So you think you've done what you came for, and then you find that you were utterly wrong.
Your most important work is ahead of you, not behind you.
Richard Brownell served 20 years in the Marine Corps, beginning with two combat tours during the Korean War and retiring as a lieutenant colonel after a year on the commander general's staff during the Vietnam War. He led every possible unit, from squad to battalion.
"I used to think that was the pinnacle of my career," Brownell said. "When I came here, I never realized that this would be my life's work. Everything I had done before was preparation for it."
"Here" was Rowan Technical College in Salisbury. Brownell arrived there in 1977 after earning a doctoral degree in higher education administration at Duke University.
Back then, Rowan Tech had fewer than 2,000 full-time students. Most were men. The college was regarded as a trade school.
In those days, Brownell remembers, Concord didn't talk much with Kannapolis, and Kannapolis didn't talk much with Concord.
Salisbury didn't talk much with either.
But when you have a vision of how the future can be, you can start to work at creating the future now. Brownell believed Rowan Tech could reach out into two counties to become the first regional multi-campus in North Carolina.
"Bits and pieces of the future are always present in the current world," Brownell said. "If you have a vision of a preferred future and you can get enough people to share that vision, the energy of that process brings your vision into the present."
After years of communication and collaboration with chambers of commerce, economic development and manufacturing partners, and community leaders, it happened. Rowan Tech became Rowan-Cabarrus Community College in 1987.
The college grew, steadily, to meet the needs of both counties.
In July 2003, Pillowtex closed, putting 4,000 people out of work overnight.
"We had 4,000 people standing there from a culture where the whole family worked in the mill," Brownell remembered.
"Their whole life was gone -- their culture, their future. We were the only ones who could address that. So we went to the Department of Labor and got ready to salvage lives."
RCCC enrolled 49 percent of the former Pillowtex workers for retraining. The U.S. Department of Labor gave RCCC a $2.2 million emergency grant and later selected it as the most innovative workforce development college in the nation.
"There is nothing like the power of education to give people hope and move on," Brownell said. "So many lives were saved through that effort."
RCCC's budget is now nearly $48 million. The school has nearly 1,300 full- and part-time employees. The student population is primarily female.
"We have lots of single mothers. They are working so hard to make a better life for themselves and their children," Brownell said.
Education changes lives. Education saves lives. A life spent serving his country in the Marine Corps prepared Richard Brownell to spend another lifetime serving his country.
He worked in the trenches, meeting regular folks' needs for the education and training that could change their lives.
"To be part of this has been the greatest privilege of my life," he said simply.
Brownell has been honored for his work in many ways: He has received an honorary doctorate from Catawba College, and he has been named an outstanding president in a 1988 national survey of transformational leaders in American community colleges.
On Tuesday, the Cabarrus County Senior Democrats took Brownell's impending retirement as an opportunity to honor his service to the community.
Brownell is leaving RCCC after more than 30 years. He is the longest-serving community college president in North Carolina's history.
But if you ask, he'll start talking about all the exciting things that are about to happen in Cabarrus County, about the changes he foresees in Kannapolis and elsewhere in the region.
"I wish I could jump in the Fountain of Youth and start all over again," he said.
Well. You never know what's before you, do you?
On Common Ground Barbara Thiede
