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For 17 years Christine and Cabell
Estes of South Hill, Virginia, had at least one daughter attending
Longwood College. Some years they had four.
Now, granddaughter Crystal
is here. One more year and she'll most likely
be joined by her sister Amy. As this generation
continues a...
Longwood Legacy
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Mary came first. She had tuition of $875 per year, a state teacher's scholarship and $2 a week allowance from home. Velva was
the last. She had tuition of $2,285 per year, a state teacher's
loan and $20 per week from home, plus a four-times-handed-down Volkswagen
Beetle.
Between
Mary and Velva came Betty, Shirley, Sarah Jane, Marilyn, Sandra
and Linda.
It's
a tribute to Longwood that each of these eight sisters graduated,
went on to teach in Virginia schools and continues to teach in Virginia
schools; Mary has taught for 32 years, Velva for 21. It's a tribute
to Longwood that in 1996 Kim and Pam Goodwyn, Mary's identical twin
daughters, were graduated from Longwood. Together, these 10 Longwood
graduates represent 198 years of teaching, ranging from kindergarten
to community college. It's also a tribute to Longwood that Crystal
Nemeth, Sandra's daughter, is now a junior in Longwood's booming
School of Business and Economics.
However,
in this family there's plenty of praise to go around. And
when children and grandchildren of Christine and Cabell Estes get
together, the credit for all the students' lives they have touched
is paid to two people who never enrolled at Longwood, who never
attended college at all, but who instilled in this family the importance
of an education plus the perseverance and ethics to get an education
and then use it for the good of someone else.
Christine
and Cabell Estes were married on July 20, 1941. Cabell helped his
father on the farm and Christine made 45 cents an hour at the Burlington
Ribbon Mill. By 1956, the family had celebrated the births of six
daughters. To support this family they left the farm and bought
an old boarding house, the South Hill Inn. Mrs. Estes cared for
the family, cooked and cleaned at the Inn, and worked as secretary
for her husband's business moving houses and building rental homes.
The Estes were blessed with two more daughters.
Eight
girls, one closet, one bathroom, one telephone. They
learned to share and to respect one another. They
followed their father's advice to "do for one another."
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Clothes were handed down and handed down again. "Tell me about it," laughs Velva, the end of the line. Shirley
remembers, "Every Christmas, each of us got the very same thing.
Plus we'd get a bag of nuts and a bag of oranges to share." Every
Christmas Eve they acted out the Christmas story with the "youngest
stuffed in the clothes basket as the baby Jesus." Each girl got
a birthday party for her 14th birthday. For
Easter, each got a chocolate egg and her choice of an Easter dress.
They picked vegetables from their grandmother's large garden,
and if they shelled enough peas in the station wagon on the ride
home, and they were good, they stopped for
ice cream at Dairy Hart. Now, they laugh about Tony-brand perms
that their mother administered before school pictures each year.
Linda laughs loudest, having been excused due to
naturally curly hair.
Everybody
worked. The girls too at the Ribbon Mill or at Leggett's
department store. But no matter what hours they worked
"sometimes it was a revolving door here"
their
mother prepared for each one three hot meals a day.
Each
of the girls graduated from South Hill's Park View High School,
and not one had ever heard the word "if"; it was always "when"
you go to college. The women say that they "never had a choice."
They were "told to go to Longwood."
Cabell
Estes had wanted to be a veterinarian, but with the Depression
he was needed on the farm. Christine Elliott Estes remembers that
her dad "wanted to be a preacher, but he finished only the third
grade. He couldn't send me to college." So
the dream deferred was instilled in the next generation.
Longwood
was relatively close and had a strong teacher education program.
Teaching was good money for a female in an economically poor county,
and teaching allowed for normal work hours and time with family.
That settled it. Says Marilyn, "Dad called us 'Longwood Ladies.'"
All
of the girls were good students. Betty admits, "I loved to play
bridge; Shirley didn't approve, so she would come and check up
on me." Their parents expected good grades, but when Linda was
upset over a C in one course, "Daddy said, 'Look you can
teach with a C as well as you can an A; just do the best
you can.'"
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