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Visitors bear witness to history for students
Eyewitness event lets visitors who lived it speak
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by GRETCHEN PHILLIPS
Mary Louise Webb, the vice president of the African-American Heritage Society, talks with Thomas Stone High School students at an Eyewitness to History event Feb. 27.
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It was a history lesson directly from the mouths of those who lived it.
At Thomas Stone High School last month, select students were asked to be part of an Eyewitness to History program where people from the community shared stories of their personal accounts of history including times of war, racism and hardships.
Guests came from all walks of life and from different cultures.
As a baby of the Great Depression, Col. James Anderson spoke to students about people in his time hiding money as they did not trust banks.
Roberta S. Wise, vice chairwoman of the Charles County Board of Education, told students about how she in recent years cleaned out a deceased relative's house finding money in random hiding places.
Anderson spoke of the Depression and of his time as a pilot in Vietnam.
Mary Louise Webb stood before a group of high school children and, as lively as a child herself, told of her upbringing in a one-room school in the 1930s, growing up in Bryantown and making the most of her life.
She told students of walking three miles to her segregated African-American school. She said the white school was just on the other side of the road, so all the children walked together and got along.
Webb said her first job landed her $3 a week and she saved every bit of it.
She moved to New York to work in a hospital making $36 a week. She eventually moved back to Maryland to get married and stayed in Waldorf for 59 years until she moved back to Bryantown in 1980.
"I've been extremely busy since 1980," she said.
Since then, Webb has been volunteering for various groups and is the president of the African-American Heritage Society.
Webb told the students that there is nothing more rewarding than volunteering.
She reminded them that volunteers don't get paid, but "look at the education you get volunteering."
Students asked Webb if she knew back when she was attending a one-room school that she would wind up where she is today.
"I had no idea about my future ... it's when I became older that [the question was] what do I want to do with my life," she said.
Ida Wills also had no psychic ability to see her future.
Now a loving mother and grandmother, Wills grew up in Charles County off Route 231 where at 8 she helped build the church she sings at today. She recalled lying about her age at 16 to work at the Pentagon in Virginia. At 20, Wills moved back home at her mother's request to help raise her siblings. Wills' mother died at 50 before Wills was able to come home.
Wills married and had six children of her own and spent much of her life raising children. She later worked at Mitchell's Tavern on Route 231 after attending classes at the Charles County Community College, now the College of Southern Maryland.
Wills told children to always be respectful and that discipline started in the home.
She spoke of her little church and offered the students a valuable lesson.
"Sometimes you can make a big thing out of a little thing; we have good times there," she said.
Bob Pitts, a former Thomas Stone High School teacher, spoke to students about good times talking with his father.
Pitts explained to students that he began recording his father's history on audio tapes so that he would always be able to reflect and pass on the history.
Pitts said he learned a lot about his father, who lived through segregation, the Great Depression and witnessed hate crimes by the Ku Klux Klan. Pitt said out of all the stories he most admires his father for learning as much as he could from life with only an eighth-grade education.
Pitts said he, a college graduate, called his dad for help in putting together an appliance which his father was able to walk him through over the telephone.
Pitts along with several of the speakers encouraged students to talk to their family members about history.
In a later interview, Pitts said the Eyewitness to History event was important for students.
"It gives them an opportunity to see history up close and personal ... it makes history come alive," he said.
Kenneth Talley, who works as a prosecutor in the Charles County State's Attorney's Office, told the students that everyone, regardless of race, needs to get at least a high school education. Otherwise, "you start life with one leg cut off."
Wise encouraged students, especially the girls, to go out in the world and make the most of opportunities, as when she was growing up, the only options for her were to teach, become a nurse or become a homemaker. Wise chose teaching and when a student asked if she could do it all over again what would she do, Wise said she would more than likely teach as it is her passion.
Senior Joshua Lucas said he enjoyed hearing the speakers. He said he learned a lot from the stories and mostly that he could aspire to do whatever he wanted in life as long as he put his mind to it like many of the speakers and "just do it."
