news-record.com

EDEN — As teacher Tonya Gillespie waited for her third-grade students to enter her Draper Elementary School classroom in the fall of 2003, she experienced a lot of mixed feelings.

“It was like my first day of school all over again,” she said, “except I was on the opposite side of the room.”

Gillespie, 33, readily admits her biggest fear was failure. “When you go into that classroom and you have 15 sets of eyes on you and they are hanging on your every word, that’s intimidating,” she said. “You don’t want to fail your students.”

Most first-time teachers probably have many of the same fears as Gillespie, but she had another reason to worry. Gillespie is in a wheelchair as the result of a paralyzing aneurysm when she was a teenager.

After the initial shock when their teacher did not stand to greet them, the students’ reaction quickly changed to wonder.

“They were just so interested to find out everything they could about my wheelchair,” Gillespie said. “They were amazing. They wanted to know everything about me.”

For the next hour, students and teacher talked about her disability.

“The way I explain it to kids — I tell them it’s like blowing a piece of bubble gum and after it gets so big, it pops,” she said.

Often the reaction is, “Miss Gillespie you should not be blowing that bubble gum any more!”

After the first week, the students get used to seeing their teacher in a wheelchair.

“They are very protective of me and want to carry my tray and do what they can to make my life easier,” Gillespie said.

After teaching third grade that first year, Gillespie was transferred to second grade.

“My favorite phrase to hear is: ‘Miss Gillespie, I’ve got it! I understand,’” she said.

Principal Tammy Heath said, “I respect Miss Gillespie for her initiative as she has worked so diligently to find that special life where she can touch the lives of so many people.

“Her students really love her. She always has a smile,” Heath said. “She doesn’t let anything get in the way of her dreams.”

In 1993, Gillespie graduated from Fielddale-Collinsville High School and was deciding what to do with her life.

But an aneurysm in her spine burst on New Year’s Eve. “I thought I was having a heart attack,” she said. “I was having extreme chest pains and my arms were going numb on me.”

Doctors told her the aneurysm was caused by something she had at birth: Arteriovenous Malformation.  “I don’t have capillaries in between the arteries and veins,” she said. “They are connected like two ends of a water hose.”

Doctors told Gillespie it was so rare that she probably wouldn’t recover. She is paralyzed from the chest down.

Gillespie says her faith in God and the prayers of strangers, friends and family — especially her grandmother, Arlene Taylor, who still lives in West Virginia — helped give her a good outlook on her future.

She said her grandmother took her to church every Sunday when she was a child, and “if that seed hadn’t been planted when I was young, I don’t think I would be here.”

Reality set in after she returned home from the hospital and rehabilitation. “At rehab, everything was customized to fit me, and when I got home, I had to be the one to customize everything,” she said. “The real world is not customized for a handicapped person. I had to learn everything — take a shower, crawl in bed, get dressed, everything.”

For three years, Gillespie hid in her parents’ home.

“I was scared of the way people I knew before would look at me or what they would say,” she said. “I did not socialize.”

By the time she turned 21, Gillespie had decided to go out on her own and she bought a home in Spencer, Va.

One of her biggest joys was a Shar-Pei puppy named Sumo. “He was with me when I bought my house. He kept me safe at night,” she said.

Sumo died on Feb. 10. Gillespie still has two Yorkies, Gracie Mae and Bailey, and two cats, Samson and Delilah.

About the time she got her house, Gillespie enrolled at Patrick Henry Community College although she didn’t know what she wanted to do.

For nearly a year, she prayed about it and the answer that kept coming back was “teach, teach, teach.” She transferred to Averett University in Danville, Va., and earned her bachelor’s degree in science in 2003.

Then she set out to get a job.

“It was hard,” Gillespie said. She interviewed at eight schools in Virginia. The response was always they wanted an experienced teacher.

After interviewing at Draper, Gillespie told her mother, “That’s where I want to teach ... because of the atmosphere and feelings.”

More importantly, Gillespie said Heath and her staff “didn’t look scared at me. A lot of people look at me and have a scared look on their face.”

The very next day Heath called and offered Gillespie a job teaching third grade.

Gillespie gives most of the credit for her success to the support of her family.

“They have absolutely, positively never let me down,” she said. “... I know I would not have been pushed and achieved what I have so far without them standing behind me.”

Ann Fish is a Reidsville native but has lived in Eden since 1979. She is a retired newspaper editor and reporter. Contact her at annsomersfish@yahoo.com