Alumni Feature: Jon Barnwell '92

Jon Barnwell ‘92 is an alumnus of Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School and currently serves on the Board of Trustees as the alumni representative.

A native of Atlanta, GA, he moved to Clayton in 1986. He started at Rabun Gap in ninth grade and graduated in 1992. During his time here, he experienced life on campus as both a boarding and day student, and was able to attend the school because the farm program made it financially possible for his family. After some time away, he moved back to Georgia and has been working as a realtor at RE/MAX Rabun for the past 13 years. He and his wife currently live in Clarkesville, GA, just south of Tallulah Falls.

The setting, sense of community, and financial aid — in large part through a work scholarship on the farm.

I attended Berry College in Rome, GA, for four years after Rabun Gap and received a BS in Animal Science/Pre-Vet.  My intent was to continue at UGA veterinary school, but I was presented with an opportunity that was difficult to turn down.  

My friend in the Advancement Office at Berry connected me with a very generous donor to the school who was searching for a farm manager for their grain operation in Meadville, PA.  They had the financial and land resources to be very successful but were having great difficulty finding reliable help at the time. The job was a rare opportunity, and we expanded operations to planting, harvesting, storing, and brokering 550 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, and whatever else we found interesting and productive to plant.  I loved it but hated the winters in the snow belt.

Around 2000, my brother Jeff and I partnered up as owners of the Kids R Kids Learning Center in Murfreesboro, TN, which was licensed for 300 children and 50+ employees.  I was the operating partner for several years before selling and moving home to Rabun County to begin my career in real estate. I’ve been with RE/MAX Rabun for the past 13 years, and I love introducing families to the area and sharing my passion for mountain properties that surround Rabun Gap.

Working on the farm at Rabun Gap paid $1.50/hr with a non-negotiable check that could only be deposited at school for financial aid credit. This program shaped my work ethic and love for all things outdoors.  

I made lifelong friends at Rabun Gap who I still talk to all the time, and I have always been appreciative of having contacts all over the United States and around the world. I became involved in the Alumni Association through my colleague’s wife, Kathy Long Blalock ‘72, who recently passed and who I miss dearly.  I’ll never forget Kathy asking if I would consider serving as alumni representative to the Board of Trustees.  I didn’t even have to think about it; what a wonderful way to give back to the school that had so much influence on who I am today.  I’m pretty sure the entire class of 1992 would feel the same way if asked, and the times we spend together since graduation are almost as if time hasn’t slipped away - but it has! Rabun Gap has an incredible Board of Trustees, and I really enjoy my service to the school in that capacity.

Times, technology, and the world are always changing -  faculty, staff, and kids come and go, but what I have learned about Rabun Gap as a student, and now an adult, is that the mission of the school is still focused on the same values planted on campus by Dr. Andrew Ritchie at the turn of last century.  He and his wife, Addie Corn Ritchie, were true visionaries, and I know they would be proud of how their school has evolved today.

I wish I would have played baseball.  Wait, we didn’t have a baseball team then.

Searching for arrowheads in the plowed fields around the school.  I spent a lot of time out and about on campus. It’s really one of the most beautiful places in the world.

The farm.  You can learn a lot growing up on a farm.

The best advice I could give current students is not to wish it away.  It’s tempting to want to push on to college and careers, but you will look back and realize these will be at least a few of the best days of your life for reasons you won’t know until you have to look back later.

Billie Joe Stiles was my faculty advisor at Rabun Gap and had the greatest influence on me.  Mr. Stiles was a big part of why I was able to stay in school while I racked up more work cuts, house penalties, and demerits than just about anybody. He also really pushed me to go to Berry when all I wanted to do was get to work after graduation.  Most importantly he taught me to love the mountains and to be a better trout fisherman. I’d like to say thanks for all that!