By Mary Beth Snow
It doesn’t take much time talking with Johnnie Mac and Patricia Edwards to figure out the things that they love: their family, their community, and their God.
The couple, both natives of Collinsville, Ala., got married during their time as education majors at Auburn University before returning to raise a family and work in their hometown. Both retired teachers, Johnnie Mac spent years at Collinsville High School as a high school history teacher and football coach, while Patricia worked as an English Language Learners teacher in the elementary school.
Patricia, still wearing a nametag from a church conference earlier in the morning, said of the draw back home to Collinsville, “We came back because it’s where family was.” She adds that the community “sticks up for each other.”
It’s a community that the two are very much a part of. Myles Smith, another mover and shaker in the community, said of the couple, “You wouldn’t find anybody in the entire neighborhood that didn’t look up to the two of them.”
Something important to both of them is taking up for the needs of the immigrant population, especially the children. Johnnie Mac said that the biggest change he’s seen in his lifetime in Collinsville is the change from a bi-cultural community to a multi-cultural one.
Being an ELL teacher, Patricia has had many opportunities to be in close contact with the immigrant population. Johnnie Mac describes how she would pick up van loads of children and take them to Bible school and about a time the mother of one of her students came over to teach her how to make tamales, an authentic and notoriously hard to make Mexican dish.
Johnnie Mac also mentioned a former student of Patricia’s, Walter, who still calls her three times a week, even though he was deported back to El Salvador. Patricia has known Walter since elementary school. She was actually the one who made the decision to hold him back in the third grade because his English wasn’t good enough to continue on.
The same age as their oldest son, he spent much of his high school years in the Edwards’ home. He was the first Hispanic to join their church, and the first all-state Hispanic football player from the Collinsville High School football team, which was coached by none other than Johnnie Mac.
Though retired, both still actively volunteer with church ministries and at the schools. Their son Riley, known as “Coach Riley” to his students, also teaches at the high school. He often teaches the children of the students his own mother taught in elementary school. Walking into the kitchen wearing a Collinsville Panthers sweatshirt, their son spoke about his preparations to soon go to Europe to share his faith through sports-based children’s camps.
Sports have also been an important part of Johnnie Mac’s involvement in the community. He attributes the acceptance of the Hispanics into the community to the fact that they were family-oriented and involved in sports, making it much easier for them to find a place in the community.
It’s this level of involvement in people’s lives that make Johnnie Mac and Patricia so important to the people around them, making it easy to understand why multiple people in the community claim, “If you want to get to know Collinsville, make sure you go meet the Edwards.”
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