Hope McClendon Willis moved to Marietta in 2006 after her father, Don Keizor, became the pastor at Enville Community Church. That same year, she began working as a paraprofessional in the high school Special Education classroom for longtime teacher Sharon Haines.
Willis graduated from Mounds High School in 1989 and had earned an associate’s degree from Tulsa Junior College before moving to Marietta with her children Maverick and Kendra. The plan was for late husband Bill McClendon, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper, to follow soon, but he was killed in the line of duty before that could happen, leaving Hope at a loss in more ways than one.
“When something like that happens, you just lose your purpose,” she said. “I was struggling, and my children were struggling. If it hadn’t been for Maverick and Kendra’s teachers and the teachers that I was working with giving us the tools we needed to cope after losing Bill, we wouldn’t have made it.”
Willis said she soon realized that she wanted to be able to do the same thing for students.
“Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have chosen education,” explained Willis, “but I realized that being in Special Education was my calling. It’s what I was born to do.”
In 2008, Willis began taking classes to finish her degree in education. While working on her degree, she also remarried, to Love County native Steven Willis. The couple has been married 10 years.
Since she was working full time and raising children while going to school part time, it took a little longer, but eventually she earned her bachelor’s degree from Southeastern Oklahoma State University.
“It took me a long time get through school,” Willis remarked. “Sometimes people will tell me they can’t go to college because it would take too long. I always tell them, ‘It took me six years to get finished, and if I can do it, so can you!’”
She was immediately hired as the Special Education teacher in the primary school and has been there for six years. Her son Maverick, a Marietta graduate, has been teaching Special Education in the elementary school for two years.
One of the things Willis enjoys most about her teaching assignment is that, unlike regular education classrooms that trend to larger class sizes, it allows her to focus more on individual students.
“I sometimes see my kids struggling,” she said. “They may come to school crying because things are tough at home, and since I’m a special education teacher, I can focus on that one child and get to the bottom of the problems before the day ever starts.”
Willis loves what she does.
“Steven always tells me he’s never known anybody who loves their job as much as I do,” Willis said with a smile, “and I guess that’s true. I never wake up and say that I’m leaving for work, I’m going to school. There are days when it’s frustrating and tough, but it’s not a job, it’s where my heart is.”