Where Are They Now?

Mary Walker Thiebaud Massingill is the kind of person people generally like to talk to. “There can be 100 people in the grocery store, and if somebody wants to talk about something or give someone their life history, it seems that they pick me up to tell it to,” she said.

This quality is nice on its own, but Massingill put it to work, with a nearly 30-year career as a school guidance counselor. “It just seemed like a natural thing to go into, and I loved it,” she said.

Massingill graduated from Dublin in 1975, where she had danced with the school’s very first drill team. After she graduated, she went on to Tarleton to study business, since she’d liked the subject in high school when she took a class from Letha Northcutt.

Her first job out of college was as an administrator at Golden Age Manor in Dublin, but she soon decided to go back to school at Tarleton to get her masters. That was when she started considering counseling. “It just felt like a natural progression,” she said.

Massingill completed her masters degree and counseling license through night classes while still working at the nursing home, and then when she graduated, she found a job working as a traveling counselor serving several schools in the area.

While she enjoyed working with the students, her schedule made it hard for her to settle in at any one school. “It’s hard to connect with the kids to where they actually want to talk to you when you’re only in their school one day a week,” she said. “It’s easier when you see them all the time, and you go to their activities, and they know who you are.”

After three years of traveling around, one of her schools, Chilton, wanted her to stay on fulltime. Then, in 1994, she started working at Meridian, where she stayed for the next 20 years of her career.

Being a high school guidance counselor means you’re often handed the toughest problems people face during their time in school. “We usually laugh and say that we get to do what nobody else wants to do,” she said. “But I loved it. It was different every day. I’d always have an agenda on the way to school of what I thought I was going to do that day, and then someone meets you at the door with a deadline or a crisis or whatever and so your whole day changes. That was a part I liked — that I never knew what each day was going to bring.”

Massingill retired from Meridian in 2016. “We just had a crew there that worked together for a long, long time there, for about 20 years,” she said. “When I retired, the next year, most of that core group retired also. So it’s kind of like it was a one for all, all for one type of thing.”

Since her retirement, Massingill has been enjoying spending time with her family. Her husband, Billy Massingill, is still working as a coach, and they have two children, Casey and Stephanie, each of whom have three children themselves.

“I’ll go keep my husband’s books for basketball and go to everybody’s sports that they’re involved in,” she said. “I also drive the bus for Jonesboro. It’s a good way to get to see people every day.”

A few years ago, Massingill reconnected with some of her friends from high school. “We started going to Fredericksburg every year together, and there’s nine of us that have kept that up over the years,” she said. “We are fixing to go at the end of April this year. It’s kind of unusual that we just picked up where we left off, and it’s so fun to get back together.“

She’s also involved in her church, where she teaches Sunday School and other classes. Her faith has been her greatest inspiration in life. “It doesn’t matter what we do with our life, at the end, we’re all trying to get to Heaven and take as many people with us as we can,” she said.

Massingill has worked through her life to focus on this mindset, and not get wrapped up in drama or thinking people are out to get her. “Nothing’s really about me,” she said. ‘I used to do this thing when I met somebody in the hall and they didn’t speak to me, like they usually do, I would immediately think that I had done something to make them mad. But I’ve realized that’s very selfcentered. It very rarely has anything to do with you, and people just are not out to hurt you. Everybody’s got their own things they’re dealing with, and sometimes we just get in their way.”

After years of working as a high school counselor Massingill has spent a lot of time thinking about advice for graduates. “Senior year, people start asking you, ‘What are you going to do with the rest of your life?’ and that is so frightening at that age,” she said. “But really, your senior year, you need to realize that whatever you do, you’re not bonded to it — you can and you should make make adjustments and try different things, and just know that you can always change. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. Go do something else.”

Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other graduates, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.