Sunday Interview with Vicky Partin: 'I'm a farmer at birth and farmers don't quit'
Vicky Partin has served the Columbus community for 43 years as a social justice activist, ministry leader and community volunteer.
In 2014, she retired as director of Chattahoochee Valley Episcopal Ministry. She and her husband, John, are also owners of Chatt Glide Tours, a Segway company based at the Whitewater Express location in Phenix City.
Partin sat down with reporter Alva James-Johnson and talked about her childhood, advocacy work and life in the Chattahoochee Valley.
Here are excerpts from the interview, with the content and order of the questions edited slightly for length and clarity.
What was life like for you growing up as a child?
I had a wonderful life. I grew up on a farm in Giles County, Tenn., with loving, good Southern Baptist parents, one sister, and nearby were both sets of grandparents. Together they all raised me. I was very blessed to have parents
and grandparents who taught me how to work hard physically. Farming is hard. I didn't know until much later that I was growing up learning about faith in a unique way. Farmers have to live on faith in order to raise crops and cattle and chickens and pigs.
How did you develop your desire to be a teacher?
I really went to Peabody College to major in music. I thought I wanted to teach piano and voice as my mentors had taught me. I got to Peabody and realized that I really hadn't been taught enough theory.
At the end of the first year, I decided to continue the voice lessons but focus on English as a major, and was very well taught to teach English at Peabody and enjoyed it very much.
When did you develop your passion for social justice? And did any of your childhood experiences have anything to do with that?
I think so. Having grown up among people on a farm ... we were taught very young to love everybody, and our best friends were living on the farm with us as sharecroppers, often. ... We didn't have a lot of money. We owned the land and we could produce on it, but we never had access to much money. And so I understood more about how to care for people who don't have what they need, as a young child, and then doing outreach work in my church, years later, I would learn even more about that.
Our farmhouse burned when I was a junior at Peabody and the outpouring of gifts and necessities that came to us the morning after our house burned overwhelmed us. As a family we had never been on the receiving end like that.
And I shall never forget how generous people were, many of whom had far less than we had in our home. I would serve on the vestry at my parish and out of that came my need to go outside the parish and focus my energy in community among people in need. And so I give credit to a parish who's always been very involved in the community and in outreach.
You're talking about here in Columbus?
Yes. St. Thomas Episcopal Church.
You talk about the sharecroppers and that environment. That was at a time when races were very segregated and there's a lot of history with slavery and everything else. What was that like in terms of the relationships in the sharecropping environment between your family and the black workers?
It made it so much easier for me. I understood black people. I understood the culture and I had been blessed to have very close friends in the community I grew up in. When I became a teacher at Kendrick (High School), it was the first year they integrated 74 black students from Carver.
I got to teach quite a few of those kids and I understood exactly why they were excited to be in this school. I, unfortunately, had to learn that many young educators, particularly women, were fearful of that experience and had not had an experience in their lives to help them understand how these kids were just like every other kid and eager to learn. ... That was a wonderful opportunity for me to share a bit of my experience and understanding.
What brought you to Columbus?
My husband graduated from law school during the Vietnam War and expected to be drafted. He went into the JAG Corps (Judge Advocate General Corps) and then became a lawyer here at Fort Benning in the JAG Corps. He was actually the assistant prosecutor in the (Lt. William L. Calley Jr.) trial, which is what kept us here all four years of our Army life. ... We met people from all over the country and the world and learned how rich the culture of the military is and how fortunate we are here in Columbus to have that next door.
What was Columbus like when you first came?
Pretty dreary. When we first came they were just building Columbus Square Mall and there was no easy way to get to it. We lived on post at a time when people said, "You don't live on that side of Columbus."
We would later learn how racist that comment is and how hurtful that can be to people, but we have enjoyed watching this city grow in many ways.
We found our niche in a small Southern town where we had no connections, really, at that time. It was a good place to bring up our son and close enough to get to the farm and our parents in Tennessee.
Is the farm still in existence?
My sister and I own the farm and go there several times a year.
When you first came to Columbus, what did you do when you arrived?
I started substitute teaching to get a job ... eventually I got the job at Kendrick. That was an interesting time because I would later learn my black friends got jobs before I did, because it was a time when they were concentrating on having a wonderful mix of new African-American educators.
How do you feel about that?
I feel fine about it.
Affirmative action is something people still debate about now.
It was much later that college students began to feel some resentment. At that point, it was making very good sense to me because I knew how important it was for our schools to be integrated. I'm sad to understand that now we have schools that aren't so well integrated. It's just always better to have a mix of cultures and backgrounds together.
Why do you think we've reverted back to a situation where we have such segregation?
Giving people a choice of where to go. There are many low-wealth families who can't get their children across town to schools they feel might be better.
