Looking Back While Living Forward: an Autobiography

Jim Reynolds is an eighty-five-year-old White male, born and raised in Roanoke, Virginia, at that time a segregated state. He graduated from high school in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that desegregated public schools. During high school, Jim was aware that there were two drinking fountains in department stores, one for Black people and another for White. He was also aware of the two separate waiting rooms in bus and train stations and that people of color had to ride in the back of the bus. However, during that time, Jim could not identify with or support the racial discrimination practices. After high school, Jim served four years in the U.S. Navy as an Aviation Electronics Technician. During the next twenty years, Jim worked for IBM, first as a Field Engineer in North Dakota, then as a Customer Engineer in Washington, D.C. Finally, Jim transferred to the IBM Field Engineering Education Center in Washington, D.C., where he was a course instructor, course developer, and then a Senior Instructor, leaving IBM in 1983. Jim spent the next twenty years as a counselor at Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC) in Alexandria, Virginia. Jim focused on student academic advisement, career counseling, classroom and online courses about "Learning to Learn" and learning styles. Jim retired from NVCC in 2004. Jim, as a part-time adult student, earned four college degrees. First, he received an Associate of Arts Degree from Prince George's Community College (1973) and then a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from American University (1975). Next, he got a Master of Arts degree in Education and Human Development from George Washington University (1980). Then, at age 52, he earned an Ed.D. from Virginia Tech in Student Personnel Services, focusing on counseling. Jim is now a resident at the Asbury Solomons retirement community, located in Solomons, Maryland. He can be contacted at: reynoldsbook2022@gmail.com