FORT OGLETHORPE — Longtime educator, coach and Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School principal Jerry Ransom will retire at the close of the school year, bringing a 30-year career to an end.
Those three decades rewarded him in “seeing kids grow up … seeing them succeed,” Mr. Ransom said last week the day before students returned from the holiday break.
“I’ve loved coaching; I’ve loved coming to school; I’ve loved being in administration. I don’t think there’s any one thing I haven’t enjoyed about my career,” he said.
He always sought to leave a lasting impression on his students, Mr. Ransom said.
PERSONAL GLANCE* Name: Jerry Ransom* Age: 60* Occupation: Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School principal* Hometown: Fort Oglethorpe
“Some of them walk out that door and you never see them again, and some of them you continue to have a relationship (with) even when they’re adults,” he said.
Mr. Ransom said he entered education because he wanted to “work with kids and be a coach.” He startingt at Walker County’s Chattanooga Valley Elementary School in 1976. After a couple of years, he took a six-year hiatus for a better salary selling sporting goods and wholesale products as he and his wife, Debbie, planned a family in the early 1980s.
“I got back into coaching again (football, baseball and wrestling) at Lakeview Junior High,” he said.
After moving to LFO High School, he taught math and physical education for several years and served as in-school-suspension director before becoming LFO’s principal six years ago, he said.
In sports at LFO, he coached football for eight years and the golf team for 15 years, he said.
But it’s time to move on, he said.
“I’m not quitting work; I’m just retiring from the Georgia school system,” he said. He said he’ll seek some kind of job in the private sector.
Bo Campbell, an assistant principal at LFO, said Mr. Ransom has left behind a legacy “as a teacher, coach, administrator and friend. He definitely will be missed.”
F.E. Brown, retired fellow teacher, administrator and coach, said he’s known Mr. Ransom since the late 1970s and calls him “a wonderful friend and a very professional educator.”
“He’s always been kind of ‘by-the-book,'” Mr. Brown said.
“It’s sad to know that he’s leaving the system, though,” he said. “He’s what I’d call ‘old school,’ and it doesn’t seem there’s very many of those left. I wish him the best.”