Susan Claxton shows off a tattoo of an anklet with a starfish pendant as she explains the story of the starfish.<\/p>\n
It goes something like this: a boy is frantically throwing starfish on the shore back into the ocean when a man walks up and asks him what he is doing. The boy explains the tide is receding, and if the starfish don\u2019t make it out with the tide, they\u2019ll die. The man tells the boy he\u2019ll never be able to save them all and points out the miles of beach littered with starfish. The boy replied by picking up one, throwing it, and saying, \u201cI made a difference to that one.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If you ask Susan, nothing embodies her life and mission more than this story. She has made it her personal goal to help as many people as she can and to help people learn how to help others.<\/p>\n
She wants to be a light to those in dark moments\u2026 because she was alone when it happened to her.<\/p>\n
In 1983, her son was stillborn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
She remembers being rushed down the hospital hall to an ultrasound room. It was her, the doctor, and a nurse. She felt alone in the cold room as the doctor pointed out the baby\u2019s organs on the screen.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I asked him, \u2018Is everything okay?\u2019 and he said, \u2018No, there\u2019s no heartbeat.\u2019 I remember a tear rolling down my cheek and nobody said anything. I didn\u2019t feel like anybody cared\u2026 it was so sterile\u2026 it was just unreal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hospital staff attempted to call her family, but no one answered. Everyone was on their way to the hospital expecting she would deliver soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went into shock. I remember lying in bed and saying, \u2018I need Steven. It\u2019s time to feed him,\u2019 because I had already named him, and they told me, \u2018Susan, he\u2019s not here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Later, they brought Steven to her, so she could hold him a while.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter all that happened, I literally shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n
But one day while Susan was at church, she learned that one of the girls who was attending was deaf. The choir director explained that the girl couldn\u2019t hear anything and was praying that someone might start attending the church who knew how to sign.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u201cThis was right after my son died, and it felt like this was what I was meant to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Susan\u2019s church paid for her to attend GHC (then Floyd Junior College) to take classes on sign language. But after she learned and started helping, she wanted to do more. It was helping her to help others. So, she went on to graduate from GHC and then transferred to Georgia State where she earned her master\u2019s in human services.<\/p>\n
Shortly after she graduated, she returned to work at GHC (Floyd College) and eventually became the director of human services. She wanted to make sure she could teach others how to effectively help others going through dark moments like she had been through with her son.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot appreciate this college as a student or as a faculty member more. I can remember the first graduation I attended. I sat there and watched my human service students cross that stage and I cried,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing to me, if I had not started here, I don\u2019t know where I\u2019d be today.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
While working at GHC, Susan\u2019s daughter, Felicia, contracted a rare heart virus at 13 and had to have a heart transplant. Although the procedure went as planned, her body eventually rejected the new heart. In 1999, shortly after graduating high school, Susan\u2019s daughter died at 18.<\/p>\n
She said the college supported her in a way she can\u2019t describe, and she wasn\u2019t alone when her second child died like she had felt with her first.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the kind of climate GHC has,\u201d she said. \u201cWe truly care about one another. That\u2019s the kind of place this is. I felt like as soon as I walked through the doors here, I knew I was home. This place has my heart.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Soon after, human services students worked to put together the Felicia Claxton Memorial Scholarship, which is an ongoing Foundation scholarship for human services students at GHC. Susan proudly continues to give to the GHC Foundation and plans to for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI truly believe that everyone at GHC genuinely wants our students to succeed,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to put my money here to help support that effort. GHC is the place where I want my money to go. I give to GHC because my heart lives here. This is an amazing place. I can\u2019t imagine being anywhere else or supporting any other cause. This is my home. It truly is.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Susan, who goes by Dr. C to her students, recently completed her suicide prevention specialist course and passed her exam for the American Association of Suicidology. She is now the college and university suicide prevention specialist for GHC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Susan Claxton shows off a tattoo of an anklet with a starfish pendant as she explains the story of the starfish. It goes something like this: a boy is frantically throwing starfish on the shore back into the ocean when a man walks up and asks him what he is doing. The boy explains the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":7907,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7906"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7909,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7906\/revisions\/7909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}