It’s a muggy spring morning and the spirit is alive and moving
through many of the students gathered in the
auditorium-turned-Sunday-chapel at the Piney Woods Country Life School.
This is the last worship service before graduation and summer break,
and the Rev. Robert McCathern is consumed by his weighty charge –
making sure the independent school’s nearly 300 students are prepared
to leave the stony gates of the idyllic campus and return to their
homes across the nation and around the world.
Piney Woods, one of only a handful of Black private boarding schools
left in the country, is where you can “still hear about God” and
“escape what’s out there,” says McCathern, a lean, young and streetwise
chaplain.
“You’ve got to put on the whole armor of God. [You need] the
breastplate of righteousness. [You need to] bind up your feet to walk
in places of peace and put on the helmet of salvation,” he explains
before arriving at one of the more sobering passages of his sermon.
“For many of you, the things and people you left behind in the
streets are still there and your home situations haven’t changed. The
world out there will eat you alive if you let it.”
For eleven months of the school year, many of the students who come
to Piney Woods watch as relatives and friends fall victim to drugs,
violence, and the breakup of families. At Piney Woods, they can live,
study and play in a peaceful and safe environment.
Although the majority of students come from economically-depressed
backgrounds, there is a small percentage, according to Piney Woods
President Charles H. Beady, who come from middle- and upper-income
families. Some of these are the children of legislators and
entrepreneurs. Students come from twenty-five states and several
foreign countries, including Caribbean nations and Ethiopia, to attend
this school which is virtually all Black. Currently, there is one White
student enrolled.
