Baby Boomer (born 1943 to 1963)
 
Carol Hector-Harris was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother, born in Everett, Massachusetts, was a “Rosie the Riveter” at the Charlestown (Mass) Navy Yard during WWII and a homemaker. Her father, born in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, was a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier and a typesetter for The Guardian, an African American newspaper in Boston in the 1920s. He was also a swimming instructor at the YMCA.
 
Carol lived in Roxbury her entire life before college. Starting at the age of five through high school, she attended the Kennedy School of Dance. Weekly dancing practice, annual recitals, and various dance competitions was a major part of her life and what made her happy outside of school. She attended William Lloyd Garrison Elementary School, joining the debate team in the fifth and sixth grades. Next, she attended Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High School and graduated from Brighton High School where she was on the student council every year and elected the senior class secretary.
 
Her mother and my father welcomed 74 foster children into their home over the years until they retired. The youngest of three girls and one boy, with her siblings being ten to sixteen years older, her mother said that she didn't want her growing up like an only child. They may not be her biological siblings, but they are her brothers and sisters, nonetheless. She grew up with them in her daily life, more than her biological siblings. When she was a teenager, it became her responsibility to cook Sunday dinners after church. When fried chicken was on the menu, it was her job to cut up six whole chickens and fry them in an iron deep fryer and iron frying pan. Carol was a part of a very happy and loving extended family where food and fun played a huge part, enjoying birthdays, holidays, and cookouts and clambakes with family and friends at various beaches on Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. Carol was a member of St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church, as did most of my relatives and family friends, and I joined the Girls’ Friendly Society at the church.
 
Abandoning her dreams of becoming a professional dancer, Carol set off to honor her father’s wishes for her to become a nurse. Discontented learning nursing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Carol received his permission to instead study acting and directing at Emerson College. She then transferred to The Ohio State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and a master’s degree in Political Science: International Politics (sub-Saharan Africa). At seventy years old and continuing her love of learning, Carol is near completion of a PhD in Journalism from Ohio University Scripps School of Journalism.
 
Carol built a career as an award-winning journalism practitioner and educator who has made noteworthy accomplishments in a career of more than forty years in print and electronic media, education, public relations, fundraising, photography, public speaking, and special event coordination. In the U. S. and the Caribbean, she is recognized as an expert communications strategist. As an educator, she taught communications at Columbus (Ohio) State Community College and journalism at Ohio University. Carol also worked for the state of Ohio, a cable television station in Antigua where she lived for three years, as a substitute teacher, and for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in external affairs, being deployed to disaster areas around the nation, including in NY, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. With the support of her husband, Carol was away from him and their two boys off and on during fifteen years of her career. Wherever she worked, they visited as often as possible.
 
She has been honored with the following:
Cambridge Who’s Who VIP Special Section, 2009 – 2010
The World’s Who’s Who of Women 1988
Who’s Who of American Women 1985
First Place, Radio Broadcast, 1983, Great Lakes Regional Awards, Women In Communications, Inc. 
Certificate of Award, Michigan Lupus Foundation 1981
Certificate of Appreciation, Columbus Metropolitan Area Community Action Organization, Columbus, Ohio, April 25, 1980, for the series “Poverty in Central Ohio” broadcast on WOSU-AM
Broadcast Journalism Award, The Ohio State University Black Communicators Association 1978
Academic Excellence Award, Ohio State Representative Les Brown 1977
George Kienzle Memorial Award, The Ohio State University School of Journalism 1977.
 
Carol describes her most significant life accomplishments as being a principled woman that her parents, husband, family members, friends and colleagues can be proud of; living a happy and fulfilled life while being married to a loving and supportive husband for more than 45 years; rearing two successful sons into adulthood who she and her husband are very proud of; living and working in the Caribbean; having a successful career in journalism for more than forty years; and having a ball with her grandkids.
 
She enjoys traveling to tropical destinations, researching family history and Africans in the diaspora, and having fun with family and friends