Part 1 with Ronni Chandler of Project GRAD Knoxville

**Ronni Chandler** (0:05)
One of my teachers told me, she said, you know, you were a smart girl, but you'll never be anything now. Those words really stung, but they also became fuel.
And every time I had an accomplishment, I would make sure I would drop her a note in the mail. When I became executive director, I sent her a note. It's a reminder that the words that we speak can speak life, or they can just literally cut the life out of somebody.

**Paul Sponcia** (0:35)
From the IT Company, it's Made Right Here, the stories of East Tennessee founders, creators, and builders. From the idea behind it, to the impact it had on the community, their employees, and their personal lives, we're taking you behind the scenes of the movements they built. Hey, I'm Paul Sponsia. On the show today, I've got Ronni Chandler, one of the key original founding members of Project GRAD Knoxville.
And really one of the key builders to what is Project GRAD, and now part of Knox Education Foundation. Part one is Ronni's really incredible story of her life growing up in Knoxville. We get into race relations, college, education, having kids, depression, suicide, all these really big topics that I hope leave you full of hope and inspiration and wanting more for episode two.
So thanks for listening. Here's Ronni.

**Ronni Chandler** (1:32)
So I am Knoxville, born and raised. We first lived in public housing in Lincoln Heights, which is now Ridgebrook Apartments over on Western Avenue. They poured down Lincoln Heights and built that. My parents used my dad's GI Bill to buy a house in East Knoxville near Five Points. I have two brothers and two sisters. I'm the second oldest, but I'm the middle girl. So I have all those middle child strengths, the peacemakers and negotiation skills, that a middle child develops those really well. I have one brother and one sister who still live here, and one lives in Florida and one lives in Louisiana. So our parents were first generation college. They met at Morristown College. My mom's parents were farmers and her dad was a coal miner.
And my dad's father left the family and his mom raised her two sons by herself and helped send them both to college on her earnings as a maid. She was a maid for 30 years for Bill Walkup, the first president of Home Federal Bank here in Knoxville.
My dad died young. He was only 42 My mom became a widow. After my dad died, I had a baby in high school. I was a single mom for a while and I married her dad a few years later. It was an expectation though of our parents that all of us, all five of us would get a college degree.
I went to UT for a year after high school as a commuter student, but withdrew when my mom became terminally ill and she was only 48 when she passed, eight years after my dad.
By that time I was married to my high school sweetheart, Tim.
We had a second daughter and I started working full-time at Pellissippi State. In five years into our marriage, my husband became physically disabled from a work injury and he was only 29 years old, but I was still working and I got my degrees while working at Pellissippi State. Employees could take classes for free and they had this tuition reimbursement benefit. And so I got an associate from Pellissippi State and a bachelor's from Tusculum. And so all five of us do have college degrees now. I have one brother who's an attorney and the others in corporate retail and then all three girls are actually non-profit executive directors. My work history kind of then takes off from there.

**Paul Sponcia** (4:07)
Are both of your parents from this area?

**Ronni Chandler** (4:10)
They are, okay. Actually, my mother grew up in Morristown, Tennessee, a little bit east of here, but both families are from East Tennessee.

**Paul Sponcia** (4:20)
I mean, what an incredible story to, first off, they're both, you said, first generation college. And then all five of you did the same thing.

**Ronni Chandler** (4:30)
Yes.

**Paul Sponcia** (4:31)
That's awesome. That's incredible.

**Ronni Chandler** (4:33)
It was always their expectations that you will go to college. That was non-negotiable.
But I had to get that done.

**Paul Sponcia** (4:41)
You said your dad in the GI Bill, did he, what, was he in Vietnam or Korea or World War II?

**Ronni Chandler** (4:47)
He was, he actually was a decorated pilot in the Army. His dream was to fly commercial jets.
But as a black man in that time, he couldn't do that. My mom was an educator. She actually was a teacher for a while until she taught when my older sister came along. She taught in Paswell, Tennessee in a one-room schoolhouse.