Edwards Family Empowerment

Jesse Edwards The Southern Migrant By Renardo Edwards There are people whom are a living history and a bridge from the past to the present and one of those people is our very own Family Patriarch, Jesse Edwards. Jesse is the third child of Cora and Thomas Edwards he was born on December 21 1941 in Potter Station, Alabama. Jesse early childhood was one of a happy child even though he was raised in the Jim Crow south. Family was very important in those days much of one’s socialization and education was formed in a tight knit family village, listening to him reminisce how they all live and work together was something of amazement and wonder. Gone are those days. Jesse has an injured shoulder sadly an injury he had involving my dad and cousin Mary, to think that he fell off a wagon and suffered and injury that bad but he refused to tell his parents to get better medical help, this showed me the toughness this man had even as a little child.  1940’s Alabama was a different time this was...

Felicia Gill, mother of one son, Lawrence and his wife Kraneisha, two grandsons, Lawrence Jr., Andrew, and one on the way. Unlike the other family members that have presented their careers, my career is what I refer to as “Planned Happenstance”. Being a fighter since birth, I have had to persevere my way through, making something from nothing. I am grateful for this opportunity to share with the family my career path, and how I got where I am today, by Happenstance.   Currently, I serve as Career Advisor at Calhoun Community College- Decatur campus. As some may already know, I served as an Academic Advisor and Director of the Rosa J. Young Center for Women at Concordia College Alabama, as well as served as a representative for Concordia in various capacities. This however was not a career path I chose. The career path chose me.  I want to refrain from saying I was a late bloomer, but rather choose to think that I had to get to the place where I stumbled upon my purpose. M...

  Hi Family! I’m L.C., the middle child of Joe and Ruth. One of the things my parents told us often after giving us a task was “Don’t go in there half doing it”. That set the tone for me determining what my career would be. I wanted to find something I could do well. Growing up, I developed a love for music. I sang around the house and listened to music every chance I got. I even toyed with the idea of singing opera. I was attracted to the life style the singers on TV seemed to have and wanted that career and seemingly good life for myself. So, I started preparing myself to become a singer by participating in the school chorus in grades 7-10. I found out I had a high pitched voice that my teacher taught me was referred to as first soprano. My teacher in grades 7-9 was very encouraging. He selected me to assist in his classroom and even selected me to sing a solo for our concert. However, my 10th grade teacher didn’t seem as impressed with my singing. She had a small select...

3. My third major career decision was to remain devoutly focused in the face of adversity. Failure was never an option. I leaned heavily on 2Corinthians 12:9, as I still do. I worked there for a year, it was third shift working at night, but I was always stopping by campus every week to read all the job postings. I desperately wanted to be in pharmaceutical research and on the biologics side. And finally one day, I saw what I was looking for and finally got into The Upjohn Company as a Research Associate. My first salaried position with benefits and paid vacation. It was here that I learned many surgical techniques, on many different species. I was even doing angioplasty on pigs & delivering nanoparticles to reverse plaque narrowing in arteries (atherosclerosis). I also got to write many technical papers and get published in professional journals like the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology. 4. My fourth major career decision was to take a job doing what I didn’t ...

I am the son, and only child of Willie Dean (Edwards) Turman, and Eugene Coker; both of Selma, AL. I’ve only met my biological father a handful of times, but my mother married Henry Turman in 1976, he adopted me, and he raised me and loved me throughout the rest of his life. We lived in Detroit for a few years after that, but left east Detroit as the city began to rapidly deteriorate. The Detroit of my youth was a grand and beautiful place; I miss it. It was at the end of summer in 1978 that we made our way to the small, quiet farming community of Litchfield, Michigan, and that is when this city boy began to learn how to do many things working our small produce and pig farm. In preparing to write this bio about the various careers I’ve had, I instinctively fast forwarded to all the things I’ve done since graduating from Western Michigan University, but life has a way of sometimes leading you back across paths you’ve already walked, and I must admit, many of the skills I learned on...