Abbye Ayers Faurot

Rachel's journey from Chipola Roads, the rural community in northwest Florida where she was born in the mid-ninteen-twenties, was so much further than the few miles it took to arrive in the small town where the highschool was located Her naC/ve approach to life was a result of her plain-spoken, down to earth poor farm family's upbringing, where life's rules came mostly from their understanding of the Good Book as handed down to them.

Florida Cracker born Rachel Wilkes had never seen a coconut palm or pink flamingo but that did not mean she was not a typical product of the "forgotten Florida" west of Tallahassee, where tall virgin pines still grew in the years between the Great Depression and World War II. Rachel knew from childhood that she wanted to teach, as her desire for knowledge was only surpassed by her religious faith and her love of family. She did not know the odds of her reaching that lofty goal. She only knew she was going to do it. This is the story from Rachel's entering formal schooling in her teens, and her family's struggle to make it possible.