Editor, Gazette-Journal:

On Thursday morning at 9 a.m. at the old Mathews courthouse, there will be a hearing regarding the continued employment of Charles “Tony” Forrest within the Mathews County school system. The circumstances that occurred at the high school notwithstanding, I want to take a moment to talk about what I know first-hand about this man.

This year I will be celebrating 30 years since I graduated from Mathews High School. I could write a very long list of those amazing teachers and coaches that took a troubled young woman who spent her life moving from place to place following her military parents, and showed her what home is and how it feels to have people you aren’t even related to care about who you are and who you could become.

Because of this experience, I brought my sons home to Mathews for them to go to school here. It was all I had hoped. I failed to give them the positive male role models they needed, so they found them in Mathews. This com...