelradio.com.
He is survived by his mother, Allie D. Gregory of West End, NC; aunts,
Bernice Lane of Asheboro, NC and Odell Livingston of Candor, NC; cousins,
Maryann Gosney of Lucas, TX, Ramona Wilson of Bennett, NC, Genie Carico of
Trinity, NC; stepsisters, Susan Magas of Greensboro, NC and Nancy Evans of
High Point, NC; and devoted friends, Pat Lowenberg and Ron Harris of
Atlanta, Georgia. A private memorial service will be held at a later date.
Memorial contributions may be made to Reelradio, Inc., Box 340893, and
Sacramento, CA 95834-0893 or to Haven House Hospice, 5411 Northland Drive,
Atlanta, GA 30342. Arrangements by National Cremation Society (770)
923-2940.
Published in
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on 4/27/2004.
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