Education is the catalyst that can transform the trajectory of a family. My father and his family are proof. I grew up in a two-parent four-child family in St. Joseph, Missouri. My mother’s parents were both elementary school teachers who lived a middle class lifestyle.
In contrast, my father grew up in a very poor rural home where his mother died when he was four and his father tried to raise his four children during the Great Depression of the 1930s. As late as the 1960s my siblings and I still had to use the wood outhouse and outside water pump when we visited our grandfather. My father barely graduated from high school, was drafted into the army during the Korean war, and used the GI bill to attend college after his service. He was the first in his family to go to college where he eventually earned a bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Both my mother and father worked in the St. Joseph public school system as teachers and principal until their retirements, a combined total of 50 years. Their focus on education resulted in my siblings and I becoming a lawyer, a university professor equivalent of chemistry in Germany, a medical professor in Chicago, and me, a professor of geology.
My family exemplifies the life-changing impact high-quality public education in Missouri can have on families. I believe the same can be true for residents of the Lindbergh school district.