From there, you went into social justice work, right? Tell me how that came about?
The first nonprofit I coordinated was the Lung Association. I was enjoying that very much, traveling to 16 counties and doing education around asthma and respiratory therapy and that sort of thing, a lot of anti-smoking and smoking education work. But eventually I was voted on the vestry of my church and put in charge of the outreach arm of the church. That I did for three years. At the end of that, my friend, Barbara Thompson Danner, who later I would learn is a spiritual friend, knew me so well spiritually that she knew that I should quit my job at the Lung Association and do outreach full-time. That she told me on the phone one day as I was headed to Florida to a fundraising conference on how to do a bike trek across Georgia for the Lung Association. ... I was somewhere on my way to Eufaula on the trip and I knew immediately that she was right, that I could do that and that excited me. And I just cried for many miles just knowing that that's not so different than the altar call in the Southern Baptist Church when I was 11.
I got home and told my husband and he said, "Oh, that sounds like fun. Why don't you do it?" So Barbara and I went to Father Charles Roper who would become a mentor. He was the parish priest and he had watched me fight for money to give to the poor on the vestry and he understood that this sounded like a very real call. He called the bishop, Bennett Sims. And before we knew it, there was formation of the pastors, directors, of different Episcopal churches in this area. We call that a convocation. They met and agreed that a community organization around our different parishes would be a good thing, a good way to work together as Episcopalians. And so that's how the Chattahoochee Valley Episcopal Ministry formed. It was the first diocesan ministry of a cluster of churches in the diocese. It became a nonprofit in about 1980 and the bishop commissioned me lay missioner, which I knew nothing about and would learn that there were no others in the country.
How did you get started?
I was very fortunate that Father Roper sent me around the country looking at outreach ministries and I would meet other mentors. But no one told me how to be a lay missioner or how to form this ministry. So rather than having guidelines of how you do this in a community, we were sent into the community to learn from the people what the needs were. That's how it's continued for 34 years, a process of involvement. As we would learn needs of the people who taught us the most, we would create and develop ecumenical programs to assist with those needs.
What were some of the needs that you discovered?
Well, the first was I was in a parish that had a shelf of food to give to people and I had met already a man in Atlanta named Bill Bolling who had started the Atlanta food bank and we had been on a committee together in Atlanta. And I knew that we needed to have a food bank in Columbus. In the meanwhile .... all of the parishes around my work had shelves but not food pantries. I called Methodist and Catholic and Baptist friends and we together started the Interfaith Food Bank and went to Atlanta and brought home our first van load of food from there and opened a food bank. And that would serve organizations who were churches or nonprofits, who serve people in need. That is now called Fooding the Valley.
Then I worked with the people in the parishes -- at that point there were five -- and developed a food pantry around each of those. And four of those have become nonprofits on their own. They run very good food pantries. Wynnton Neighborhood Network is one of those. We helped start that. That was our first experience ever formulating a set of bylaws and mission statements around people who are Christian and Jews together. ... Then there is the Uptown Food Pantry that Trinity's involved with here on Second Avenue, and there is one in LaGrange and one down in Lanett, Ala.
What happened from there?
Then a lady called me one day and said, "How do we help people have decent housing? We don't have enough affordable housing." That was back in the '80s. I said, "Have you heard of Habitat for Humanity?" And she said, "Yes. How do we learn about it?" And I said, "We go over to Koinonia, near Americus, and we learn how Millard Fuller started this." Again, very ecumenical. I was so enriched by the ecumenical and interfaith work because I figured out very fast that we Episcopalians couldn't save this world. We needed to work alongside the whole city and all kinds of people to do this. So we were able to start our local chapter of Habitat for Humanity from that.
One area that emerged was working with incest victims. Can you tell me how that got started?
That's the most recent. A lady named Frances Morris willed her estate to the ministry. After she died and her properties were consolidated, we received a check for $178,000 and a letter. In that letter she said to me, "Do with this what you need, but I would like some attention to be given to victims of incest as I have been one." She died in her mid-'80s not having any opportunity to deal with that pain. She lived it her whole life in secret. I knew nothing of the tragedy of incest, and went about gathering in counselors and telling this story and people came forward to help meet as a group. Eventually, people who were survivors and victims came. So we started Shedding Our Secrets in 2009 as a result of Frances Morris.
You've also been very much involved in trying to improve race relations here in Columbus. What's your assessment of the current racial climate of the city at this point?
It's far better than it was when a cluster of pastors and laypeople started the Interfaith Action Group. That was about bringing together black and white pastors and laypeople in conversation. I can thank again my mentor, Father Roper, who said to (the Rev.) Johnny Flakes (of Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church) that we must get to know each other as brothers.
How long ago was this?
