MRS. CAROLYN THOMAS HINSON

A Teacher’s Story

Carolyn Lucille Thomas was born July 23, 1930, to Walter and Theodosia Thomas, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was the sixth of eight children. The Great Depression was in full force. Her father was not around enough to make a positive difference in the lives of his wife and children.

Because of this, the family moved frequently to find cheaper rental homes to start anew. Lucille, as she was called by her family, grew up knowing poverty, cold, hunger and want. Despite bleak beginnings that would discourage many, Lucille found some bright spots. She actually flourished in her schoolwork. Under her mother’s gentle encouragement, she developed a life-long love for learning. A good education would become part of her staircase to a much better life.

Lucille’s faith was another essential part of her staircase. As a good Baptist Youth, she joined an ensemble of teens who excelled in scripture and poetry recitations and spoken word performances. Mrs. Sarah Horne was their dedicated church leader. She took them all over the state and they won many competitions. Soon, the student now known as Carolyn Thomas, was graduating with her Atkins High School class of 1948. Her good grades and faithful participation in church activities earned her a full scholarship to Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina.

She went off to Shaw in the fall of ‘48, successfully completing her freshman year and the first semester of her sophomore year in ‘49. While at Shaw she also pledged with the sorority Delta Sigma Theta, thus solidifying her love for the color red. Then, scholarship funds ran low. The church was only able to fund their seniors. Carolyn would have to return home.

What seemed to be a disaster was merely God working behind the scenes. Before she went off to college, Carolyn had two life-changing encounters. The first was with Joseph Hinson, a worldly-wise WW II veteran who escorted her to her senior prom. Then he led her to the second encounter—this one with E.E. and Celia Cleveland and their evangelistic campaign (the first of three in Winston-Salem). Convictions in her own heart to follow God’s leading meant she would build on her faith foundation and accept the Bible-based truths she was learning. She became a baptized Seventh-day Adventist. By that time, Joe was attending Oakwood College. She saw no reason to leave Shaw—until that major pause in scholarship funds. Joe never stopped praying, writing, convincing. Carolyn prayed, wrote and listened. She began studies anew at Oakwood in winter, 1951, working her way through at industries on campus and as a literature evangelist or Bible worker during school breaks. She graduated in 1954. She returned home from college to find her beloved mother dying of cancer, and threw herself into caregiving with her sisters. (She unknowingly created a blueprint for her own daughters to follow decades later, just by word of mouth). Mrs. Theodosia Thomas would pass away only three heartbreaking weeks before Joe and Carolyn Hinson were married, on June 20, 1954. Still, her mother was delighted to see this daughter realize these accomplishments in academics and in love for life.

What came next? The beginning of marriage, joint careers in ministry and education, then children. Each child marked a different place in their work: Kyna in Winston-Salem; Lisa in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Marla in Atlanta, Georgia.

All the while she worked as a teacher, both in and out of the classroom. She taught high school English in Charleston, South Carolina; taught in a multigrade, elementary classroom for the Fort Lauderdale Mt. Olivet Church school; taught at the Bethany SDA Union Academy in Miami, then later joined President Lyndon Johnson’s Head Start program in Miami, teaching and eventually directing centers to boost underserved, inner city children. A few years after the family moved to Atlanta, she was asked to become director of the Berean SDA Church Day Care Center where she gave a decade of service.

Even so, every summer she assisted her husband in 35 evangelistic campaigns fashioned after the ones that led them to a deeper understanding of God and His Word. Sometimes that meant moving her entire household to distant cities, laboring through 18-hour days as a Bible worker and bookkeeper. If she were working, each weekend she would drive from the family home to apartments all over the South Atlantic Conference, bringing cheer, handbills and Vacation Bible School supplies to Joe and her girls, the VBS workers!

Ironically, the little girl who would hide under tables on moving day, grew up, moved constantly with her husband and brought words of encouragement to thousands in private, in their homes or hers, or in public. She spoke for Women’s Days and Women’s Ministries. She served as an ordained church elder; Children’s Sabbath School teacher and division leader; Sabbath School superintendent, and Community Services worker. She was a vital part of church Grief Ministries, sending cards and offering many words of reassurance to every member who experienced bereavement.

When she left the day care center at Berean, she still couldn’t stay out of the classroom and worked as a substitute teacher for the Fulton County Board of Education. A professor at Georgia State University created a curriculum for teachers with degrees to become certified in Special Education. Carolyn took on the challenge, earned undergraduate and graduate credits, took multiple exams, and emerged successfully with credentials in Special Education. She ran her classroom with firm kindness; then ran the entire department with competence and generosity. She retired from this work in 2000 to enjoy more years of life with Joe before his demise in 2004.

Though heartbroken over this loss, she still embraced life. She accepted the invitation of daughter Marla and beloved son-in-law Walter (Skoog) Fordham III, to live in a ground-floor apartment they created for her in a home they built especially to her taste and to meet her needs.

She later traveled to Jamaica; to Ghana, West Africa, a gift from her children; took a Christmas cruise to Caribbean islands and a crown jewel of a trip with Lisa to Hawaii. She absolutely lived.

Carolyn loved all types of music, from hymns and great gospel by legends Andre Crouch, Donnie McClurkin and Richard Smallwood to Whitney Houston and Frank Sinatra. On the morning of her 90th birthday, she wanted to hear George Beverly Shea sing “How Great Thou Art” during a replay of a Billy Graham Classics crusade. She loved good books and reading and passed these loves onto her children. She met famous authors such as Alex Haley and Maya Angelou and had them inscribe their works for her library.

She came to love running. She trained for her first Fourth of July Peachtree Road Race during the 1980s when she was in her early 50s. She finished that race, earned her T-shirt, and was hooked. She finished more than 25 Peachtree races and influenced a troop of family members and friends to join her for Peachtree races.

Her last work in education was to take care of little newborns to toddlers at a Goddard School in Tyrone, Georgia, for several years.

However, nothing gave her more joy than becoming “Nana-Nana” to the Buttons, twin girls Selah and Logan, born to Marla and Skoog. They would never be parted, and what grand times they had for 10 years.

The only clouds on her horizon came from increasing mishaps—lost keys, cell phones, money; fender benders; just getting lost. The diagnosis: Alzheimer’s disease that would take her independence, f reedom, and pleasure in everything. The end came swiftly, over a course of days. Carolyn Hinson took her last breath in the early morning of December 7, 2022. She lived 92 full years, but if you ask any she loved and who loved her in return, it wasn’t long enough.

She leaves to mourn her loss: The Buttons, Selah and Logan; their parents, Walter and Marla Fordham III, (also her caregivers); daughters and caregivers Lisa and Kyna Hinson; nieces Roslyn Thomas and Jean Good; great niece Tiffany Dover; nephews George Thomas, Brian Thomas and Marcques Dudley (Nina); honorary daughters, Flora Johnson and Patricia Harris and honorary g randdaughters Alexandra Quettan and Nia Lester. She had a host of life-long friends from churches and schools, and extended family members from across the nation and around the world. We await that promised day of New Life. “Even so, come Lord Jesus.” t

The family of Carolyn Thomas Hinson expresses deep appreciation for every prayer and demonstration of love in our time of great loss.