After working for 25 years in her family’s heating and air-conditioning business, Marye Jane Brockinton of Cabot was looking for something more.
She knew she wanted to do some sort of mission work, which led her to what she calls the greatest mission a person can have — teaching.
Brockinton, 60, served as an assistant principal at Jacksonville High School for the past three years before retiring at the end of the 2018-19 school year with 16 years in the education field.
Before she jumped into the discipline Brockington sought advice.
“I had a conversation with my pastor, and he said, ‘You teach Sunday School, and they like you teaching it,’” she said. “What bigger mission field is there? I had an uncle who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. When I talked to him about it, he said, ‘I don’t know of a more honorable profession than teaching.’ I was like, ‘OK.’”
Brockinton got a Bachelor of Science in Education degree from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. She began her teaching career at Ridge Road Magnet Middle School in North Little Rock, the city she is originally from. She taught two years there before moving to the Cabot School District.
She worked at Cabot for eight years, starting out as a classroom teacher. She taught at Eastside Elementary School and Cabot Middle School North. She was an instructional facilitator at Cabot Junior High School North before becoming an assistant principal at Northside Elementary, then Westside Elementary.
“When I was in Cabot, I was contacted by someone at Harding University, and they suggested I apply for the principal’s job at Westside Elementary in Searcy, so I did,” she said. “I was very fortunate to work there for three years.”
After three years in Searcy, Brockinton said, she wanted to take some load off her plate by becoming an assistant principal. She knew Tony Wood, who was superintendent of the Jacksonville North Pulaski School District.
“I saw him at a professional development, and he talked to me about what he was trying to do in Jacksonville with the new district,” Brockinton said. “I thought, ‘What a big mission field, to start a new district in an area that desperately needs quality education. So I came and asked to be an assistant principal, to have time to take care of my parents.
“I was fortunate that Jacksonville gave me that opportunity.”
Brockinton’s first year at Jacksonville was the first year after Jacksonville withdrew from the Pulaski County Special School District. She said it was definitely a challenge.
“It was one of the most difficult, but most rewarding, jobs I’ve ever had in my time in education,” she said. “The No. 1 mission for me was to join two cultures. You had Jacksonville High School and you had North Pulaski High School within a few miles of each other in the same city, but they had very different cultures. They were rivals.”
She said her job was to bring those two “groups of scholars together and merge them into Titans instead of Red Devils or Falcons.”
“It took a lot of communication and a lot of love,” Brockinton said, “but I remember when we were at the Jack Stephens Center for graduation and I saw them come out of the tunnel, I said to my other administrators, ‘Oh, my gosh. We did it.’ We were Titans. They were graduated, and we were successful.”
Brockinton thought of herself as a successful administrator from her time at Cabot and Searcy.
“It was harder than I thought,” she said, referring to coming to Jacksonville. “I had no idea what it was like to start from nothing. You don’t have any type of insignia for the high school to put on diplomas or stationery. You just start from square one. You’re behind because everyone has already booked all the graduation venues years in advance. You are trying to squeeze in anywhere you can have graduation. It was definitely a challenge. Merging the two cultures was the greatest challenge of them all.”
Brockinton said one thing the school had to deal with was overcrowding at the old Jacksonville High School.
“Neither campus was full,” she said, referring to both Jacksonville and North Pulaski high schools. “When we merged, we pushed Jacksonville’s campus to its limits. That’s what I heard most — it’s so crowded here. There was truth to that.”
Even though she only worked in education for 16 years, Brockinton reached the point when she wanted to retire to take care of her father, Jim Kennedy.
“It was strictly to take care of my dad,” Brockinton said of her retirement. “He was almost deaf. He was 87 with heart issues. Anytime I had to take off, I felt guilty because I was leaving my team behind. My team was wonderful and took care of everything in my absence.”
She said she told Jacksonville North Pulaski Superintendent Bryan Duffie that she needed to go.
