Spending time with sisters LaDonna McCarther and Cheryl Yellow Fawn Scott is a little like spending time in the past.

And the future.

That is because both women embrace and share a legacy of family, education, and service to others, and they are already seeing that legacy passed on through their children and grandchildren.

The two were born in Mount Airy, but moved from the area relatively early in life, each attending a boarding school during their teen years. McCarther went to Mather Academy in Camden, S.C., , where she graduated, while Scott attended Mather for one year before moving on to Palmer Memorial Institute in Greensboro, where she finished out her high school career.

That each would end up at a boarding school was a direct result, the women said, of the life their grandmother had to live decades earlier.

“Our grandmother lost her husband when her two children were very young,” Scott said.

“The only work she could find was at a boarding school,” McCarther said, so their grandmother worked there while raising her own children, including the sister’s mother, Gladys Bernice Neal Bailey. “Mom was raised in that environment until she went to college.”

Thus, the idea her own children — McCarther and Scott — would do the same was nearly a foregone conclusion, the sisters said. And they wouldn’t have had it any other way.

“We met students from all over the U.S.,” Scott said, as well as classmates from other parts of the world.

“You learned to respect differences in people, it taught you to respect different cultures,” she said.

McCarther said the boarding school experience also taught a certain decorum that was expected in various social settings. “We were raised to dress a certain way...act a certain way.”

“It was a preparatory experience,” Scott said. “Remember, this was during segregation, and they were preparing us” for a time when society was not segregated.

The boarding school experience also gave the sisters what they considered a large family. “Our friends’ parents became our adoptive parents,” McCarther said.

“We have a lot of cousins and sisters,” Scott said with a laugh.

Here again, extending a hand to others as if they were family is a trait seemingly ingrained in the sisters’ DNA. Their mother, who died in September, was known by many in the area as a woman who opened her home to many.

“Everyone called our mother Big Mama,” Scott said. “People were always telling our mother they wanted her to be their mother. Mom, in her wisdom, would say ‘you already have a mother.’” Still, those who knew her adopted her as a mom, or at least a second mom.

“Any evening you could go to her house and there might be 10 or 12 people sitting around the table eating,” McCarther said.

Both sisters followed a long-standing family tradition through college and into their career, entering the teaching profession.

Their great-grandfather is the one who started the two on that journey. After the Civil War he left a South Carolina plantation and eventually journeyed to Arkansas, where he started a community school.

Nearly every generation of their family since then has been involved in education. Their mother was a teacher for 47 years, during which time she was named Surry County Teacher of the Year.

The two said that in their household, education was always front and center.

“Growing up (during that time), if you didn’t have an education, your opportunities were limited,” McCarther said.

“We know that education was the key,” Scott said.

Plus, she said going to school was fun. “I could have stayed in school forever,” she said.

That joy for learning, as well as their family heritage of working to educate others, led them into teaching careers. Both taught in other school systems before moving back to Surry County — McCarther in 1976 and Scott in 1981 — and the two continued their chosen careers once back in the area. McCarther was an elementary music teacher in Surry County while Scott spent her time teaching French and English, or Language Arts as it was known then.

Even though education seems to have been part of who the sisters were destined to be, their openness to helping others and making a positive contribution to their community is likewise ingrained in their souls.

Through the years the two have been known to adopt an underprivileged family for a year, providing gifts for the kids at birthdays and Christmas, notes and cards of encouragement, school supplies, and other help. They have done this not only locally, but with families as far away as Franklin, Tenn.

The two still do that to an extent, taking on individuals whom they will send encouragement letters and other little gifts. At present they offer that support to five different college students, one as far away as California. While only one of these young people are related to the sisters, all have come in contact with them through family members or friends.

“We grew up that way,” McCarther said, again explaining how their mother’s way of life influenced them.

“If there was a house fire in the community and we heard what the family had lost, she would go out that day to Walmart or Roses and buy this and that,” Scott said, then take the supplies either directly to the family or to the Red Cross for delivery to the family.

Their kindness has crossed not only state boundaries, but international ones as well. And the more they do, the more other people seem to want to help as well.

One example of that, they said, is when McCarther’s nephew’s wife, an African native living in Baltimore, visited her homeland and found people who were in need of basic daily supplies. The sisters, as well as other relatives, began collecting items to send there.

“As word spread about what we were doing, people would come and leave stuff on the front porch,” Scott said. Eventually, so much was collected the sisters then had to spearhead a fund-raising drive to generate enough money to ship the supplies.

They have also helped raise money for and actually worked in the Baton Rouge relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina, and raised money to benefit children living in squatters camps in South Africa.

The two also make the annual Thanksgiving Day community dinner at First Baptist Church, hosted by Melva Houston, a part of their family tradition.

“Our family knows if they come home for Thanksgiving, not to expect any cooking,” McCarther said. “We all go to First Baptist Church,” where they help prepare and serve the dinners, then clean-up afterward.

And it’s there, Scott said, that the family’s legacy of community involvement and helping others seems to be taking hold with still another generation of their clan.

“My grandson, he’s been helping the past two years, when he was just 6 and 7,” Scott said. “You see, it is moving to the next generation.”

John Peters is the editor for The Mount Airy News. He can be reached at jpeters@mtairynews.com or at 719-1931.