By Cindy Long

It’s all in the family in Tennessee’s Delegation at the 2010 Representative Assembly. The state has three mother-daughter teams, including Tennessee Education Association (TEA) President Gera Summerford and her daughter, Caryce Gilmore; TEA Vice President Barbara Gray and her daughter, Lomay Richmond; and Knox County EA President Jessica Holman and her mother, Rosalind Holman.
“I’m so proud to have my daughter here,” said Summerford. “My husband and I are both teachers, and we’ve always been active NEA members. We didn’t know if it would make Caryce hate it, but clearly it didn’t — now she’s president-elect of the NEA student program at the University of Tennessee-Martin.”
   

Gilmore, who’s a K-6 education major, says she’s excited to “finally see what my mom’s been doing all these years.”

 
Barbara Gray is assistant principal at Northaven Elementary School in Shelby County. This is her fifteenth RA, and her daughter’s fifth. This year they even brought Richmond’s two young daughters along, making theirs a three-generation team. But rather than debating action on the floor, the grandkids spend the day in daycare.

 
“We all love it,” said Gray. “It’s a lot of fun.”
Jessica Holman, who teaches third grade at Dogwood Elementary, has been coming to the RA for five years and is thrilled to have her mom along. “Now I get to tell her what to do,” she says.

 
It’s Rosalind’s first RA, and she says she’s relying on her daughter to explain the process and tell her how she should vote. She’s been a band teacher for 35 years and wanted to come to the RA at least once before she retired.
“I wanted to be part of the decision making process,” she said. “I wanted to be a voice for education.”

This story first appeared on July 5th in RA Tod@y, an online publication of the NEA Representative Assembly.