By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Mrs. Tish a fixture at RHHS
Longtime custodian still enjoys job at 71
IMG 3007
Christine Carter, who is fondly known at Richmond Hill High School as Mrs. Tish. - photo by Jeff Whitte
Jeff Whitte
Bryan County News
Updated: Aug 20, 2014, 9:00 AM
Published: Aug 20, 2014, 1:33 AM

Christine Carter starts her work day at 8 a.m. by making sure the windows at Richmond Hill High School’s west campus are clean.
Thanks to Carter, they may well be the cleanest windows on any school in Georgia.
Carter, known fondly as “Mrs. Tish,” has been a custodian at RHHS for 15 years, and it’s her work ethic and her friendliness that make her stand out, RHHS assistant principal Mickey Bayens said.
“Mrs. ‘Tish’ Carter brings not only a smile to school every day but she has an incredible work ethic that is second to none,” Bayens said. “She is well respected among her peers and is always looking for something to clean.”
And then there’s this.
Carter is 71. And she really doesn’t have to work. But she’d rather stay busy than be retired, she said.
“I get bored sitting around the house,” Carter said. “I want to do something. I tried part time a while ago. I didn’t like it.”
Carter is from Richmond Hill and has worked her entire life, including the years she spent up in Virginia. She’s married — her second husband is Wayne Carter – and has three children, seven grandchildren and four great grandchildren.
It’s a big family that plays together. Carter said weekends, especially in the summer, are devoted to family cookouts in her big yard.
But come Monday, she’s back at work.
“I think if I quit work I’d get sick, I really do. And I don’t want to have to quit work because I get sick, I want to work as long as I’m able and then retire and still have my good health,” said Carter, who said she gets along with both students and faculty at the school.
Co-workers say Carter more than pulls her weight, whether it’s helping clean the lunchroom or making sure there’s soap in the bathroom dispensers.
“She’s always busy doing something,” said Richard Bessert, who said that while he usually works alone, “whenever (Carter) is around, she’s always helpful.”
Her regular duties also include taking care of offices and carpets, along with the doing windows and making sure the bathrooms have soap. And she refers to each responsibility with a sense of ownership.
“I start by taking care of my windows,” she said.
Carter said the job keeps her young. She likes the kids and the teachers.
“I’ll be 72 in February,” she said. “But this keeps me going. I think it keeps me healthy.”
As for how long she’ll keep working, Carter said 75 sounds like a good age to retire. Ninety, on the other hand, is not.
“I don’t want to work that long,” she said.

Sign up for our E-Newsletters
Later yall, its been fun
Placeholder Image
Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

Latest Obituaries