Meet Patty Hobbs

Patty Hobbs left Northeast Alabama for the big city after college, but her alma mater persuaded her to come back home.

Hobbs graduated from Jacksonville State University and briefly taught at Weaver High School. But her interest in politics lured her to Washington, D.C., where she worked for 27 years, first on Capitol Hill for then-Rep. Dick Cheney. She moved to the Reagan White House and then on to the U.S. Department of Education, where she spent 21 years.

"Everything good that came out of the Department of Education, she had a hand in," joked Eric Mackey, Jacksonville superintendent and chair of the Chamber of Commerce education committee, at a recent meeting.

But when JSU's Child Development Center was in need of a new director, they turned to Hobbs.

"It's really not something I had thought about," she said of working with younger children. "But JSU has done a wonderful job with this place."