Perserverance

About the Book

While compiling this memoir, I was reminded of a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Do not follow where the path may lead, but instead, go where there is no path and leave a trail.” I titled this memoir Perseverance because in January of 1990, my son, Ross Richardson Bettis, received orders to go to the war called Desert Storm. Ross later reflected that after the first night of his arrival to the war, he fell on his knees and prayed to the Lord for safety and protection. He told me that he had decided that his life was not in the hands of President Bush nor Saddam Hussein. After praying, he said he felt like he could fly to freedom or to peace instead of war. Back home, I (Ross’s mother) was busy writing and calling the governor of Alabama and the Pentagon as Ross was the only son born to this union of marriage between his father—the late Dr. Roseal B. Bettis, who died a tragic death of a tractor accident in our farm in the month of his birthday, October, of 1975—and me. At the time of his death, he was a professor at Tuskegee University and Ross was only five years old.

About the Author

Dandy Bettis Maxwell is the wife of Mr. Harvey E. Maxwell and the mother of three sons: Ross Bettis, Royal and Raleigh Maxwell. As a first grade teacher, she and her husband decided to name their children the three R’s. She is a UMC certified Lay Speaker. Mrs. Maxwell graduated from Howard High School with honors. She matriculated at Tuskegee University with B. S. Degree in Elementary Education. She was a Purdue University Fellow who terminated her doctoral program at the Master of Science level. She became the first Macon County Teacher of the Year in 1975. As a school teacher, Mrs. Maxwell taught children how to write through story dictation. She loves reading and writing. She was inspired by other authors and chose to write a book of her own. As a first grade teacher, she won a reading contest and was awarded five hundred books for her first grade classroom. Mrs. Maxwell is a retired assistant professor of Education from Tuskegee University.