Few people will ever be able to see the impact they have had on others in their lifetime, but Fayetteville resident Faith Hardnett has been able to bear witness to just a small sampling of people who have been touched in some way by her in her career as an educator in Fayette County.

Hardnett, who has spent time as a teacher, counselor and administrator in her 35 years in the county, retired this summer and hundreds of former colleagues and students attended her retirement party to wish her well.

Hardnett arrived in Fayette County in August 1970. She was to be a teacher at Fayette Junior High, which is where East Fayette Elementary School is now, during the first year that Fayette County schools would be fully integrated.

"Most of the roads were dirt, most of the parents were farmers and everybody knew everybody," recalled Hardnett. "Some of the parents were nervous about integration and they escorted their children to school, but I wasn't the least bit afraid. It was a beautiful day."

Hardnett went on to say that she never saw herself as any particular color because her parents never taught her or her eight siblings to see the world like that. "That was the greatest gift they could have given me," she added.

Hardnett was from a small town in the north Georgia mountains, Red Top Mountain in Bartow County. She had a double major at Morris Brown College of English and Education. While attending Georgia State University to get her master's degree she wrote and illustrated an English textbook to be used in her classroom. Her advisor at the university used her book as an example of what dedicated teachers will do when they love their students.

Her students and their parents could see the love and they gave it right