Emmie Gorrell:  

Hi! I am Emmie Bullington Gorrell and I graduated from East Meck in 1971. I went to college in the Blue Ridge Mtns., at Appalachian State Univ., majoring in Theater, until my dad asked me just how I planned to make a living! So, he told me of a "new" field(at that time, it was new!) of Speech Pathology. I graduated from ASU with my B.S. that almost earned me a Special Education double major, as we had to take so many Spec. Ed. classes to learn about the different types of problems or "Challenges" kids and adults can have that can require Speech Therapy to help them be able to communicate their needs and wants. I also learned to ski(LOVED IT!!) and even took skiing for a PE credit! After I graduated in '75, I moved to the little town where my mom had grown up and my grandparents still resided in and started to be a Speech/Language Therapist. I loved the kids, but all the repetitions required for anyone to remediate their speech/language disorder bored me so much that after two years, I came to Columbia, and got my Masters' in Speech Pathology and Audiology! After I got my Masters' degree, I just stayed here in Columbia. It didn't really occur to me to move away from the East Coast, which is where I've always lived! I met Martin Gorrell, and as soon as I was standing beside him, I could tell something was different in a wonderful way. He was such a terrific person, smart, witty, loved to read, and was such a kindred spirit. We lived together for 6-7 years, and then decided we wanted to get married, which we did at my parents' church in Fort Mill, on a beautiful, sunny HOT afternoon in August and he surprised me with an incredible trip to Hawaii!! We went to Oahu and then, to Kuaui. We debated whether or not to just chuck our mainland lives as we both fell in love with the state. Reality came along, as it tends to do, and we came back home to Columbia, moving out to Lexington before too many years after getting married in '85. We found a house that we both loved and have lived here about 25 years! We could use a little more space for books and a doll collection I started when I got very sick 15 yrs. ago. I taught Learning Disabled kids and then, would switch back to Speech Therapy every few years, as I just get bored so easily. When I was in Grad School, our classes were in the evening, three hrs. long!! My best friend and I nearly went nuts sitting that long, even with a quick break halfway through, after doing practicum work all day and I had a Clinical Fellowship, which meant that they would pay me for working in the Speech Clinic, which was then located at the Wm. S. Hall Institute, at the State Hospital! There were about 30 of us in the program at a time, and so the faculty had a weekly meeting and discussed how each of us was doing academically and clinically. My advisor called me in for our little conference that they always had with whoever had been discussed at the faculty mtg. She told me that the faculty realized that I missed my share of classes, but since I had a 4.0 average, they decided that it wasn't necessary for me to even BE in class, since I seemed to be learning whatever I was supposed to learn with a minimum of boring, three hour classes. Looking back, Grad School for me, was like running a marathon is supposed to be. I just gritted my teeth, probably chewed my fingernails and because I only had to go for three semesters, since I had my undergrad degree already, managed to hang in there, even when the "wall" made its appearance about the second semester!! So, for my "career", I taught Special Ed. students in elementary and middle school. I've heard that there are actually some teachers who love teaching middle school, and wouldn't want any other job, whereas I was in my element at the elementary level, the younger, the better. Well, not necessarily, but I did love the second graders a whole lot, as I did all my kids. I could somehow just appreciate that grade level a bit more than other grades. I wasn't cut out to be a teacher/therapist, but that meant that I worked on overload all the time, determined to make myself fit the teaching "mold." I now know that I should have stuck with theater, or majored in Art or Music(piano). But I worked way too hard, pushing myself, and periodically, I'd burn out. That started happening earlier and earlier in the school year. When it started happening basically at the time we had to be back in school in the Fall, it should have been a red flag to me. And it was, but I had no idea back then what I was really meant to be or do. My last year, I had moved to a brand new school, along with a lot of the teachers and principal from the previous school. I thought it would be kind of nice to have the experience of actually having a whole classroom to myself and my kids. A lot of things happened with the logistics of opening a newly built school, and we had our share of those. By Thanksgiving, I cried every morning, as I was so incredibly exhausted that I hadn't ever felt that exhausted in my life. Along with the exhaustion, I'd feel like I had the worst flu I had ever had in my life, and I could barely get ready for work, even though I was used to riding my bike 30 miles a day after I got home- major debriefing method! Plus, I love to ride. My drs. all told me to QUIT at Christmas Break, but I pushed on to be there when my kids would be subjected to taking standardized tests, which none of them would do well on, as that was a major factor that had placed them in special ed. classes in the first place. I pushed on, still crying every morning, not knowing how I was going to make it, and on April 21 of that year, I stopped. Imagine the Tinman in the Wiz of Oz, and that was pretty similar to how it was for me. I could not take one more step, I couldn't imagine trying to fake my way through teaching the kids that day or any other day, and I just collapsed, sobbing, as I was going to have to leave my kids. And of all the things I disliked about the administration in our school, I adored my kids, and didn't want to let them down, by leaving before the year was over. But I had no choice. I crawled to the one computer that the admin. allotted for my LD kids, and tried to type out some form of long term lesson plans, as I knew the kids would have to have one, and I wanted to try to type out as much as I could, so they would teach my kids what they were working on. My principal came in, sat down, mumbled something to me, maybe, "So, you won't be coming back?" I'm not sure, but I think that he asked me some arcane question like that one. I couldn't even talk. All systems were down after pushing myself so far past my limits for 25 years. I don't remember how I got home, 26 miles away, and I don't recall going to clear out my personal stuff from my classroom. Back then, we all thought if you broke a teaching contract, you would never be hired by another school system in the state. And I worried about that?? I went to bed when I got home, and I pretty well slept that entire first year, as I had been born with no immune system, as I was born very, very sick, and the dr.told me that babies develop their immune system during the first six wks. of life, but I didn't have the chance to do that, as I was sick during those weeks. It turned out that I had Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome, otherwise known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, otherwise known as you can't get much sicker that that. A book I got when I was up to reading, likened having this disease to the last two months of a terminally ill AIDS patient's life. It was bad.. Very bad.. Turned out that, being the Type A overachiever that I was, I also had what the rheumatologist told me was the worst case of Fibromyalgia that he had ever seen in his whole career. And a lot of other, lovely illnesses love to piggyback on these major two that have no cure and many drs. still don't know much about either disease, but Fibromyalgia seems to be getting more widely known, and the actor, Morgan Freeman, just recently came out with the news that he, too, was a Fibromyalgia sufferer. I knew I had always loved his movies, his acting, and I so respected that a celebrity had finally come out to the public, which would so help public awareness of this disease. ...Expand for more