In the '80s as well. ... We started meeting every week, and out of that came what we called cell blocks at that point. Little groups of people around town would meet once a week, and I was very fortunate to have Johnny Flakes II as my mentor in that group, and (the Rev.) Albert McCorvey of New Providence Baptist Church, and (the Rev.) Emmett Aniton of Friendship (Missionary Baptist Church), and (the Rev.) James Johnson of First (Presbyterian Church) and (the Rev.) Bob Potts at First Baptist -- people who taught me a lot about how churches had that opportunity to grow together, but first, relationships needed to be built. That was really helping me a lot to understand how the community functions outside the religious arena. ... It was called Valley Interfaith Mission. (It) continued to grow eventually into One Columbus, which eventually evolved into the Mayor's Commission on Diversity, Racism, and Prosperity.
I have seen a lot of opportunities for people to work together better and I'm still very hopeful, but just today I read the most recent paper of the Columbus Times and they have lots of unity programs going on and the pictures had no white people in them. And at (the city's MLK commemoration), which our church participated in and the Commission sponsored, there was a good turnout, but there weren't many white people at that either.
In terms of poverty, crime and the statistics we see whenever it comes to test scores, do you think that we still have a race problem in this community and this society?
We certainly do. A lot of it is not understanding what poverty does in a family. The people who would come to CVEM for rent and for scholarships -- or for clothing or referrals for food or shelter or being abused -- don't have the energy it takes to also understand what their children need and (what it takes) to help lift people out of poverty and give them opportunities to see how other people live. And that starts in school, very young. When schools are segregated, children with means and children without means do not have the opportunity to grow and understand other people from different ways of life.
In addition to your work here as an activist, you're also an entrepreneur. You and your husband have your own Segway company called Chatt Glide Tours, which allows people to tour the river by a personal transporter. Can you tell us what made you decide to launch that company here in Columbus?
Yes. In 2006, John went with me to San Francisco, where I was there for an economic justice conference. He decided what we would do on Sunday, a free day, and we went to Grace Cathedral to see their labyrinth. ... Then we went to ride Segways down on Fisherman's Wharf. It was pretty scary. There were about 14 people in an alley and the traffic had started on a Sunday. Vendors were all around and there were little Asian children, about 200 of them, in a road race on the Fisherman's Wharf. And there we were for our first time on Segways, instruments we'd never seen before.
So we went up through a park and over to Fort Mason, nearby, and came back in about an hour and a half. We were so proud of ourselves. We'd accomplished that, riding Segways, and I said, "You know what? This would be a lot more fun on the River Walk in Columbus, Ga." So we came back and looked around the Southeast for Segways, and traveled to Nashville and Savannah and South Carolina and decided to open a touring company.
Last week you were in Atlanta lobbying for a few issues. Can you tell us what that was about?
On Feb. 2, I went up with an organization I've belonged to a long time called Georgians with Alternatives to the Death Penalty. The issue around this legislation had to do with intellect disability. Warren Hill was our most recent victim of execution in the state of Georgia and he was intellectually disabled. And this legislation was to bring home, again, the Supreme Court ruling that they had banned executing people who were intellectually disabled. ... The next week, I went back with a team of three others (to address domestic violence). There we were planting seeds for some bills that would give the courts a different look at the sentencing of victims of domestic violence who do crimes. Many are in prison for shooting or beating up their perpetrators, leaving children unattended. We're hoping to have the courts look at that sentencing more from the viewpoint of the battered.
In retirement, you could just lay back and enjoy life, but you continue to be active in working on a lot of these issues. Why do you continue to put so much energy into activism?
First, I have the energy to do that. I'm a farmer at birth and farmers don't quit. They don't retire. My daddy never retired. He had cattle when he died at 85. Part of it is in my genes. Getting up early is important to me. I am so enriched by the people I get to be around to do things. I'm one of those few people who has never probably said, "I hate meetings." Meetings are where you gather with people and share and grow and learn and engage. Even though I have choices ... I'll always work at something.
BIO
Name: Vicky Partin
Age: 70
Hometown: Pulaski, Tenn.
Current Residence: Midland
Job: Co-owner, Chatt Glide Tours, diocesan jubilee officer of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, and overall community volunteer.
Previous Positions: Founder and lay missioner of the Chattahoochee Valley Episcopal Ministry; district director for West Central Georgia with the Georgia Lung Association; English and journalism teacher at a high school in Orange, Va.; Kendrick High School and Hallie Turner Private School.
Education: Bachelor’s degree from George Peabody College for Teachers of Vanderbilt University, 1967.
Family: Husband of 48 years, John Partin; son, Shane, and daughter-in-law, Anne.
This story was originally published February 27, 2016 at 10:11 PM with the headline "Sunday Interview with Vicky Partin: 'I'm a farmer at birth and farmers don't quit' ."