Culpeper High School grad Peggy Bruce is the guidance secretary and has worked at the school for 40 years. PETER CIHELKA/THE FREE LANCE-STAR Visit the Photo Place

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Bruce a constant at Culpeper High

Culpeper High secretary has spent four decades at same school, in same building

BY DONNIE JOHNSTON

Date published: 6/21/2009

BY DONNIE JOHNSTON

For the past 40 years, there has been one constant at Culpeper High School--Peggy Bruce.

The 58-year-old guidance secretary has outlasted principals, teachers and custodians.

Bruce has seen the ninth grade disappear and then reappear. And she has seen enrollment swell from fewer than 1,000 to more than 2,000 and back to about 1,000 again.

Literally thousands of students have passed through her office, and most of them had stories to tell as they waited to see a counselor. Some problems were serious; other tales were ridiculous.

"They can talk anything over with me," Bruce says. "I can be the kids' friend because I don't have to teach them."

There are those in the Culpeper County school system who have more years than Bruce, but not at the same school and not in the same building. She began work at Culpeper High the month the building opened.

"Mrs. [Revere] Houck told me that there was a job opening as a library clerk and I applied," Bruce recalls.

At that time, Houck was head of the school's business department and wielded a great deal of influence.

"Mr. [Superintendent Hubert] Monger asked, 'Are you the young lady that Mrs. Houck recommended?' and I said that I was," Bruce recalls. "'OK, you can start the first of August,' Monger told me. It was a five-minute interview."

That short interview in 1969 turned into four decades of employment that shows no sign of ending (Bruce did take three weeks off when her daughter was born).

"I can't see myself retiring in the next five years unless I hit the lottery, and I never buy a ticket," says Bruce, who graduated from Culpeper High six weeks before she was hired.

Although she admits that she loves working with kids, Bruce says she figures she will have to keep working to support her two hobbies--attending country music concerts and bird watching.

She says she and her only child, Christy, attend about every big-name country concert that comes within 60 miles of Culpeper.

"I know I've seen about 75 different acts," she boasts.

While she shares her music passion with her daughter, it is Bruce's husband, Charles, who helps fuel her excitement for watching and photographing birds. Many of her bird pictures are on bulletin boards at Culpeper High.

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Date published: 6/21/2009

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