Walking into her new office, Darla Youngblood unenthusiastically plopped her belongings on the desk. Thirty-years-old at the time, she’d just dropped her secretary job at the Montgomery County juvenile courts.
After a decade of managing misfit teenagers, Youngblood was over it. But the freshly opened Caney Creek High School needed a secretary, and Youngblood needed employment flexible enough for her 6-month-old daughter at home. So she sucked it up.
That changed her life.
Sitting in her small secretary office, those students opened her eyes. She had the power to change their lives. Now 30 years later, those misfit kids are the reason she remains at Caney Creek.
“I realized I was able to make an impact on these kids,” Youngblood said. “Just by listening to them and talking to them and understanding them and showing them that I care. I think that’s what kept me here, I don’t make a lot of money but education pays in other ways.”
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Youngblood moved with her parents to the Houston, Texas region when she was 13. Youngblood grew up in a close-knit family and said they shaped her morals today.
“They cared for us when we didn’t have a lot,” Youngblood said. “So I think that is the way I was raised. That was what shaped me more than where I lived. It was how I was raised by my parents. It was always just about showing love.”
Youngblood’s family lived paycheck to paycheck, which only worsened when Youngblood got pregnant with her first son at 18.
“All I knew to do was to be a mom,” Youngblood said. “So, I was playing house at the time until his dad and I separated. And then I realized this is not a game I have to grow up and I have to be responsible, this child depends on me.”
Since 1991, Youngblood worked as a Montgomery County secretary for Adult and Juvenile Probation. In 1996, now remarried, Youngblood had her first daughter. Looking to spend more time with her baby, Youngblood accepted Caney Creek High School’s offer.
“I’ve never saw myself go through this being the type of person I want to work with teenagers,” Youngblood said. “I saw them go through the juvenile system and I thought, I don’t want to do that. But I had nieces and nephews in the area I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s go for it.’”
From 1996-1999, seventh, eighth and ninth graders shared the building – no upperclass men existed yet. Youngblood got her first gig as the intermediate-grades secretary under the first principal, Greg Paul. Youngblood said she mourns those days.
“The school was back there and that was a little country school, so to speak,” Youngblood said. “Now it’s more populated out in this area, which is why we have this luxury school now. It was like a family.”
Her passion changed over her first four years at the hands of high school secretary Francis Gates, who Youngblood said became her best friend and mentor.
“She was a lot older than me, but she became like a mom, a second mom,” Youngblood said. “She would help when I had trouble with the girls or help me through problems. She cared so much.”
Gates’ influence gradually shaped Youngblood, who was once uninterested in education, into an impact-driven secretary. Youngblood was looked down at juvenile teenagers, but when she discovered she changed those lives, she fell in love.
“I’ve always been drawn back to the discipline area, and I think that’s because I feel that’s where I made the most impact,” Youngblood said. “As crazy as they can make you some days. But then they touch you. Pull pulling your heartstrings. I grew to love the environment.”
Roughly 1,000 kids attended Caney Creek High School in it’s first year; now it’s nearly tripled to 2,800. Youngblood said she excelled as the growing school population pushed even more troubled students piled to her door.
In her 30 years, Youngblood has worked almost every paraprofessional job and offered positions in the administrative building. She declined all and remained the secretary for her Creek family.
“It’s not ever been about the money for me,” Youngblood said. “It’s about the impact that I have on the kids and that they have on me.”
Youngblood said she misses the tight-knit family environment the most. Her favorite examples were old graduating class traditions, where seniors donated to the building such as the theater bricks and the panther statue which remain today.
But despite the growing population Youngblood said she is here to stay and hopes to retire from Caney Creek.
“What I’ll always try to tell and show students is that they matter,” Youngblood said. “They’re human. If I respect you then you respect me. Because we’re all human, we’re all equal. I think some people need to hear that. It’s good to have a voice.”
