RISING STARS
B
runswick resident Thearon Filson says she was a single mother of three girls living in public housing in January 1997, when STAR Foundation entered her life and changed it forever. “I received a flyer for free computer training classes promising to open the door to higher-paying employment. I was working at Wal-Mart for $4.75 an hour, so I signed up immediately.” On the first day of class, Filson remembers, she was nervous. “I’d been a teen mom, I lived in the projects, I came from a dysfunctional urban family, and I’m an introvert. Plus, I knew nothing about computers. I walked in expecting to be stereotyped and judged. But Ellen Murphy wrapped her arms around me and I felt like she saw ME, not my situation, and heard me, too.” Only months earlier, Murphy, her sister and brother-in-law, Katie and Wally Orrel, proprietors of Dataline Computers, a
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ELEGANT ISLAND LIVING
successful Golden Isles software training and computer repair company, had approached the director of the Brunswick Housing Authority with a proposal offering residents computer training classes, and thus, STAR was born. “Don McGlamory
gave us trial-basis permission to use a rec room in the Glynnvilla Apartments for a quarter,” recalls Wally. “And for the next three years, it was always ‘I’ll give you another four months’ until the program expanded, and we moved.”
ABOVE LEFT: On site in the CCGA Student Health Service Center, STAR alumna, CCGA graduate and staff member Thearon Filson and College of Coastal Georgia president Dr. Michelle Johnston. ABOVE RIGHT: STAR executive director Dr. Markisha Butler (far right), with 25th Anniversary Gala committee members (counterclockwise) Donna Davis, board chair; Courtney Prince, gala co-chair; Debbie Banks and Elaine Griffin, at the event venue. Not shown: Molly Moroney-Norrett, gala co-chair; and Tina Kirby, past board chair.
