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Goodbye Quesinberry
Bringing history to life: Quesinberry’s legacy at Newnan High BY REBECCA LEFTWICH becky@newnan.com
T
eaching was less about what Steve Quesinberry wanted to do than what he didn’t want to do. “I realized at the end of my freshman year that if I went into education, I didn’t have have to take any more foreign languages,” said Quesinberry, a Virginia native who was a student at Asbury College at the time. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I really kind of fell into education.” Quesinberry is retiring after spending his entire 36-year career at Newnan High School, where he will leave a legacy of connecting students – and the community – with military veterans to bring history to life. But it wasn’t always his plan to become a teacher. He left Asbury College with a double major in history and physical education, a double minor in health and coaching, and a wife. He arrived at Newnan High School in 1985 with a plan: he’d teach for five years and then head to Mississippi to work with a college buddy. As it turned out, he had a knack for teaching. “You can go to education classes all day long and not have a clue, but I had some really good people that helped me my first year,” Quesinberry said. “And I found out that I liked teaching. I wasn’t great at it, but I enjoyed it.” He was an assistant and then head coach of the Cougars soccer team and continued his own edu-
Steve Quesinberry
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cation, completing a masters in exercise science in 1992. And he still wasn’t finished. “By the time I got to the early 90s, I’d already been moved full time into the history department,” Quesinberry said. “I decided I liked it, so in 1993 I got my masters in history from West Georgia.” He also was a new father at the time. The first of his three children was born in 1990 to Quesinberry and his wife, Susan – a math and French teacher at Newnan High School. The pair met in college. “We were in the same freshman English class,” he said. “She was doing well, and I was not.” Susan spent her entire career at NHS as well, teaching on the same hall, and the couple’s children – now grown – are all Newnan High alumni. Susan retired pre-pandemic to spend more time with family, Quesinberry said, especially now that grandchildren are in the picture. And Quesinberry continued to build the school’s history department, which he has chaired since 1995. “The more knowledge that you have – the more stories, the more things you’ve heard or read or know – the better off you are,” said Quesinberry, under whose leadership the NHS history department now sponsors programs like Student-Vet Connect and the History Speaker Series, as well as the Veterans Relief Fund 5K. QUESINBERRY . 2
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JUNE 2, 2021