ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, August 1, 1996               TAG: 9608010021
SECTION: NEIGHBORS                PAGE: N-4  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BETSY BIESENBACH STAFF WRITER 

RETIRED GRAD'S NEXT GOAL? A MASTER'S

Farley Childress of Garden City has a brand-new bachelor's degree in organizational management and development. He earned it through adult education courses offered in Roanoke by Bluefield College. Like many new graduates, he doesn't expect his degree to help him out in his career; it's just something he did for his own satisfaction.

Besides, he retired eight years ago.

At age 74, Childress says he was "an object of curiosity" at the May 4 ceremony at Bluefield College. No one is sure whether he is the college's oldest graduate ever, but he's certainly in the running.

Education has always been important to Childress. He grew up in Clintwood, a tiny community that serves as the seat of Russell County, where the school only went through the sixth grade. But for the rest of his life, Childress has taken every opportunity to further his education.

In 1939, at age 17, he hopped aboard a bus headed for a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Scott County. He didn't have so much as a toothbrush or a change of clothes.

"The government supplied all that," he explained.

He spent 22 months at the CCC camp, working his way up from manual labor to working in the post exchange. He took classes at the camp, and got his high school diploma through a correspondence course.

After he left the CCC, he got a job at the Radford Arsenal, then went into the Army in 1942. That was the beginning of a 22-year career, during which he was stationed in Germany, Japan, Korea, Belgium and France. At the end of World War II, he participated in the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he saw the gruesome results of the Nazis' attempt to exterminate Europe's Jewish population.

Childress shrugs off the horrors he saw. "It's just another footnote in my life," he said, quietly. "You can't dwell on things. You'd lose your mind."

While in the Army, he took classes in French and electronics. In his spare time, he read classic literature.

He retired in 1964 as a master sergeant, but kept working for the Army as a civilian employee until 1987. Along the way, he met and married his wife, Helen, and had three children. The couple have been married 50 years.

Retirement didn't mean an end to work. Childress was accepted into the Peace Corps, and was all set to go to Mauritania, a small West African nation, when the Gulf War broke out. Because Mauritania's government was sympathetic to Saddam Hussein, Childress' trip was canceled.

Since then, he has kept busy with church activities, working in his garden - and his studies.

Earning his degree "was easy," Childress said. Most of what he studied he had already learned from his life experience. "It's just that I wanted [the diploma] in my hand," he said.

He also has applied to the AmeriCorps program. He has had job offers from all over the East Coast, he said, but from now on, he plans to stay around Roanoke. It will give him a chance to work toward his next goal: a master's degree.

If you stop working, Childress said, "you die. I'm not ready to die yet."

LENGTH: Medium:   63 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  Alan Spearman. Farley Childress got his degree in 
          organziational management and development for his own satisfaction -
          which is a good thing since he's been retired for eight years.