Jan 22
RichmondCC Endowed Scholarship Honors Memory of Former Mill Workers
Jan. 22, 2026 – The Richmond Community College Foundation announced Jan. 21 the establishment of a new endowed scholarship fund that honors the memory of husband-and-wife cotton mill workers who did their best to provide a better life for their children.
Retired attorney and insurance executive Rose Young and her husband, Ric McHenry, established the Thelma G. and Samuel A. Young Endowed Scholarship Fund, which will be awarded annually to a student enrolled in any program at RichmondCC.
“I can never thank my parents enough for working so hard for all their family. They took care of their own, raising four children to be college-educated, responsible members of society,” according to Rose, whose life began in the Hannah Picket Mill village of Rockingham.
Her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents all worked in the Rockingham mills.
“Following the economic devastation of the Civil War, my great-grandparents moved from unproductive farms to the bustling cotton mill town of Rockingham to find work, like many thousands did throughout the Carolinas in that era,” Rose wrote in an essay she penned for a memoir writing competition.
The essay is entitled “Linthead,” a term of disparagement for cotton mill workers who would leave their shifts covered in white cotton fibers. In the essay, Rose traces her family roots and describes the mill village life that is her heritage.
Her mother, Thelma, was born in 1927 in a small wood-frame cottage across the street from the Hannah Pickett Mill in East Rockingham. Her father, Roosevelt Speight, was a mill overseer, and her mother, Cornelia, had worked in the mill from a very young age. After graduating from high school, Thelma worked as a clerk at the Hannah Pickett Mill.
Rose’s father, Sam, grew up in the Pee Dee Mill village on the north side of Rockingham in a small wooden house with his widowed mother, Ila, his grandmother and two sisters. Sam joined the Army and did a stint in Korea. Upon returning home to Rockingham, he settled into a mill job. However, his first order of business was to install indoor plumbing in his mother’s home.
Thelma and Sam met through mutual friends and were married in the Hannah Pickett Mill Community Church in 1953. They would eventually move out of the mill village and into a house in Hamlet.
“My parents were not educated, but their innate intelligence and work ethic allowed them to do higher skilled blue- and pink-collar jobs that inched them toward the middle class,” Rose wrote in her essay.
Even though Thelma and Sam’s standard of living was better than their parents’, they still had a difficult time financially raising four children. They worked non-stop, both outside the home and after work hours. They took one week of vacation a year.
Her parents were also determined that their children be more educated than they were. Rose remembers many trips to museums in Raleigh while she was still in a stroller and the Dr. Seuss books her mother would bring home from the public library for them to read.
“All their energies were directed toward their children. My parents were determined we would have the material security they never had and that we would go to college,” Rose wrote.
The oldest of the four children of Sam and Thelma, Rose was the first in her extended family to attend college, and she did so on full scholarships to Peace College (now William Peace University) and Duke University. Her siblings also earned college degrees and made successful careers in business management, social work and commercial real estate.
Her parents lived well into their 80s, enjoying retirement traveling in their motor home and playing cards with an eccentric group of “RV cronies.” They even took up line dancing.
“I like to believe they were satisfied with how life had turned out for two scrawny lintheads,” Rose wrote in her essay, which won second place in the memoir writing competition sponsored by the N.C. Writers Conference.
About the scholarship gift made to the College in her parents’ memory, Rose said, “If I could, I would tell them how their sacrifice and inner fortitude inspired me to want to help others achieve their dreams, despite obstacles of money and background. I think they would be proud.”
Give Today
If you would like to make a difference in the lives of our students, please consider donating to the RichmondCC Foundation. There are many ways to give. Call Dr. Wendy Kelly Jordan, Associate Vice President of Development, at (910) 410-1807 or email wkjordan@richmondcc.edu.