Annie Cureton has spent years in Scotland County helping others and the community showed her how much they care with a recent drive through in Laurinburg.
Cheris Hodges/The Laurinburg Exchange
LAURINBURG — Annie Cureton loves children. She spent her entire career helping kids as a teacher, principal, and school administrator.
Her impact on Scotland County made such an impact that on May 15, two of the women whose lives she’d played a key role in, Tracey Williams and Miriam Monroe organized a drive-by to celebrate Cureton.
Monroe said, Williams wanted to give Cureton her flowers while she was alive. And even though the event was over a week ago, Cureton is still receiving gifts of thanks and heartfelt letters from the people whose lives she’s touched.
“She’s the type of person, she’ll give you her last. She’s the type of person who will go out of her way to make sure everyone has what they need. She’s always doing something for somebody else,” Monroe said.
Cureton, who graduated from I. Ellis Johnson School in 1965, said she’s always loved Scotland County. “After my mother’s death, my grandfather returned us here,” she said. “And he was a janitor with the schools. And he raised us as if we were his children.
Cureton said her grandparents raised her, her siblings and cousins and taught her some lessons that stuck with her for a lifetime, have faith and help people.
“He had so much love that he could open his house up to three sets of grandchildren. He raised us as his kids and told us that we were sisters and brothers,” she said.
For 32 years, Cureton worked for Scotland County Schools, taking tough love, strength and knowledge throughout the county and state. She worked as a teacher, administrative assistant, assistant principal, principal and administrator of several county-wide curriculum programs.
Cureton was the type of administrator who earned her students’ —and their parents’ — love and respect. “I would tell the parents, if you don’t have my babies in school, you’re going to see me.”
And when she was the principal at Pate-Gardner in Gibson, it wasn’t shocking for Cureton to go to a student’s home who was having trouble to missing days at school.
“It was always the children first. I have sign outside my door that said all kids are gifted, they just open their packages at different times,” she said.
But she was also in the church and making sure the kids at the schools where she worked had breakfast in the mornings.
When you speak with Cureton, she’s not one to take credit for what she’s done. As a matter of fact, after she said she cried like a baby during the drive-through, she wondered why?
“I hadn’t done anything,” she said with a laugh. “At the celebration, the surprise guest was Clayton Dell. He’s living in Norway at this time. He was here because he has twins who were celebrating a birthday and they scheduled my thing around the time that he was going to be here. When he came out, I thought my heart would just burst.”
After 32 years with Scotland County Schools. Cureton retired, but that only lasted for about a week. She became the Highlands Charter School principal in 2001 and stayed there for seven years.
She’s always been an active member Jones Chapel Missionary Baptist Church and the first non-clergy member to be the president of the Sunday School Congress.
Cureton now works with Purcell Funeral Home, doing a job that was created just for her. She’s a family attendant, providing comfort to people during their bereavement period. She’s one of the first faces that a person sees when entering the funeral home. And just like she treated her students, she brings that same attention and tenderness to grieving families.
It’s her faith that keeps her moving forward and helping people, she said.
“If you hold on to faith, there is nothing you can not do,” Cureton said.