Mary Sledd

Fred and Peggy Paxton, and Mary Sledd will receive the Curlee Brown Award, the NAACP's highest award.
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Mary Sledd was a business teacher and Co-op Coordinator at West Kentucky Technical School for 28 years.

For 70 years, Mary Sledd has devoted time to her family and her community.It's not in Mary Glenn Sledd's nature to give up.

Sledd overcame the challenges of rearing her five younger brothers and sisters at age 15 after her mother died from ovarian cancer.
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Her mother died in 1931; Sledd graduated in 1933 at the age of 16.She wanted to attend West Kentucky Industrial College, but money wasn't available after her father was laid off from the railroad shops.The school business manager said she could pay the $15 registration later, but a friend standing behind her in line slipped her the money.

Seventy years later, Sledd, 85, will be honored during the West Kentucky Alumni Association gathering at 8 p.m. Saturday in the Ritz Hotel ballroom.The public is invited, and $10 donations will be accepted at the door.

"I think I'm the only person from the old West Kentucky Industrial College living when it was D.H. Anderson's old school," Sledd said."I am just blessed.Honestly, it seems impossible.If I hadn't had a strong spiritual background, I think I'd be somewhere sitting in a tree and trying to get down."

Ever determined, Sledd didn't allow financial shortfalls to derail her path.She graduated in 1935 and enrolled in typing classes and shorthand during the evenings.

When her father died in 1938, Sledd became head of the household.At 21, she worked as a preschool teacher and playground worker to make ends meet."Ironically, most of those kids were disadvantaged," Sledd recalled.
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"I have always wanted to go into the Army," Sledd said.
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Those emotionally draining experiences of being thrust into parenthood too soon matured Sledd.After brief employment at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, she returned to Paducah and began a career that lasted for 28 years as a business teacher and co-op coordinator at West Kentucky.Sledd worked during the day and attended classes at night at Murray State University, earning her bachelor's in vocational/technical education in 1973.She earned her master's in co-op education/business education two years later.

"After I got started, I was determined not to give up," Sledd said.
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Sledd encouraged her, and now Warren works with students at the Kentucky School for the Blind.
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Sledd was so touched by her former student's success that she sent a donation to the school for the blind."She's one of the smartest students that I've ever taught."

Other students stand out in her mind, but Sledd says the most rewarding times came when she watched a "young person who almost seemingly had no chance at all to succeed" make it in the business world.

Cards from former students are scattered around her den.Some still drop by to share a few lines of poetry with her and thank her for encouragement and motivation.

Sledd expected a lot from her students, and the good ones earned praise as references when they applied for jobs.Those who dawdled and didn't make it to class saw the harsher side of her normally sweet personality."Nobody came to my class late," she said."Anybody can be late, but once you start it, you're in trouble.You see what it does."

She was late to work just once, when she couldn't hail a cab.Sledd, who is always attired with colorful outfits, matching shoes and stylish hats, headed to work that day in such a rush that she pulled on one blue shoe and one black shoe.

But Sledd's influence reached far deeper than West Kentucky Technical School.She never declined a chance to help others in the community or at her church, Washington Street Baptist."I was asked," Sledd explains."As my late husband (Harry W. Sledd) said, 'You don't know how to say no."

Her resumé lists an impressive string of community involvements from serving on the American Red Cross board, serving as a judge for 4-H talks, serving as a Girl Scout camp leader and devoting 19 years as a commissioner for the Paducah Housing Authority.Sledd also served as a board member and officer of the Paducah-McCracken County Mental Health Center in the 1960s and was a member of the Martin L. King Area Housing Redevelopment Program where she helped win a $1 million grant to revive the neighborhood in the 1990s.She also served as superintendent and Sunday school teacher at Washington Street Baptist for 50 years.
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But it's the little things that Sledd doesn't tell and that few know about that set her apart.
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In her younger years, Sledd helped people with transportation problems.
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Ridgeway says if someone asked former West Kentucky students if Sledd touched their lives, about 80 percent would say yes.
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But Sledd says her work in the community was necessary."I think everything that I've done has needed to be done," she said.
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Though slowed slightly by advancing age, Sledd is still active.She plans to paint the shed behind her house this week and tend to her flowers."Life is too beautiful to be concerned with the little problems that we have that we cannot solve," she said.