What Do You See When You Look at Me?

Sallie Peace-Graves, determined, ambitious, and talented.

by Sarah Williams

The fascinating life of Sallie Peace-Graves

Sallie Peace-Graves has a brilliant smile and a kind hello for everybody. Countless Asheville High School graduates remember her as Mrs. Graves, who walked the halls giving good advice to students. But students often don’t know much else about their teachers, and in the case of Mrs. Graves, there’s a lot to learn, beginning with her childhood in Henderson, N.C.
“I lived in a house with no running water,” she recalls. “Our bathroom was on the back porch. I took a bath in a tin tub after heating the water on top of the stove. I picked blackberries along the highways and in the bushes. I sold those blackberries for 25 cents a quart after picking all day. I walked the streets and sold butter beans for 25 cents a quart.”

From the earliest age she understood that education was the key to success in life.

“Everybody walked to school in my neighborhood because the
school was less than a mile from us. When you walked to the end of our
street, it turned into a paved street and on this street the teachers,
doctors, and lawyers lived. As an elementary student, I knew then I was
going to be a teacher because then I could live on a paved street and
have a nice house that had an indoor bathroom.”

A small, simple thing — having hot-and-cold running water inside
the house — was important to her as a child, she notes. “It was not
where I came from or what I had, [but] what I wanted that made me who I
am,” she says.

With that ambition, it comes as no surprise that Sallie was an
active, successful student at the segregated Henderson Institute. She
excelled academically as a member of the National Honor Society chapter
at the school, and she also was a head majorette, played basketball and
softball and ran track.

She remembers how she loved going to church and singing in the
choir, and taking on the responsibilities of Sunday school secretary
and then the church secretary. And, of course, having some fun as well.

“Our neighborhood boy friends would go to Bible study or BTU so
they could walk us (the girls in the neighborhood) home when it was
over. We didn’t have boy company when it rained because the roof
leaked.”

There was always work to be done. “I worked in the tobacco
fields during the summer. I picked cotton so I would have enough money
to go to the fair but we would sneak in so we would have more money to
ride the rides. My four sisters and I had one bicycle and we still had
to share it with the neighbors — everybody took turns riding it.”

As if advising one of the students at Asheville High, she points
out, “Life is not always the way we want it but it can be what we make
it. Your circumstances can change with hard work in school and a desire
to be more than what you see. I still could be what I wanted to be
because the key to success then was education and determination and a
desire.”

And Sallie pursued education with determination. She earned her
B.A. in Business Education, with a minor in Business Administration,
from Barber-Scotia College in Concord, NC. Later she attended Western
Carolina University in Cullowhee and earned a Master’s in Business
Education, another in School Guidance and Counseling, and a
Certification in Administration. While earning her degrees, she
attended school at night and during the summer months while she worked
full time.

She started working as a teacher at Asheville-Buncombe Technical
Community College in 1972. She went to Asheville High as an assistant
principal in 1990, and after thirty-three years of service, she retired
from the Asheville City Schools system.
She also married, and she and her (now ex-) husband reared two
children. Nevaina graduated from the University of North Carolina in
Chapel Hill, and Gramel graduated from the University of North Carolina
in Greensboro. She has four grandchildren.

But retirement from one job doesn’t mean retirement for life.
Sallie has written two books of poetry. Too Weak to Fight & Too
Strong to Hold On is a collection of poems for the broken-hearted. She
notes that a person’s heart can be broken in a second, a minute, an
hour or a day, and that words can sometimes soothe the heart. Her
second book, The Truth Will Make You Lie, tells stories of times when
love and life collide, and the damage that remains when life and love
divide.

She also works part-time at Partners Unlimited, a nonprofit
organization with offices on the lower level of the W.C. Reid Center.
(Anderson Davis is founder and executive director of this program, and
Jim Drummond is the president of the board.) The organization, like
many nonprofits, is constantly in need of volunteers and funding, and
Sallie encourages everyone with free time to share it with the group.

As if those activities aren’t enough to keep her busy, Sallie
and another City Schools retiree, Lyndia Chiles, are co-owners of B4U
& New Resale Boutique. The shop, located at 63 Brook Street in
Biltmore Village, is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6
p.m. Sallie notes that if they don’t have what you are looking for,
they’ll do their best to help you find it.
Determined, ambitious, and talented people often live lives as full in
retirement as they ever were during their “working” years. And they
usually have lives that would surprise many people who think they know
someone. As Sallie puts it, “[I] always wanted to ask someone, anyone,
anybody, this question, thought it would generate a conversation. ‘When
you look at me what can you see…?’

And what a lot there is to see, when we take the trouble to look!