By Erica Wright
The Birmingham Times
In retirement, Lawson State Community College (LSCC) President Dr. Perry W. Ward said he expects to do at least one thing no one would expect of him.
“I plan to do a little bit of car racing,” he said. “I’ve got a brand new 2019 Corvette C7. When you buy that car, you have a year to go out to Nevada, where you can go race for two days and [have someone] show you to handle the car. … It’s exciting because the car will get up to 200 miles per hour, and you can do 0 to 65 in 3.5 seconds. I plan to go out to [the track at Birmingham’s Barber Motorsports Park], too. There are enough tracks out there, so you can find and do some exciting work.”
Ward, who will retire, effective August 31, after 33 years at LSCC, also plans to work with Habitat for Humanity.
“I want to help build homes and be part of the event when they give the key to the owner of the house,” he said. “I might do Meals on Wheels, as well. I also have a fairly elaborate model train to build, so on days when it’s cold or I just want to stay at the house, I’ll work on that. I’ll still probably do a bit of educational consulting to help out where I can, but I don’t plan to work eight days a week,” he said, meaning he won’t be stretching himself.
And there’s more.
Ward also has a “Honey-Do List” from his wife, Ann.
“She has already made me aware of some things she wants me to do around the house, but my plan is to do nothing from September 1 to January 1. I’ll be available for the list on January 2,” he said.
Ward and his wife have been married for 47 years and have three children: Perry Jr., 50, from a previous marriage, Adrian, 44, and Stephen, 40; they also have three granddaughters.
While Ward didn’t have much time for his hobbies before retirement, he will now have some time to watch shows from his all-time favorite media franchise, “Star Trek.”
“I love, love, love technology, and I grew up on the original ‘Star Trek,’ [series]” he said. “When you stop to think about it, look at the original, and see where we are technologically now, the only thing we don’t have is the ability to beam people up.”
Ward also wants to develop an app.
“We teach our kids about app development, so they can get training and learn how to develop one of those apps. If you develop a 99-cent app that becomes something everybody loves … and sell two or three million of those apps … [in the U.S. and worldwide], you can get a lot of money off of that app in two or three years,” he said. “It seems so simple, but [a company like Apple] could put that app their app store and [the developer] can get residuals. We teach kids how to do that.”
