Twice this week, parents have asked me to talk to their junior high school children about a career in politics, what classes to take, what college major to choose, how to start etc. It’s a conversation I love to have. And it always ends the same way, with a question to the young person: “Do you want to change the world?” “Yes sir, Mr. Gowdy” is the response. “Then become a teacher”, is my response. I understand the allure of government. Going door to door for Carroll Campbell, working for Senator Strom Thurmond in Washington, suffering through the State Senate loss of former Spartan High coach Bill Carr and watching the Republican National Convention as a kid with my dad – all of these memories are etched in my mind. But not as much as my 3rd grade teacher asking me to stay after school one day and giving me to the confidence to believe I could do anything I wanted to do, not as much as my 6th grade teacher letting me re-take the test on Tom Sawyer because I gave her the TV ending and not the Mark Twain ending (and not telling my parents about it), not as much as seeing children run up to my wife and hug her because she teaches them in kindergarten. Government is important obviously. But the reality is, there are scores and scores and scores of women and men who could effectively serve in any single office in the country. Finding someone willing to love and teach other people’s children is special.
One of my heroes in government is former Spartanburg Mayor Bill Barnet. He served 8 years. He could have served forever. He was as popular his last day as he was his first, but he realized there was a time and a season for everything and that it was time to move on beyond government. I asked him at breakfast recently “what are you going to do after your term as Mayor is over?” He said “I am going to try to teach a child to read.” In other words, he was going from changing Spartanburg to changing the world.
