Soul of 78: Neal Hendrix

Retired Math Teacher at Maddox Middle School

Words by James Phillips | Images by Ryan McGill

Neal Hendrix has always loved two things — children and math. Those two passions helped her to become one of the most beloved teachers ever in the Jasper City School System. 

Hendrix graduated as an 18-year-old from the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (Auburn University) in 1949. She graduated from LaGrange High School in Georgia at 15. 

Hendrix and her husband, Grady, moved to Jasper, and she began her teaching career in January in 1950. That first job was a four-month stint at Sumiton School, where she taught fourth grade. 

“I think I learned more from those little fourth graders in that four months than all of them combined learned from me,” Hendrix said. 

A two-year stint teaching sixth, seventh and eighth grade at West Jasper School followed before she was out of education for a while, working at the Alabama Department of Welfare (now DHR) from 1952 to 1956 before being a stay-at-home mom until returning to teaching in 1970. That teaching job would be at Jasper Junior High School, teaching seventh and eighth grade and later Algebra 1. 

“It was a whole new world between 1950 and 1970, a tremendous difference, even in technology at that time,” Hendrix said. 

In the ‘50s, Hendrix had basically a chalk board and a text book. She said there were a few reel-to-reel movies and a pull-down map in some classrooms. By 1970, she had an overhead projector built into her desk and a teachers manual. 

“Before, I had the same text book as the children, she said. “The teachers manual had everything written out and all the answers.”

Hendrix taught at Jasper Junior High, which later became Jasper Middle and Maddox Middle until she retired in 1992. 

“There was so much change in technology during those years,” she said. “My last few years is when computers came in. We had a computer lab, and I had one computer in the classroom. It wasn’t connected to the internet. It was just a computer. I didn’t use it constructively, only using it to get familiar with a computer.”

It was also in her last few years that she started teaching Algebra 1 at that grade level. 

“I had not taken algebra in 40 years at that point, but once I started teaching, it all came back to me,” Hendrix said. 

Hendrix said she always loved math. 

“Math is something we use every day,” she said. “I would play a game with the students, asking them to name something and I would tell them how math is used. I love puzzles, and math solved puzzles.”

Hendrix said she loved her students, saying seventh and eighth graders were always her favorite. 

“A lot of people do not like teaching that age, but I loved it,” she said. “Every day was different. The same class today could have a different personality tomorrow. Each class was always different.”

Hendrix, 91, said she retired in 1992 to be able to spend quality time with her husband. The two traveled to almost every state in the Continental United States. The only states the couple didn’t travel to were California, Oregon and Washington. All their travels were by car. 

Even though, she’s been out of teaching for 30 years, she still keeps up with many of her former students on social media. 

“I loved each and every one of them,” Hendrix said. 78