Dusty: For me, Terrell isn’t just a zip code; it’s an energetic anchor. My first memory is from November 1978, right before my fifth birthday. Southwestern Christian College was hosting its national lectureship, a major fundraiser for the school. My aunt, now Dr. Reba K. Williams-Rollins, was a student there. I will never forget the energy of that campus—it was electric. Students would gather on the stone benches outside Mary Carpenter Hall singing, and the vibe was palpable.

The second time I visited, I was in the second grade. My other aunt, Dr. Catherine Williams Abouzar, was serving as the Dean of Women. She actually lived right there on campus in the historic Round House—the exact same octagonal home built by the town’s founder, designed with the first glass windows in Kaufman County. I stayed with my aunt that week and slept in that Round House. The foundation was already being laid.

Dusty: The connections are incredible. Brother Phillips was a true polymath—a master control engineer for the local PBS affiliate who held multiple patents, converting ambient radio waves into energy.

In 1993, I came down from Chicago to SwCC without a high school diploma or a GED. A few weeks into the semester, the dean called everyone missing transcripts into her office. Most were locals and got sent home. I told her I would get it done. That same week, I took the college entrance exam and tested out of the prerequisites. By the end of the week, I took my GED test, finished it in half the time, and scored in the top 10%. That moment was the very first seed planted for what would eventually become the Seeds of Success program.

As a student, I actually met Brother Phillips on the 3rd floor of the historic Jack Evans Administration Building. We stood in the large classroom—the exact place he said he invented the wireless telephone and sold the rights for $50,000 without knowing about royalties. To be in that room, standing where that kind of kinetic innovation happened, it leaves a mark on you.

Dusty: They did! My husband, Toronto, and I moved to Terrell in 1999, joining my grandmother and both my aunts who were already living there. We lived in a house right across the street from where Jamie was raised by his grandparents. No one lives there now, but it’s kept beautifully.

Years later, during my son sophomore year, he was the quarterback for Terrell High School. We were at a game, and just as Terrell scored, Jamie Foxx came walking up the bleachers and sat right in front of me. We exchanged hellos, and as he watched the game, he mentioned that the quarterback seemed to have “a nice little arm on him.” I smiled and said, “Yeah, that’s my son.”

That is actually how I first found out Jamie used to be the Terrell quarterback back in his day, passing for over 1,000 yards in a single season! We just had a classic quarterback football conversation on the bleachers.

Dusty: Calm Energy. Maybe it was the setting, but that is the word I keep coming back to. Big personality, quick-witted, thoughts coming fast — and still, underneath all of it, calm. Cool. I did not get a sense of anything except a man having a moment watching a football game. He felt like a Terrell resident in the bleachers with the rest of us, because that is exactly what he was that night.

A lot of people who grow up in a small town believe the town is what kept them small. He is the standing argument against that. He is internationally known. It does not matter where you come from, and he proves it by what he sends back.

And understand what he sent back. The basketball court at Breezy Hill is not just a court — the whole park is beautiful. The auditorium holds real concerts. That is not buying a few kids a pair of shoes and t-shirts with his name on it and taking a picture. That is infrastructure and legacy. That is a town that looks different because he decided it should.

Dusty: That is exactly where quantum possibility meets purpose. When my son was a senior, he dated Lance Gooden’s sister. Lance was living here, campaigning for office, and he’d come by to pick my son up to help with the campaign or go to church. Wade Phillips, Lance Gooden, Shelton Gibbs, and myself are all connected like family through the Church of Christ.

The Gibbs family connection is pure “Singularity Grace.” In 1993, Shelton Gibbs III was my Humanities/Theology teacher at SwCC for The New Testament. I needed a ‘C’ to graduate. He extended me that grace, and I ended up graduating “Thank you, Lordy” instead of Summa Cum Laude!

Fast forward to 2020. His son, Shelton Gibbs IV (who I first met as a baby in a swing on that second trip to Terrell), was in a primary runoff election for District Judge. One of my offices in Terrell was used as his election headquarters. Judge Gibbs won that runoff with exactly 1,111 votes.

If his father had not extended me that grace with a passing grade decades earlier, I wouldn’t have lived in Terrell to provide that headquarters for his son.

Dusty: Because a town is not its buildings. Terrell is a tree, and these are its roots — and so am I. I am not telling you how to think about any of them. I am telling you who they were in a space with me, years ago, because the same soil that grew them is the soil I am asking a student to plant in. If this ground produced them, it can produce you.

Dusty: He is present. That is the first thing, and it is rarer than people think. When Lance is speaking with you, he is speaking with you — not scanning the room over your shoulder for whoever is next. He is also funny, which people might not expect. It does not matter the race, age or party, you can see that inner person in Lance and that is why across the board he is cheered on by the people of Terrell.

What I have always respected is the ambition, and I mean that as a compliment about where it comes from. Lance was adopted, and he has never hidden it — he says it out loud. There is a no-excuses quality in how he carries that. Be who you are going to be. Be who you want to be. That is where the optimism comes from, and you feel it when you are around him.

Dusty: He and his wife are two of the most down-to-earth people in Kaufman County. His intelligence is hard to measure — you can almost watch him calculating — but the thing that stays with you is how warm he is alongside it. Smart people are not usually warm people. He is both.

Here is what I admire most. He asks, “What do you think?” A man in that chair, with that mind, still asking someone what are their thoughts. That is a true leader, and a lot of people never learn it.

Then he stands up to speak — the way he did in front of the parents at Terrell Youth Football League — and a switch clicks on. He has the thing gifted preachers have. Four generations of Gibbs ministers behind him, Shelton the First down to Shelton the Fourth, and you can hear every one of them when he speaks to a crowd. He connects. That is the whole gift.

Dusty: Terrell, TX, is undeniably my homeland. If you, or anyone you know, has dropped out of school and has the mind to reclaim their education, we are here to plant a new seed.

As the Founder of SOS, I am proud to announce that when you earn your GED through the Seeds of Success (SOS) GED Online Program, you will receive an SOS Pre-Paid Scholarship (student loan-free) to my Alma Mater, Southwestern Christian College in Terrell, TX, available for online or in-person studies.

The soil is ready. You just have to plant the seed.