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Culpeper High School grad Peggy Bruce is the guidance secretary and has worked at the school for 40 years. |
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.
"I was almost late for work today because Charles said he knew where a robin we had been watching was nesting," she says. "We looked but we didn't find it."
Bruce says she loves the high school atmosphere and has the greatest respect for educators.
"I am so impressed with teachers," she says. "On top of everything else, they have to entertain the kids all day long."
So would she be a teacher if she had the chance?
"No, I'd be a photographer," she replies without hesitation, beginning a story about how she took pictures of another bird's nest in the top of a post.
Bruce gives a lot of reasons why she continues to work after 40 years, but the main reason is clear--she likes her job.
"It is so much fun working here," she says. "The kids keep me young."
So how much longer will she remain in the Culpeper High guidance office?
"Well, my grandmother worked in the school cafeteria until she was 86," she says.
If Bruce makes it that long, she may well outlast the school building she helped open.
Donnie Johnston:
Email: djohnston@freelancestar.com
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