GARY JOB CORPS
Georgia Cheatham has officially retired from Gary Job Corps after 58 years of service. Due to her many years of hard work and the great impact she has had, the center recently held a ceremony to send her off with the reverence she deserves, revealing what has been deemed Cheathams Corner — a platform and statue bearing her name for use as a place of reflection for the cadets.
Cheatham has lived an exciting life, with her many years at GJC being just one of her many accomplishments.
Cheatham was born and raised in San Marcos, which she called “quiet.”
“Everybody looked out for everybody’s children,” she said. “We didn’t lock doors back then.”
Though Cheatham’s father passed away when she was very young, she was blessed to still have a father figure she could look up to as her stepfather was kind, gentle and “the best stepfather anyone could ever want to have.” She had two cousins that were like sisters to her and assisted in expediting her education early on.
“They used to take me to school with them. They would give me colors and paper, and I’d sit in the corner. So I learned to read at a very young age, and then I started school — actual school, not Pre-K — when I was five.”
She went to college at Texas Southern University initially, and even met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while she was there.
“He came to Houston, and he spoke at my brother in law’s church, so I had an opportunity to meet him there and Andrew Jackson at the same time. They were there together,” Cheatham said. “[Martin Luther King Jr. was] so friendly, easy to talk to. He didn’t snub you or look down his nose at you. He was just a regular man.”
While Cheatham was at Texas Southern, Dana Smith sued what was then called Southwest Texas State College, now Texas State University, which was the catalyst for the school’s desegregation. She won the suit in 1963, and Cheatham was one of the first five black women to attend TXST. She got her degree in physical education with a math minor.
“[It was] a little bit scary only because I didn’t know what to expect when we got there. There were police, Texas Rangers, DPS, everything; That was kind of scary, but everybody was very congenial, and it was just really nice,” she said. “Growing up in San Marcos, most people here knew me.”
When Gary Job Corps opened in San Marcos, Cheatham got to meet US President Lyndon Baines Johnson. He was friends with her father in law, but she had not yet met him herself until the center opened.
“He came to Gary when they opened it, and I went out there and wanted to meet him personally,” she said. “That was exciting because it was something that I never thought I would do. It was thrilling just to be there, see him get off that plane and come riding up there on an open, white Cadillac convertible.”
Cheatham began her work at GJC in 1967. While she worked almost every job that one could at the center, her most recent position was as a transition coordinator, assisting students with resume writing, placement and teaching some life skills.
“I started at Gary in January of 1967, and I was an executive secretary for the counseling department,” Cheatham said. “I think I’ve worked about every place on the center except security.”
Cheatham’s students and staff speak very highly of her, and she’s just glad she got the opportunity to impact their lives.
“I was just thankful that God gave me the opportunity to have an impact on somebody else’s life and to help them to become successful,” she said. “I had one student that came to Gary, got his GED, went into the military, completed college there, got a medical degree and became a doctor. And then he performed a liver transplant on my best friend’s husband.”
Her fellow GJC staff members are equally impressed with her hard work and character.
“She’s been committed to this center for a long time. She’s navigated the ebbs and flows of the Job Corps program, and the fact that she has committed that much time of her life is just phenomenal,” Gary Job Corps Center Director Norman Turner said. “She’s always been someone I could depend on. Day in and day out you know what you’re gonna get. She’s always the same, very committed, very focused, very caring. She would see the good in people before the bad. And those are the kind of people we want more of in Job Corps, in the city of San Marcos, in the state of Texas and in the United States of America.”
Cheatham said Gary Job Corps is a great program that she hopes can persevere.
“I don’t ever want to see it go away because I think that it is important,” Cheatham said. “It has helped so many young people, and I think everybody should rally around keeping Job Corps open.”
Cheatham has two sons and a daughter, four grandkids and one great grandson whose “five [years old] going on 25.”
