Surry County Profile
800
volunteers
enrich the schools
Robert
Merritt’s roots — familial and financial — run deep
through the soil of scenic Surry County. His grandfather, E.E.
Merritt, settled in Mount Airy in 1888 and helped create a major
economic foundation for the area’s bedrock textile industry.
The names of Mount Airy and
Renfro Corp. became as interwoven as the millions of socks the company
produced in the town. Three generations of Merritts helped make Renfro
into one of the two largest sock manufacturers in the world (along
with Sara Lee).
Since retiring from active
management in the early 1990s, Merritt has not been running any
textile plants, but he has been running hard to help keep the
county’s educational and economic engines oiled. He labels himself a
“professional do-gooder.” Whatever the title, this 74-year-old
former corporate executive is doing a lot of good.
He and a lot of other Surry
volunteers have turned their attention from the boardrooms to the
classrooms that were in need of attention and resources the county’s
tax coffers could not provide.
A decade ago as Merritt was
drawing the curtain on his own corporate career, he led the way for a
group of private citizens who became willing shareholders in the
county’s schools by creating a program of citizen volunteerism
unequaled in Surry and in many other counties. “We just saw a need
and wanted to help,” Merritt says, downplaying his own role in the
successful endeavor. “As corporate people, we felt we needed to have
a financial stake in creating educational advantages for students who
needed special attention.”
Merritt and his colleagues
knew the schools were strapped for cash where supply could not meet
demand. And they realized if their companies were to continue to
succeed in the emerging workforce environments, future workers had to
have increased skills.
What started slowly with a
half-dozen corporate leaders offering to serve as tutors or lunch
buddies for a handful of students at one school has turned into a
network of almost 800 individuals from private industry, civic and
church clubs and retirees who give thousands of hours a week to help
students succeed. Today more than 300 students in six different
schools stretching across Surry County receive special guidance and
attention. Each student has access to four different volunteers who
work on reading enhancement and offer just plain old tender loving
care. Many corporations provide paid leave during regular work hours
for employees to serve as volunteers in the schools.
“It is wonderful,” Mount
Airy Superintendent Bill Church says of the volunteer program. “It
supplements the regular curriculum for reading improvements among
students who would be falling behind. It has added at least a year of
academic proficiency among those being served and it stays with the
students year after year.”
In addition to providing
volunteer time, Merritt spearheaded a campaign to get corporate and
other private donations to purchase supplemental reading materials
from HOSTS (Help One Student To Succeed), a private company in the
state of Washington.
“We believed in what we
were doing,” Merritt says, “we thought we were successful, but we
didn’t have any measurements for several years. We wanted to look at
it as a business, to see documented results. HOSTS has allowed us to
do that.”
When the initial contract
with HOSTS expired last year, Merritt took charge again. “We were
making real differences for students and couldn’t just let it
drop,” he says. In less than a month, Merritt helped raise $300,000
in private dollars to renew the contract.
Success with the tutorial
program has bred success. What’s next? “Well,” Merritt says,
“we need more volunteers.” — Ned Cline
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