Juanita Wilson

I am one of ten children born to Grant and Azilee Wilson. My name is Juanita and I was born in 1951 at Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Growing up I attended Maplewood, Franklin, and Jefferson elementary. In middle school I attended South High School and at the end of the 1969 school year South was closing so in 1970 I had to attend Union High School. It was a year I will never forget. I did not like the idea that I would not be able to graduate from South High seeing how I had been looking forward to graduating from South High. The first year I attended Union High was in 1970 and I did not like it there. That was the first time that I experienced so much racialism so openly. At the end of that school year I had made up my mind that I would not return the next school year. So in 1971 I enrolled at Central High's night class where I graduated from. I graduated in 1971. After that I took some computer programming classes at GRCC. I attended Davenport College where I took the Executive Assistant - Word Processing course and received my certificate in 1985.

I started working when I was in the eleventh grade at Kressge's in the eleventh grade and worked there for five years. In 1975 I started working for Blodgett Hospital in Environmental Service. I started out cleaning, but over the years I held several positions which was being a team leader, supervisor, office secretary and worked in a doctor's office in medical records. Also during the time I worked at Blodgett I took a course in medical terminology. I worked for Blodgett for twenty five years. After leaving Blodgett I started working for the Grand Rapids Public Schools I started out being a teacher's aide and then I transferred to the Nutrition Center where I was a cook at Oakdale and Campus Elementary for five years. I left the GRPS and moved to Atlanta. I was there for five years and moved back to Grand Rapids to help take care of my mother.