By Staff
Story and photo by Lydia Grimes
Connie Rush stays busy - from home schooling to catering to knitting, she has her hands full.
Rush is a teacher who has turned her training toward educating her own children.
She not only teaches her children, but she is also the administrator of Cornerstone Christian School, the local home schooling program. The school is made up of the children of seven families in the area who have chosen to home school their children.
She began home schooling when her daughter, Allie, was in the first grade.
Cornerstone follows the same schedule as the public school.
Rush was born in Brewton while her parents, Gene and Nora Frazier, were living in East Brewton. She has an older brother, Tony Frazier, who is the Alabama state veterinarian, and a younger sister, Cami, who is a nurse anesthetist in Atlanta.
The family lived in East Brewton, and the children attended school at W.S. Neal. Rush attended North Brewton School for the tenth grade, but was soon back at W.S. Neal where she graduated in 1980. She was in the honor society and several other organizations. Her whole family was talented musicians and she played the clarinet in the band in high school. Her parents, along with their pastor's wife, made up a trio of singers who sang in churches and different functions.
When Rush was about 12 years old, she made her debut into the singing group.
Rush got some early training in motherhood and teaching. When Rush was about 13 years old, her sister Cami was born, and the older children were very proud of her. They felt as if it was their job to entertain the new baby with their singing and playing.
This ended when Cami got old enough to read and write. Cami wrote her mother a note and told her she was tired of having two mamas and two daddies.
After graduating from high school, Rush entered Jefferson Davis Community College.
After attending JDCC, she transferred to Auburn University and graduated in the spring of 1985 with a double major in health education and biology.
College not only gave her an education, it also introduced her to her future husband, Dru Rush, who was from Clay County. After graduation they were married and when a position for in the county extension service came open in Escambia County, he took the job and the couple moved to Brewton.
She taught eighth grade science at Escambia County Middle School from 1985 to 1990. When an opening became available in Brewton, she took on the seventh grade at Brewton Middle School and taught there for three years.
Allie was born in 1992, and Rush faced what most working mothers face. She was missing her baby.
The second child, Connor, was born in 1995. That same year Dru quit the extension service and took a job at Delta and Pine Land Company as a cotton specialist, producing cottonseed. He also moved his office into his home.
He now travels often, and with the children being in the home schooling program, they travel with him sometimes.
He also has a love of cooking and it has brought on a whole new business. His father brought some large drums home with him when he retired from ARP.
Dru made a grill out of the drums and soon had a thriving business going. The family got involved in the cooking and now run the &#8220Pig Daddy's” barbecue using Dru's special sauce.
The barbecue business has kept the family pretty busy. They set up in downtown Brewton every other weekend and cater a lot of events for large companies such as NDI and Hyundai.
The also did their part in bringing food to the hurricane victims in Mississippi by going on several occasions to Waveland to distribute hot food.
The Rush family is very involved with their church and its activities. They support their church and work very hard in it.
Along with her friend Becky Jordan, Connie has started another ministry.
They got together and formed a Prayer Shawl Ministry. This is a ministry done by getting together and knitting shawls and praying at the same time. They even continue the praying and knitting at home when they sit down to do the work. The idea is to make a shawl for someone, usually using the knit three, pearl three to represent the Trinity. The members meet every other Monday at Cornerstone Church and knit and pray for an individual. When the shawl is completed, it is given to the person who has been prayed for. Rush said that they would welcome anyone who felt like sitting, praying and knitting at the same time.
The church is a very big part of her life. She is very active in most of the events going on there.
She is never without something to do. The family lives on Appleton Road in a large home. She loves to cook and has a rather large cookbook collection. She also is quite good at smocking and keeps a project going most of the time.
Rush may be a stay-at-home mother, but she keeps herself very busy with all the things with which she is involved.