Athens ISD inducted John Glover, Katie Leatherwood, and Steve Grant into the Hornet Hall of Fame Thursday night at the Athens Country Club in an event sponsored exclusively by Ask Dr. Fran.
Posted by Henderson County Now on Thursday, September 28, 2017
By Toni Garrard Clay/AISD Communications Coordinator
Thursday night was a who’s who of local luminaries as Athens ISD held its second annual Hornet Hall of Fame Induction Banquet. More than 100 people were on hand to see John Glover, Steve Grant and Katie Leatherwood honored for the overwhelmingly positive impact they have had on their communities.
John Glover was an employee of the school district from 1968 to 2004, during which time his positions included, band director, assistant high school principal and assistant superintendent. Steve Grant graduated from AHS in 1975 and in addition to his successful real estate business in Athens, has made a last impact on area due to his civic and charitable involvements. Katie Leatherwood is a 2005 graduate of AHS. She lives in Riga, Latvia, where she serves people affected by disabilities with her skills in prosthetics and orthotics.
Glover grew up in Eagle Lake, Texas, and attended school under segregation. The summer before his eighth-grade year, out of necessity, he taught himself how to play baritone and found he enjoyed it a great deal. In fact, he took to it so naturally, that when a teacher at E.H. Henry High School decided to start a band that coming school year, Glover taught his fellow students brass and percussion by staying a lesson ahead.
Upon graduation he went to Huston-Tillotson University in Austin on a music and basketball scholarship, earned a bachelor’s degree in music and secured his first job in Woodville, Texas, where he met JoAnn Blanton. They were married in 1967 and the next year moved to JoAnn’s hometown: Athens. Both took jobs with Athens ISD. Glover started as the middle school band and choir director and soon moved to the high school. In 1970, their only child, Katrina, was born.
Glover spent 36 years with Athens ISD, 32 as a band director — seven of those while also serving as assistant principal at the high school. His last four years with the district were as assistant superintendent. Glover earned master’s degrees in art and mid-management, was three times selected as Teacher of the Year, served seven as the fine arts director, and led the “Pride of the Hornets” band to multiple first-division ratings and a Sweepstakes Award. He retired in 2004 but continues to work with band students at AHSl on a regular basis.
“I never asked kids to do anything I wouldn’t do myself,” he said. “If they were in the sun without a cap, I was in the sun without a cap. … Working together as a group was a big thing to me, showing them that being part of a 100-piece band is really an individual project. You have a responsibility to take care of your part to make the group work. That’s not just about being part of a band, but part of life.”
Grant was born and raised in Athens. Coming up through the Athens public school system, he was an A-honor-roll student who ran a thriving lawn-mowing business during the summers and loved sports.
“I had great teachers and coaches in Athens,” he said. “I especially liked the way they emphasized hard work and discipline. That had an impact on me.”
During high school, having benefitted from years of golfing with his parents, Grant made his mark on the greens. In 1974, during his junior year, he and four others — Kip Estep and the Pierot brother, Billy, Mike and Philip — won the state golf championship for Athens. Grant also claimed the individual gold medal.
He graduated Athens High School in 1975, attended Henderson County Junior College and earned a business degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Grant had gotten the real estate bug while still a teenager and began selling as a realtor while still enrolled at UT. When he graduated, he returned to Athens and, after a stint helping to build and manage King’s Creek Golf Course, opened Steve Grant Real Estate in 1981. The company sells, manages and develops property and ranks year after year in the top five agencies in Henderson County for volume moved.
Grant’s contributions to his community have been many over the years. He was instrumental in starting a food bank that was the forerunner to the Henderson County Food Pantry. He was the first president of the Labor of Love organization, which makes free home repairs for people in need in Henderson County. He was a founder of the Disciples Clinic, a faith-based community health clinic in Athens now with over 1,000 patients. He’s a member of TVCC’s board of trustees and chairs their endowment committee. For many years, he was a member of the Cain Center board of directors and also chaired the center’s $1.2 million endowment fund. In 2002, Grant was named Athens’ Citizen of the Year.
“Faith without works is dead,” he said. “If you’ve really got the faith, you’ll want to do the works.”
He and his wife, Claire, married in 1986 and have two grown sons, Nick and Stephen.
Leatherwood was born in Odessa, Texas, and moved with her family to Athens in 2001, just in time for her to begin her freshman year at Athens High School.
Though very active with sports, church and outdoor activities, a health condition meant Leatherwood spent a good deal of her childhood with doctors. The extended time around health professionals and other patients provided her from an early age with a broad view of what “normal” looks like.
She was introduced to Christian mission trips at an early age, and when the family became involved with First Baptist Church of Athens, those trips occurred more frequently and further abroad. They placed Leatherwood in a position to encounter problems faced by people of other cultures — many of them medical. In 2003, she traveled to Cesis, Latvia, as part of an outreach youth basketball camp … and fell in love with the country and its people. That trip would be followed by several more over the following years.
A tipping point in Leatherwood’s life came her senior year, when Athens High School calculus teacher Linda Enger took a small group of students to LeTourneau University for a banquet. While there, Leatherwood was fascinated by an informational display about a student research team’s work developing a prosthetic knee that could be manufactured inexpensively in developing countries.
After graduating AHS in 2005, she enrolled at LeTourneau and eventually joined that very research team which included two months of work in Kenya developing the prosthetic knee. Devoting herself to the study of prosthetics and orthotics, Leatherwood graduated from LeTourneau with a bachelors of science in kinesiology and then attended graduate school in Connecticut where she studied prosthetics and orthotics.
After working several years for the largest orthotic and prosthetic company in the United States, she moved in 2015 to Riga, Latvia. She is a Christian missionary, serving people affected by disabilities with her skills in prosthetics and orthotics. Through collaboration with the Latvian government and local university, she is enhancing their knowledge and skills to improve patient care. In exchange for university lectures, training and instruction, Leatherwood is given access to their fabrication facility and equipment, in place of pay. She custom makes orthotics and prosthetics as a charity for those who otherwise would not have access to the life-changing technology, and she works within the church to increase their members’ awareness and inclusiveness of people with disabilities.
“Most of what I’m doing is relational,” she said. “I’m using the prosthetics and orthotics as a practical way to invest in people’s lives. They become friends, not just patients.”