Regular readers of the late Dr. William Hunter’s column in this newspaper over the years were treated not only with his comments. He also shared his family and his life with us.

Today, I’m going to borrow a page from his book and do the same. I’m going to tell you about the most important person in my world for much of my early life, my mother.

Mother was 97 this year, born on Halloween back in 1910. Despite the fact that neither of her parents finished the 7th grade, they valued education.

My mother was the first person of her family to go to college. Education is a family value that grows out of the parents’ desire and expectations for their children and is passed on to future generations.

My mother, a school teacher for 38 years, was committed to education and everyone in the family was to get all that would benefit them.

Mother taught English for most of those 38 years.

She was a wordsmith who believed in the old school way of teaching with drill, memorization and diagramming sentences.

The number of greeting cards she receives on Christmas and birthdays every year from her former students is testimony to how her efforts were appreciated.

Mother’s devotion to English excellence was re-emphasized to her sons over the years.

Often when I would receive a letter from her it would have my last letter tucked into the envelope with spelling and punctuation corrected in the margin with her red pencil.

By then I was a college president but that didn’t change her need to “help me improve.”

It is impossible to think of those early days without remembering the music. Mother played the piano and often directed the church choir. In her younger years, she was the soloist for the 140th Infantry Band that traveled her region of the Midwest, entertaining on holidays and military occasions.

Mother’s life revolved around her family, her teaching and her church. She taught Sunday School for 52 years. In her 90s, her favorite pastimes include Fox News, the Atlanta Braves and reruns of Lawrence Welk.

On any weekday morning you would find her at the Anderson Mall pushing her walker from Penney’s to Belk’s, exchanging greetings with her many mall-walking friends.

Mother is often asked the secret of her longevity.

She says, “The answer is in just one word, stubbornness. You just don’t give in to anything.”

She started walking when she retired from teaching in the early 1970s.

She says that if she had strung all that walking together she would be somewhere west of Albuquerque by now.

I hope she makes it to Los Angeles.

Anderson resident Mark Hopkins is the former president of three colleges, including what was then Anderson College. He travels the world as a consultant on higher education.