‘She devoted her life to me’: From single mom to educator, coach

“Don’t make me look bad,” Amy Trask says with a smile before taking a sip of coffee.

She’s joking.

But not really.

Sitting inside City Java in downtown Beaufort, the media specialist at Lady’s Island Elementary has many reasons to be happy. After 23 years, she’s still married to the same man she met her freshman year as a University of South Carolina Gamecock. She has two teenage children. And she’s spent 16 years in education.

But despite all her own successes, the Virginia Beach native is in awe of her mom.

She always has been.

“It’s a shame I’m not more like her,” she smirks.

From single mom, to grad school to softball coach

Julie Drew is a Pittsburgh native. She had Amy, her only child, at 20 and found herself in the role of single mother.

Fiercely driven, Drew went back to school and earned her master’s in education from the University of Pittsburgh.

Her motivation, Trask said, was providing for her daughter.

But there was more.

Post-graduate work followed at Carnegie-Mellon University.

She taught high school before stepping into an administration role. But her teaching skills were not confined to the classroom.

There was the time Drew was recruited to be the high school softball coach.

“They just needed somebody,” Trask recalled.

Drew had never played softball. But that didn’t matter.

The team won a championship anyway.

“She’s just a really good motivator,” Trask said.

Many mothers motivate and encourage their children. But far fewer have actually worked as motivational speakers. Drew and her twin sister, a nurse, attracted newspaper coverage in Virginia Beach for their talks, Trask said.

Providing opportunities

Growing up, Trask knew her mom was unique.

There was no guilting her daughter to spend time with her. There was no competing with other moms.

“She’s too nice,” Trask said of her mother. “She’ll make you feel bad if you talk about other people.”

Drew always had a great sense of fashion, her daughter said. And she was younger than her friends’ moms.

“It was kinda fun having a hot mom,” Trask said with a proud smile.

When she looks back on her life, she sees how good she’s had it.

And she wishes she hadn’t given her mom so many headaches. Like the kind that come from your child constantly changing majors in college.

Drew’s patient response was, “Do what will make you happy.”

“She deserved better than me,” Trask joked.

Her mom juggled a lot — everything — to provide for her. And because of that, Trask enjoyed many of the opportunities her mom never had.

Even the opportunity to take a few years off work to care for her own children when they were younger.

“She was very successful, but I always felt that was secondary to family,” Trask said. “I really feel like she devoted her life to me.”

Retirement and remarriage

Trask arrived in the Lowcountry after college, settling in the same area where her husband grew up. Ten years ago, Drew followed.

In 2011, after retiring from a director of education role in Virginia Beach, she became interim headmaster at Beaufort Academy.

And Drew even found love again.

A high school sweetheart, living in Toledo, Ohio, had friends in Bluffton, Trask said. He realized Drew was nearby.

The two reconnected and eventually married.

Drew finally retired from education last year.

But Trask says her mom still can’t slow down or sit still.

There’s too much shopping to be done. Too many rescue dogs to look after. And too much golf to be played.

This story was originally published May 7, 2016 at 11:07 PM with the headline "‘She devoted her life to me’: From single mom to educator, coach."