Gayle in a circle with her Program “Bounce” children from 2009 This is the story of one woman who learned to dream and act when everything seemed against her. Mary Gayle Grimsley came from the bottom, figuratively and literally. She was raised in The Bottom, a section of Colquitt, Georgia, typical of other depressed neighborhoods that are usually the first to flood in small rural towns. Today, she’s on top of the world. What happened is the story of Gayle’s life, from a nightmare to a dream fulfilled.

While she was still in her teens, Gayle fled her broken home for St. Petersburg, Florida. She got involved in a bar room brawl and ended up in a Florida state correctional rehabilitation center in 1969. She was not a model prisoner, to put it mildly, but credits the change in her life to a social worker who was assigned to counsel her.

After one more stormy fighting session, the counselor reared back and laughed. “Well, Gayle,” she said, “You don’t have to blame anyone else for making a mess of your life; you’re doing a fine job of it, all by yourself!” This was a shocker to Gayle, who denied it at first, but as the days passed came to realize she had made a mess of what opportunities she had had, and only she could do something about it.

When Gayle was released in 1972, she went back to Colquitt to start a new life determined to provide a new path for all the other black kids of her town. She lived in an old shack and had little money, but she started bringing neighborhood kids into her home to help them with homework and teach them singing skills. Her little choir sang in local nursing homes, and afterwards she filled them up with hot dogs and ice cream. In 1977, she became a self-appointed child advocate, rewarding kids with fishing trips and cookouts for their efforts to improve their school grades. She remembered, with some embarrassment, how she would pack as many as 14 children into her 1973 Fury III to go to various church functions. She dreamed of having a building, a special club house to keep her ”children” off the drug-infested streets of The Bottom after school.

In 1992, still pursuing her dream, Gayle connected with the white community. She became a lead singer/actress in Swamp Gravy, a local story based theater that gained fame as Georgia’s official folk life play. This opened new contacts for her with those in the community who shared her concern for children at risk of gang violence, drug abuse, teen-age pregnancy and school dropout. One of these contacts was the Colquitt/ Miller County Arts Council, which secured a $300 state Grassroots Arts Program grant to fund a hands-on arts event in The Bottom. On the afternoon of March 4th, 1995, 60 children showed up for the event. This marked the beginning of the Miller County New Vision Coalition, bolstered with a $15,000 start-up grant from the state Board of Mental Health. Gayle had achieved her comprehensive after-school program of tutoring, arts activities, field trips and life skills training. Her dream was on lift-off.

Over a decade later, New Vision has served approximately 500 children with a 97 percent graduation rate from high school. Families in The Bottom at first were skeptical and unsupportive of the program. But this started to change when Sharita Fountain went from failing second grade to the AB Honor Roll, sending her mother out bragging from door-to-door about her daughter’s award. By 2002, the county board of supervisors was so impressed with the success of Gayle’s initiative that they built the Miller County Community Resource Center around Gayle’s program. Finally, Gayle had her “clubhouse.”

Today, the City of Colquitt is proud of the number of its black youth who are in universities and in professions such as teaching, nursing and government administration.

Take for example 25-year-old Carlos Williams, an original New Vision participant. In 2007, Carlos was elected as a Colquitt city councilman. Currently working on his master’s degree in public administration at Albany State University, Carlos carries memories of his New Vision experience with him.

In a recent interview with Gayle, he said, “What stands out to me was the dedication of both the students and the staff. I remember that a lot of kids and parents didn’t have proper transportation. You and Jean Patterson (program administrator) gave those kids rides home in the rain and came back to pick up more. That showed there was no excuse for any child not to attend, because the staff itself was willing to help meet any situation.”

Today, as ordinary Americans yearn for some good news, here is the story of one woman’s dream, of a hope beyond hope that empowered a small rural neighborhood in southwest Georgia to transcend its fate.