Opening Doors

Images by Terrell Manasco

Marcia Adkins once met Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at the Salvation Army. “There were these rows of books,” she says, recalling the thrift store in the Birmingham neighborhood of Norwood she frequented as a child. “It was like a treasure trove.” Allowance money was often invested in anthologies featuring the works of Poe, Doyle and the classics.From an early age, books had always been important in her life. “My mother read to me. There were always books,” she says. When Marcia began first grade at F.D. McArthur Elementary School in the late fifties, school was not among her priorities. “I did not like school,” she admits. “I wanted to stay home and read my books.” That aversion sometimes resulted in drastic measures. “I was somewhat infamous for chasing my mother’s car down the driveway,” she grins.McArthur was, in Marcia’s words, a “wonderful school with wonderful teachers”. One of them was Betty Bettis, who taught English and public speaking. “She made us get up and read poems, and I was just in my element,” Marcia says. “Getting up in front of the class was never a thing we didn’t do, so I never learned to be afraid of it.”It was Bettis who inspired Marcia’s choice of vocation. “By the time I was in the eighth grade I had already decided, I am going to do what she does,” Marcia says. “She was the first English teacher I had who made us think about what that poem meant or what that story was about.”Marcia, however, wasn’t content with just reading the books. “I loved to talk about the books,” she says. “I wanted to share that story with somebody. A good teacher can make you see things you didn’t see at all, and then all of a sudden a door will open and you’ll say, ‘Ohhhhh, I understand how this fits together now.’ To me that was just a wondrous and miraculous process. What better thing to do with your life than to try and open that door?”The path to her career wasn’t always smooth. Her husband, Lance Corporal Frank Kitchens, Jr, was killed in Viet Nam in 1970, just before her eighteenth birthday. Three weeks later she discovered she was pregnant with her son Jason.Forging ahead, Marcia enrolled at Walker College the following year. By 1972 she had remarried and was living in Cordova. She finished up her degree in secondary education, graduated from UAB in 1974, and taught at Redmill Junior High and Walker High School.After her daughter Stephanie was born in 1977, Marcia began teaching English and public speaking part-time at Walker College. In 1982, she was hired full-time. “When I got that job,” she says, “I knew I had a dream job. I thought, this is where I want to be. Never wanted to be anywhere else. I wanted to be in that classroom, doing what I was good at.”Now retired, Marcia serves on the board of Daybreak, a domestic violence shelter, and travels with a group of women friends twice a year, something she dearly loves. “I would love to travel more, but somehow I ended up with these dogs,” she jokes, referring to her French bulldogs, Truman and Fiona, and Harper, a chihuahua mix. “I am sooooo lucky with my friendships. They are varied and interesting, and there is always somebody to do something with.”But teaching, for her, always came down to one thing. “It’s opening that door,” she says. “It doesn’t happen every day, but when it does, it’s worth any number of terrible papers you had to grade and people dozing off in your class. And the thing I loved about speech was, showing people they could do something well, even if it scared them, and even if they didn’t like it. What I hoped I was teaching was that you need to form an opinion, based on evidence.”From one who has personally experienced that suddenly opened door in her class, thank you, Mrs. Adkins.And thank you, Mrs. Bettis, for opening that door. 78