UpDate - Vol. 12, No. 37, Page 5
July 22, 1993
Teaching-a way to repay society

     Terry Dozier, who gave the opening address to the University's l993
National Principals Leadership Academy last week, told her own touching and
moving story to those attending.
     The l985-86 U.S. teacher of the year, now a special assistant to
Secretary of Education Richard Riley, told why she decided to go into
education.
     Dozier said her father, a colonel in Hitler's SS, fled Germany in the
closing days of World War II. He joined the French Foreign Legion and was
stationed in what is now Vietnam.
     When Dozier's mother died giving birth to Dozier's younger brother,
the father sold both children to a Chinese businessman. Authorities found
the children hidden on a sampan and placed them in a French orphanage in
Vietnam.
     An American adviser to the French in Vietnam went, with his wife, to
the orphanage and fell in love with Dozier's brother. They adopted her,
too, as part of a package deal.
     "I went into teaching because I wanted to repay in some small way the
country and society that has given me so much," Dozier said. "My education
is the one thing I have prized the most. It opened up the world for me."
     Dozier said that only five months ago she was a high school, world
history teacher and would never have imagined working in Washington, D.C.
When Riley, who was governor of South Carolina when Dozier was teacher of
the year, offered her a job, she said she welcomed the "opportunity to
fight for quality education on a broader scale."
                                   -Beth Thomas