50-Year-Reunion

Donald Poe 8857 Baton Rouge Avenue NW, Calabash, North Carolina 28467 donald.c.poe@gmail.com (336) 625 - 7633 May 15

After graduation, I attended Bluefield State College earning a B.S. Degree in Elementary Education with a specialization in history in 1979. My first teaching job was at Oakvale School, where I was on the faculty with two other Class of 1975 members: Terri Mills and Wayne Pelts. During my early teaching career which also included Kegley Elementary and Straley Elementary, I earned an M.S. Degree in Educational Media from Radford University in 1983. In 1985, I married Jill Shafer from Grafton, West Virginia who was the guidance counselor at Straley. Having always wanted to live at the beach, Jill and I moved to Carolina Beach and Wilmington, North Carolina in 1986. After four years of coastal living, we decided to move back a little closer to home, settling in Asheboro, North Carolina. In 1998, we were blessed with a daughter, Annabeth Caroline. We lost Jill (who loved to attend our class reunions) to colon cancer in 2007. Jill was serving as the counselor at Farmer Elementary in the Randolph County Schools at the time of her death. In her honor, the Randolph County School Board named the Counselor of the Year Award for Jill. Annabeth and I have had the honor to present the “ Jill Poe Counselor of the Year Award ” for the past 19 years. In 2012, I retired as an educator having served as an elementary teacher, an elementary and middle school media specialist, and Director of Media and Technology for Randolph County North Carolina Schools for a total of 33 years. During my retirement, I have had the opportunity to pursue some of my hobbies including scrapbooking and traveling. Jill started a family scrapbook at the time of Annabeth ’ s birth, and I continued the tradition after Jill ’ s death. Today, we are at 64 scrapbooks and counting. Many of those include pictures from our travels to all 50 states as part of a goal that Annabeth set for herself when she was in elementary school. I also enjoy seeing and photographing lighthouses with the most distant lighthouse that I have visited on the island of Kauia in Hawaii. Another interesting fact is that I don ’ t mind moving—since graduation, I have lived in Bluefield; Princeton; Carolina Beach, NC; Wilmington, NC; Asheboro, NC; Chapel Hill, NC; back to Asheboro; and currently in Calabash, NC. I have attended most of our reunions over the years and have enjoyed seeing long - time friends and making some new friends with classmates that I did not know that well when we were in high school.

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