Kempton Thomas Berry, a distinguished southern planter, left one of his daughters, Martha, a tract of land near Rome, Georgia. He warned Martha never to sell; the land would make her rich one day. Martha's land lay in the northwest corner of Georgia, where the hills and hollows were populated by dirt-poor, illiterate farm families. Martha learned to love the mountain-people through teaching Sunday school. After finishing school in Baltimore, she began teaching their children. In 1902, she went against her father's wishes. In order to found The Boys Industrial School, she deeded her property to the new institution. "I want the poor boys and girls of the rural South to be my heirs," she said.

The school began with eighteen pupils who helped build the schoolhouse and its crude log-cabin dormitory. "A boy from Mount Alto who could care for a horse, one from Possum Trot who seemed bright in Sunday School, a little curly headed chap from Foster's Bend, who ran away later, and Henry Dearing from Sand Mountain came a few days early to dig up stumps, cut wood, and help us get ready to open school." Pink Dean was the first student to show up unsolicited, and he had ten dollars in his pocket for tuition. Twelve-year-old Willie Jackson walked to the school from 30 long miles away with his only possession, his pig. "He brought along the pig to pay for his 'schooling' … Both pig and boy were so thin their ribs showed."

All the boys worked at least two hours per day in order to keep the school going. Martha placed the work-study curriculum at the institution's heart. "Hands, head, and heart must be educated," she believed. Labor provided the foundation, "but not to the sole end of technical efficiency. Skill must be the servant of a thinking mind and a right spirit."

Christianity permeated every aspect of the school's life. When Martha and her boys erected a barn, she insisted it be topped by a spire. She told the building's designer, "We put spires on churches because they are places of worship on Sunday. Why not have a spire on our barn to remind the boys that their work can be a part of worship every day?"

Through astute management and enterprising fund raising—she persuaded such tycoons as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford to make contributions. Martha Berry built The Boys Industrial School into one of this nation's fine educational institutions. Today it comprises both The Berry Academy and Berry College, which are still sending out Martha Berry's "heirs" into the world to accomplish great things. At the time of its founding there were only five public high schools in Georgia. Martha Berry's school was widely celebrated and praised, even earning plaudits from Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, and Franklin Roosevelt. The school motivated communities throughout the South to begin educating their young people in earnest.

Martha Berry's life exemplifies the power of the Christian laity. She was a servant leader who changed her world. She understood the liberating doctrine of the priesthood of all believers; that work and worship are one when undertaken to God's glory.

Barns, banks, bungalows, and broadcasting studios: … Every building needs a spire.

Dorothy Sayers writes, "No crooked table leg or ill-fitting drawer ever, I dare swear, came out of the carpenter's shop of Nazareth. Nor if it had could anyone have believed that they were made by the same hands that made heaven and earth."

All quotes from Joyce Blackburn's Martha Berry: A Woman of Courageous Spirit and Bold Dreams (2nd edition, Rutledge Hill Press, 1987).