Tamika Garrison serves Burke with heart, hustle and hope

Burke County native Tamika Wade Garrison views her home community as a “place that is beautifully diverse” and yet at the same time divided into various segments that share no common goal or vision.

“We have compartmentalized ourselves into a very division-based place,” said Garrison, who is director of community relations for Carolina Caring Hospice and Palliative Care.

As a woman who grew up in Burke County and was nurtured by its people, as the mother of two teenage sons who attend Draughn High School, and as a commissioned Presbyterian minister, Garrison feels compelled to do all she can to erase those divisions and help move the county toward a more united community.

“We’ve got to get out of our own way and learn to focus on solutions and opportunities,” she said in the course of a lengthy interview with The Paper’s editor emeritus, who was also her senior English teacher nearly a quarter of a century ago.

Garrison, 42, graduated from East Burke High School with the Class of 2001.

The pair meet at Little Guatemala in Morganton, and the former teacher and pupil sit outside in the warming rays of the June sun, she enjoys a cup of iced coffee, he relishes an old newspaperman’s delight: black coffee, hot and strong.

As Garrison talks, she is, by turns, reflective, passionate, and utterly focused on sharing the story of her faith and her vision of a community where differences are celebrated and cooperation is prized.

A JOURNEY OF FAITH

That vision, she says, can be traced back to a spiritual revelation when she was but 9 years old, a revelation that she remembers as, “God’s calling me to ministry.”

Garrison was riding her bike that day, knowing that her grandfather was sick, but in her childlike innocence not realizing just how sick he really was.

“Suddenly,” she remembered, “I felt the overwhelming presence of God, who told me, ‘(My grandfather) is gone, but that everything is going to be all right.’ That’s when I felt a special peace come over me.”

It was at that moment that Garrison first envisioned working with hospice. “I have always been comfortable working with people who are dealing with grief and sadness,” she said.

Decades would pass, however, before Garrison began a formal association with a hospice program — decades that brought challenges and growth in other ways.

After that experience with the death of her grandfather, Garrison remembers watching a TV preacher on Friday nights when she was young and reading the names of those asking for prayer as they rolled across the screen.

“I would pray for each person whose name I read,” she remembered, “even if I did not know what their burden was.”

A member of Oak Ridge Baptist Church, Garrison’s spiritual awareness was strengthened by a close relationship with the church’s pastor, the late Mel Campos.

Later, recognizing that her husband Alex’s faith and religious traditions were important, she became a member of Waldensian Presbyterian Church in Valdese, a church that welcomed her and honed her leadership qualities.

“I came to realize again that I was a person who was called to minister,” she said. “It was there that I learned about the Presbytery of Western North Carolina’s Church Leadership School.”

Already an ordained elder in the church, Garrison had its full support as she entered the Church Leadership program and she was commissioned as a pastor in October of 2019, just before the arrival in America of the coronavirus, better known as COVID-19.

She then became the minister at Quaker Meadows Presbyterian Church, the oldest Presbyterian church in the county, located on Hwy. 181 north of Morganton.

She helped guide the small church through the COVID years, referring to her time there as “beautiful and challenging … but more beautiful than challenging.”

TEX’S FISH CAMP

At the same time Garrison was negotiating the dangers of COVID at her church, she was also playing the same role at the restaurant, which her mother’s side of the family has operated for decades – Tex’s Fish Camp in Icard.

Garrison grew up working in the restaurant and continues to work there a couple of nights a week.

“Sometimes I manage things and sometimes I wash dishes,” she said of her role in the family business. “I’m really happier washing dishes.

“In many ways,” she continued, “I am the product of being brought up in that environment and learning at a young age the importance of hard work and reliability and teamwork.”

It was Garrison who spearheaded the efforts which led to the restaurant receiving grants and loans which helped it to keep all of its employees, even as it was able to serve only takeout for more than a year.

“I learned something important then,” Garrison said, “When you pour your heart into the community, as we had at Tex’s, when times are hard the community will pour its heart back into you. Our parking lot was full of folks getting takeout every night.”

CAROLINA CARING

After three years of ministry at Quaker Meadows, Garrison had the opportunity to finally realize her dream of working with a hospice organization when she was hired by Carolina Caring.

“My main focus is education,” she said. “And a lot of that is dispelling the notion that hospice only plays a role when death is imminent. The truth is we provide a range of services that greatly improve the quality of life.”

Among the services provided by Carolina Caring are:

• Hospice care which is intended to enhance quality of life during a patient’s final months.
• Palliative care which works with patients facing serious illnesses to manage symptoms, assist with medical decisions and minimize hospitalizations.
• Pediatric medicine which helps children and their families face the challenges of serious illnesses.
• Grief counseling and supportive resources for families following a death.
• Cardiac care which helps patients with advanced heart failure live fuller lives.
• COPD care which helps patients deal with the disease in its advancing stages.

“My goal is to build partnerships with any group or organization that we can help,” said Garrison, whose service area includes Burke, McDowell, and Caldwell counties.

“It’s all about linking people with the resources they need,” she continued. “I like to be the connective tissue between resources.”

VISION OF COMMUNITY

Whether it be serving loyal customers at Tex’s, helping young people find a spiritual path in an increasingly secular world, or linking families facing a terminal illness with the resources they need, Garrison feels her work is building a stronger community.

“I know that it is possible to bridge differences and build cooperation,” she said. “In navigating as a minister, I have dealt with men who at first had no respect for me in that role. But that respect can be earned. And differences can be overcome.”

Burke County, she noted, needs more and better-paying jobs, housing that is both safe and affordable, accessible and affordable health care, and quality education for its young people.

“We have a host of resources,” Garrison noted. “But we’ve got to start communicating effectively as to what those resources are, how they can be accessed, and how we can work together.”

Summing up, Garrison said, “We have to stop putting each other into categories — racial, political, gender, economic — and start looking at how we are similar and how we can help each other.”