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 How many times has Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz been quoted saying, "There's no place like home." We've all had the experience of leaving home for some extended time.
Whether you attended college just an hour from home or traveled extensively overseas, either experience can provoke the same sentiment. It's great to go, but MAN, is it great to come home! This is what my family and I recently experienced when we decided to leave Pinecrest Academy, only to return 4 and a half years later.
My name is Megan Denkman. My husband Mike and I lived in the Cumming area 13 years ago when we got married and started our life's journey together. We knew we wanted our children to attend a Catholic school, (being from New Orleans we really didn't know another way), but there were none in the area until Pinecrest came along. We applied for a spot in the PK 3 program for our first child. (Truth be told, my extra efficient, pro-active husband wanted me to send in her application when she was NINE MONTHS OLD just in case there was a waiting list. Pinecrest kindly sent our application packet back to us and told us to wait a few more years!) When the time came, we did apply and we fell in love with the school during an emotional interview with Judy Guilfoil, complete with tears of gratitude and Kleenex. We loved the feeling on campus, we loved the mission of the school, to form tomorrow's Christian leaders, and we loved that our tiny daughter would receive what Judy called ‘formation of the whole child." We knew we were in the right place. It felt like home. We felt we would be able to hand the proverbial baton to the faculty at Pinecrest in the morning and they could hand it back to us at the end of the day. We were sure that Pinecrest would reinforce during the day all the values we were trying to instill in our daughter at home. And we knew that we would be supported as being the primary educators of our child. Pinecrest delivered.
We then enrolled our son when it was time for him to start PK3. By now, because of Pinecrest, I was learning about aspects of my Catholic faith that I didn't learn as I was growing up nor did I get during my 12 years of Catholic education. And my husband, a convert to the Catholic Church, was continuing his journey on his faith walk. "WOW!" I thought, "When your child attends Pinecrest, the whole family attends Pinecrest!" What a blessing for us all to be educated at once. It was so much more than the academics. It was more than just dropping my little ones off and picking them up. And it was more than just paying a LOT in tuition. Mike and I could see our money was going toward more than a report card and a diploma.
Our third child came along and soon we were expecting our fourth. At that point, we had a real desire to return home to family in Louisiana which we did in December of 2003. Our children attended a Catholic school that we had decided would be good enough. No, it wouldn't be Pinecrest, but it would be okay. Pinecrest was all we knew at this point and I suppose we thought other schools could be like Pinecrest or at least close enough. Well, that was not the case. The bar had been set quite high for us and it was clear that this new school would not reach the standards that we had set for our family and that Pinecrest had met for us. After a year and a half of frustration in a school where there was no sense of urgency to do anything with excellence in terms of academics or formation, we moved our kids to a Christian school where we had more confidence in the leadership and decision makers. However, we knew our children would not learn their Catholic faith there. We would pull the kids out of school to attend mass on Holy Days when necessary and they would eventually face questions from their friends. In the mean time, the children were in CCD which I also found to be inadequate.
We experienced Hurricane Katrina and all of the harsh truths that came along with it - the local politicians, economy and future opportunities, not to mention future hurricane seasons. It raised many, many concerns for us. It was hard to put any faith in the future or the schools that, in our opinions, were not measuring up. My husband and I realized that we were going to have to make a decision.
As Mike always likes to say, when it comes to our kids, "We only have one shot at this. We have to do it right the first time." We came to the conclusion that we left too much behind in Cumming. We moved to Louisiana to return home, only to find that we had actually left home when we left Cumming, largely in part due to Pinecrest and all that we experienced there. It had become our extended family. The desire to return to Pinecrest was very strong. We needed to know that our children's futures would be promising and that they would be able to stand on a firm foundation as they grew up in today's world. We found that there wouldn't be another Pinecrest for us in Louisiana. These factors prompted us to start planning our return to Pinecrest. The good Lord, in His time, provided us with the opportunity to move back to Cumming in the summer of 2008. He has also allowed us to enroll all four of our children at Pinecrest. Mike and I and our children have been welcomed back with open arms and it's as if we never left. For this, we are so grateful.
So, Dorothy, I must quote you again. "There's no place like home" and home for us is Pinecrest Academy.
Mike and Megan Denkman
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