Working for Samaritan's Purse Christian Relief Organization in Boone, North Carolina--Terry Harmon

Interview with Terry Harmon conducted by undergraduate students, Wyatt Payne and Tara Speelman, from Dr. Katherine Ledford’s Appalachian Stories course. Interview was conducted in Terry’s office at the Samaritan’s Purse headquarters in Boone, North Carolina, for the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum, in conjunction with the Smithsonian's traveling exhibition "The Way We Worked."

Who are you and when were you born?
"I am Terry Harmon and I was born in 1965 in Boone and I have lived here all my life, and my family has been here since about the 1790s."

What do you do for a living now?
"I work in the projects department at Samaritan's Purse, and specifically I manage a unit called the Field Support Unit. When we hire international employees my unit helps support those staff with their travel and their orientation and preparing them for their service abroad. Then just supporting them in any way that we can while they are serving."

Can you tell us how you started at this career?
"So, I was at ASU for nine years and then there was a part of me that had always wanted to teach. So, I thought well, I’ll go back and get my teaching certificate specifically in history, and so the ladies in the College of Education at that time they said, “Well if you’ll take your course work on a graduate level you can also earn your master's at the same time. So, I said okay well I’ll just get my master’s in middle grades education. So, then the last thing with that was to do student teaching. So, I did my student teaching at Mabel Elementary and then decided after that I didn’t want to teach. But it wasn’t because I had a bad student teaching experience. I mean, I love the kids and it was a good experience but I, as a Christian, I just felt like the lord was leading me to work somehow in ministry and I didn’t know what that would look like..."

Read the full transcript below. 

Tags: BHS-work, BHS-Main-Street, BHS-Job-You-Had

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