Teacher Appreciation Week runs through today

Thank you, teachers, for all you do for our students and our community

By Jim Freeman

LAFOLLETTE, TN (WLAF)- WLAF and Eagle Tire Pros recognize one educator a week on Thursdays, and, so far, more than 250 educators have been honored over the years. However, today, I wanted to personally say thank you to our current educators but more so to look back at those teachers who influenced me as we celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week this week.

There’s usually not a day that goes by without a comment or a way of doing something that crosses my mind that came from a teacher I had along the way.

Most of the names on my path, that I can recall, include Jim Pierce, Ken Hicks, Jerry Dagley, Helen Olvey, Mary Chambers, Edna Lambdin, Louise Sharp, Emma Sharp, Joe Mac Davis, Carolyn Woodward, not Woodard as she would say, Georgia Murray, Lou Baird, Bill Young, Glenn Morton, Jack Faulkner, Burton Nevils- letting us watch the World Series during class, Charles Owens, Vermon Morton, Jasper Singleton, Clifford Kohlmyer and Lou Baird. And I can’t forget all the ladies in the cafeteria, especially Betty Carson, who would fill my plate with those delicious rolls at La Follette High and Johnny Epperson, the janitor, who let me in the gym whenever he was around.

As I look around, school teachers run deep in my family. My grandmother, Dovie, and mother, Joyce, were school teachers and so was my mother-in-law Ruth not to mention my wife Sugar and daughter Ali.

One fun memory is from second grade in Louise Sharp’s room at West End School. My dog followed me to school one morning, and when I went to my class, he was outside the school house. It didn’t take long for him to get into the school. He found me. It created quite the stir, because we had just started a math test. Miss Sharp let me leave class and take Scruffy back home.

“Son, two wrongs don’t make a right,”- Jerry Dagley

“You’re probably going to pay for this”- Jasper Singleton after giving me permission to skip Miss Woodward’s class to officiate a basketball game at the junior high.

“Star, you’re gonna have to play better tonight if you want to beat Jacksboro-” Ken Hicks

“I’ll make a deal with you. When y’all win, I’ll buy you a coke, and when you lose, you’re buying me one. She’d never let me buy one”- Lou Baird

“Alright gang. Clear these halls. This is not a pep rally”- Glen Morton

“I guarantee you’ll work in my class, but you’ll also laugh at least once in here every day”- Carolyn Woodward

Thanks for the memories, the life lessons, the encouragement, the kindness and the examples you were to me. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-05/09/2025-6AM)