18
community people
Dacie and Tara Gamble
FOR THE
"G"
WORDS Dwain Hebda IMAGES courtesy Jade Graves
In many ways, the 2021-2022 school year dawned the same way it always had in Greenwood, Arkansas. Moms and dads took first-day-of-school photos on front porches of grinning kids in bright new school clothes clutching as-yet-unopened books. High schoolers shuffled off to greet their huddle of pals, sharing gossip before the bell sent them scattering to their classrooms. Talk around this close-knit town is about the prospects of the powerhouse football team, the defending state champion, and their chances to repeat. Everywhere you look, Bulldog Pride bursts the school and the town at the seams. For Josh Ray, there’s nothing routine about this year, even after fifteen years in education, five of them at the administrative level. He’s the new principal at the high school, an opportunity that doesn’t feel like
Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean that we don’t trust and that it’s not the
it should. It’s something that thrills him one minute then takes the heart right out of his chest the next.
right thing... For whatever reason, June 18 was
“I’d be lying if I told you it hasn’t been painful, that I
the day that was written for them. You can
wasn’t very intentional in how we scheduled my first
play the what-if game. What-if a thousand things, but in the end, it would have been the same because that was the day the Lord had appointed for them.
day, because I didn’t want to be sitting in there with nothing to do,” Josh says. “I knew how emotional it would be.” Of all the new challenges and unknowns that lie ahead for the new principal, the most daunting is
DOSOUTHMAGAZINE.COM