“I had lots of plates spinning every day,” Brockinton said. “I’m trying to be a good mom, trying to be a good wife and a good grandmother, good caregiver to my dad and be the employee for Jacksonville that I need to be. These plates spin constantly, and the only plate I didn’t drop is Jacksonville.
“I said, ‘That’s not right.’ I went ahead and submitted my resignation for retirement.”
However, a few days after Brockinton did that, her father died, on Feb. 13, a few months after his wife, Roseann,
had died.
“The board voted on [my retirement] on a Monday, and my dad passed away on a Wednesday,” she said. “It was just timing after that. It was just meant to be.”
Brockinton said she doesn’t know if she will come back to teaching.
“Recently, I’ve had a couple of superintendents contact me,” she said. “Right now, it’s a no. I did so much trying to take care of my dad, and my mom had died a few months before him. I needed time to settle.
“One thing is, I never want to miss another Grandparents Day at school. I can’t say that won’t happen if I start working again.”
Cabot School District Superintendent Tony Thurman hired Brockinton as an administrator after she was originally hired during the tenure of former Superintendent Frank Holman.
“She was successful working in the private sector,” Thurman said of Brockinton, “but she believed that teaching and positively impacting students were her true calling. She has always been very driven to make a difference, and she thrives on confronting challenges and working for the betterment of students and staff.”
During her teaching career, Brockinton had a few stories that she’ll never forget.
“My biggest gratification is where we started at Jacksonville with so many overage, undercredited seniors and how, through sheer determination, they graduated,” she said. “They were ones who no one thought would graduate. They walked out of that tunnel at the Jack Stephens Center and received their diplomas. They now have a future.”
Brockinton recalled a story about a female student who got caught stealing money.
“After we sat down and talked to her, she needed the money to try to help get the water turned back on at her house,” Brockinton said. “She was upset. Her clothes were dirty.”
Brockinton told the student to return the money.
“I told her that we’d get her clothes washed here at school,” Brockinton said. “The student was excited. She would bring her laundry bag, and I’d keep it in my office. Then during the day, I would go to the washer and dryer and get her laundry done. She’d pick it up in a backpack in the afternoon.
“It was little things like that I was grateful I was able to help with. It’s a small thing, but it was a huge thing to her to have clean clothes every day.”
Brockinton remembered another story about a former student in elementary school when Brockinton was in Cabot.
“This kid had a reputation of being very difficult,” she said. “It’s not right, but the teachers would talk about him. I guess being the new teacher, they said, ‘Here you go.’
“[The student and I] worked very hard together, along with his family. By the end of the year, he was very successful.”
That student eventually graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy.
“He made sure I got an invitation,” she said. “He was happy that I never gave up on him after others had. I was excited for him.”
Jacksonville High School principal LaGail Biggs said Brockinton will be missed.
“Mrs. Brockinton was my 12th-grade assistant principal and was instrumental, when we started in 2016, in helping us create a new culture by taking two high schools and making them one,” Biggs said. “She just has a way about people, period, but especially with our scholars. She had a way of listening to them, and even if she didn’t necessarily agree with them, they walked away satisfied that they had been heard by an administrator. She was their biggest advocate, biggest cheerleader. She wanted them not only to receive their education but to have fun and have a true high school experience and memories on the other side of that.”
Biggs said Brockinton is a friend.
“She brought a level of expertise and maturity that I will certainly miss,” Biggs said. “One thing about my administration team over the past three years is that we all complemented each other. We all had different strengths. We could work as a unit and not as individuals.
“I have a great deal of respect for her as an administrator, a person, and she was not just a member of my team — I consider her a friend.”
Since she’s now retired from teaching, Brockinton has another mission to work with — the Mayfly Project.
“It’s a nationwide initiative, and there’s a chapter here in Arkansas,” she said. “You take at-risk children and teach them how to fly-fish and get them out on the streams and rivers and give them that opportunity.
“I’m enjoying that. I guess that is my next small mission, working with the Mayfly Project.”
Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.