Shari Carroll
By Brooke C.
As a young girl growing up in a Kansas community centered on agriculture, Shari Carroll never imagined she would be where she currently is, in the Family Foundation School IT department working with computers. When asked what she would have thought had somebody told her she would end up working with technology, she said, “I probably would have laughed.”
Carroll was born in Wichita, Kansas as Shari Coleman. She grew up with an older brother, a younger half-sister, and a younger half-brother. She referred to her childhood as “pretty normal,” until she was three-and-a-half when her mother died, leaving her father to raise her and her siblings.
Though the death of her mother had a big impact on her life, her upbringing maintained its stability. She said, “My stepmother held the family together, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.” She did well in classes and worked for her father’s cleaning business when she was in high school.
Carroll spent much of her childhood with her grandparents on their ranch in New Mexico, where they still live. She described the ranch atmosphere, saying, “It was always a slower pace of life, and for me it was always where I could become grounded. I attribute the person I am today to having my grandparents as role models.”
When Carroll eventually left home to attend college, she went to Garden City Community in Kansas.
After college, she moved to Colorado, where she made a career decision that would shape the rest of her life. She decided that she was going to work on computers and try to get a degree in technology.
This brought her to the next phase of her life, a sequence of diverse jobs that would eventually lead her to The Family School. For her first job, she used computers to help her college (GCCC) get information on their cattle.
After that, Carroll worked for a company that contracted for the Air Force. She continued on to work for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.
Carroll then spent six weeks in Greenbelt, Maryland with NASA.
She said, “You have to have clearance for the top security sites I worked at; they have to make sure you won’t sell government secrets.
She continued to work with the government at these top security sites, including a NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs.
Of all of these jobs Carroll said her favorite was “traveling around the country setting up networks for army recruiting stations. I got to spend a week in a city, and go to another city the next week.”
Then she met the man she would spend the rest of her life with, Alex Carroll. While they were dating, Shari was introduced to FFS, helping Ted Towsley with laptop deployments.
Alex moved to Hancock, N.Y. in May 2002, and Shari followed, arriving in November, the same month they got married. The family now resides in Hancock with their two dogs, Cheyenne and Ben.
Carroll has lived through many things that are only seen in espionage movies, yet somehow she says, “Life now is much more hectic. There are a lot of computer related things that go on in the school.
“Thank God I have Archie’s [Archie M. Judd, FFS IT dept.] help or else I’d be sunk.” It’s hard to believe life at FFS could be more hectic than working for top secret government operations, but Carroll maintains that it’s true.
“[At my old jobs] when something broke, you had to be there until it was fixed, all night or even a few days, but when it was fixed it was calm and quiet, you didn’t have to do much.”
Carroll feels at home at FFS. She said, “I really like working here because of the family atmosphere of the people you work with.” She misses the opportunities that came with her old life: the chance to meet new people, the excitement and the traveling, but given the opportunity she wouldn’t go back.
FFS is where Carroll belongs. After years of searching, this small town Kansas girl has found the life she was looking for in the least expected of places.
