Monday's Internet Edition, October 06, 2008.
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| Charles Harber becomes Kempner's first police chief. The city elected to form a police force, rather than keeping a marshal's office, to take advantage of state grants. |
News editor -
After 23 years working for the Copperas Cove Independent School District, Judy Meriwether is choosing to move to Wichita Falls to spend more time with her grandchildren.
Meriwether has been a biology teacher as well as cheerleading coach since her start at Copperas Cove High School in 1981.
“I knew it was time to retire when I had one kid come to try out for the team, and her mother had been on my JV squad years ago,” Meriwether said. “That’s when its time to go.”
Meriwether came to Copperas Cove because her husband was in the military.
“I had already been in the education field in Germany,” Meriwether said. “After my divorce, my ex moved away but I really liked it here.”
Meriwether said she turned to coaching the cheerleading team after teachers approached her to take the squad to camp.
“They just came to me and said, those poor girls. They can’t go to camp because there isn’t anybody to take them,” Meriwether said. “It all started with me just doing this one thing.”
Since Meriwether had previous coaching experience while in Germany, she had originally wanted to stick to teaching when she first came to CCISD.
“I used to be involved with so many extracurricular activities in Germany,” Meriwether said. “When I got here, I just planned on only teaching, but this was something new and it was really good that first year.”
Meriwether said that while she coached a variety of sports in Germany, she had never before coached cheerleading until Copperas Cove.
“I just grew into it (cheerleading),” Meriwether said. “I was nice to get the kids out into the community.”
For Meriwether, some of the more memorable moments while coaching have been winning national championships.
“I also get a lot of kids coming back to thank me for teaching them discipline, and how to manage academics,” Meriwether said. “As funny as it sounds, I’ve even been thanked for teaching them what rules are and how follow them.”
Another factor that Meriwether will miss after retirement will be the ability to help students deal with hard times.
“There have been times that I’ve had to help a student deal with tragedy,” Meriwether said. “It could be the death of a parent or even more recently having to see their parents off to a war zone. It’s not pretty, but I’ll miss being able to be there for them.”
Meriwether also said that she will miss having former students look her up to tell her how she has changed their life.
“About two months ago I had a student call me from Waco,” Meriwether said. “While in high school, he had come so close to being strangled, but he called me to thank me for getting him through high school.”
“That is what it was all about.”
Meriwether plans on moving to Wichita Falls in the next month so that she can spend more time with her family.
“Now its time for me to spend more time with my grandkids,” Meriwether said. “Its time to go and watch them perform in school functions.”