Oral history with Mrs. Imogene Borganelli

              Oral history with Mrs. Imogene Borganelli
F341.5 . M57 vol. 695, pt. 1
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Transcript
This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program of The University of Southern Mississippi. The interview is with Mrs. Imogene Borganelli and is taking place on August 6, 1997. The interviewer is Tom Ward.
Ward: - 6, 1997. We're in the home of Mrs. Imogene Borganelli in Greenville, Mississippi. Good afternoon, Mrs. Borganelli.
Borganelli: Good afternoon, Tom.
Ward: I'd like to begin just by asking you to give a background of yourself: where you're from, your education, your career, and so forth.
Borganelli: I am at present from Greenville, Mississippi. I've been here about forty- five years. I am a transplant, I'm really a hillbilly. I'm from Scott County in a little town called Sebastopol, which I'm sure you've probably never heard of. I went to junior college at East Central Community College; at that time it was East Central Junior College. It had only been in existence; I think, about seventeen years when I first started to school there. However it took me years and years to realize that when I was going to school there it was just really a young, young school. But you have to get old to realize things like that. ( laughter) I am a teacher by occupation, I guess you would say. I have a BA in education with a science background and history also. I've always been interested in both. I started out teaching biology. Then I was so young when I graduated I was teaching children who were just about as old as I was. So I went back and got enough hours to qualify to be an elementary teacher. And I started out in the fourth grade, which I really truly loved. I really liked high school, but like I said I started teaching when I was just twenty. I had graduated from Ole Miss with a B. A. and had no intention of teaching school, none whatsoever. My father had been a superintendent and my mother had been a teacher and I said, " I did not intend to teach school." I didn't want to starve to death. I didn't know that I literally would. But I had a professor at Ole Miss that was a friend of Mr. Frank Hough, who was a marvelous educator from Shaw, Mississippi. Mr. Hough needed a teacher desperately, so Dr. Wallace from Ole Miss just kept on insisting. He said, " You just have to go talk to this Frank Hough. You just have to go talk to him." I said, " Dr. Wallace, I am not mus- coh. borganellii. doc Page 1 of 14