By Willie Turral
When my business closed after violence touched our community, I lost more than a building, a paycheck, or a place people gathered.
I lost something harder to name.
In the aftermath, I found myself asking a simple question about the young people involved: did I know them? Had they ever sat in my classroom? Was there a Mr. Turral in their lives who might have reached them before that moment?
The answer was no.
No relationship. No student of mine would have done this. Just young people I had never had the chance to know — disconnected from me the same way I had become disconnected from the work of reaching them.
That realization has stayed with me longer than the loss of the business itself.
Somewhere along the way, while I was building businesses, solving problems, and trying to hold everything together, I had taken my eyes off the work that first gave my life purpose: children, education, young people, community.
I grew up in a family where education was not simply a career — it was service. I watched my parents work with children and families. I grew up walking across the grounds of Penn Center, one of the most historically significant educational institutions in this country. Education was always in the soil around me.
Losing my business forced me to ask whether it was time to return to it. And then came a harder question: if District 3 needed someone to represent its children, families, teachers, and schools, who was actually best prepared to do that work?
I had to answer without false humility. I believed I was — not because I am perfect, or because my life has been free of failure and controversy, but because I have taught in a classroom, worked directly with high-risk youth as a behavior modification specialist, led nonprofit programs, managed budgets and employees, built businesses, earned a law degree, and am raising my own children in District 3. I know this community, its history, and the people who have spent decades doing this work.
That does not entitle me to anyone’s vote. It makes me responsible for offering myself to serve.
When I look at violence in our community, I do not see an issue that begins the moment someone pulls a trigger. I see problems that begin much earlier — young people who need
stronger relationships, classrooms where teachers need more support, children who need mentorship, recreation, and real reasons to believe good choices open real doors.
Schools and communities too often operate as if they are separate worlds. They are not. The child who sits in a classroom in the morning goes home to our neighborhoods in the afternoon. The encouragement a child receives from a teacher may carry them through something no one else knows about. The opportunity a student gets through a mentor, a trade program, or a business partnership can change the direction of a life.
That is why I am running — not simply because District 3 needs a different voice, but because it needs effective leadership: leadership that can listen, build relationships, and work with other Board members to turn an idea into a policy, a budget priority, a partnership, and eventually a result.
We have enormous talent in this community — educators, parents, retired teachers, nonprofit leaders, business owners, and cultural leaders, people like Sandra Boyd, whose educational experience has been used far beyond this community while she continues serving young people here at home. We have the resources and the history. What we need is to organize that strength around our children.
That is the meaning of Rise Up District 3. It is not a slogan about me. It is about refusing to believe struggle is our permanent identity, and remembering that this community has produced educators, leaders, and institutions that mattered far beyond Beaufort County.
I cannot undo what happened to my business, or every decision I made before that moment. But I can decide what I do with what came after. My greatest regret would be to see clearly what my purpose has always been, and turn my eyes away from the children again.
I will not do that. I am rededicating myself to the children of this community, and to the belief that District 3 can be a place we are proud to lead — not just a place we defend.
Willie Turral is a candidate for the Beaufort Board of Education, District 3.