“I started in this district when I was just 3 years old,” eighth-grader Casey Babbitt said, “and now I’m in my final year. I didn’t want to miss anything these last few months, so I decided to join Mr. Carroll on his walk.” In all, Casey and Indian Mills Memorial School principal Tim Carroll walked 24.2 miles on March 21.
When Tim Carroll applied for the principal’s job at Indian Mills Memorial School in 2003, he had never heard or been to Shamong Township.
“Except for the first day, I interviewed here,” he admitted, sharing he had been serving as assistant principal at Cherry Hill High School West at the time. Coming from such a big district, Carroll said he was “really drawn to a small town, a small school district,” like Shamong.
“It was so much easier to get to know everybody,” he explained. “You know every kid. You know all the names and you get to know all the parents. It’s much more of a community when you are able to just know everybody. I’ve always liked that a lot.”
Indian Mills Memorial School serves grades five through eight, with about 330 students this year. Carroll will retire at the end of the year after 23 years with the district.
On March 21, he set out at 8 a.m. to walk 23 miles – or 115 laps – around the school track to help raise money for the Indian Mills athletic booster club, which is used to update and replace sports equipment and uniforms at the school.
For most of the walk he wore a ruck pack.
“I like to walk,” Carroll said, something he does a lot. “I knew it was something I could do and it was like, ‘Ok, 23 years, 23 miles’ … just sounded good to me, so I said that’s what I would do.”
The school district lacked money for sports uniforms in 2011, so volunteers worked together to form an athletic booster club to raise the funds. And as he reflected, Carroll, who is also the school’s athletic director, wanted to do something for the club before he retires.
“You can’t just say you care about something,” he explained. “You have to show your actions if you care. This is my last thank you to the school, to all the students who play sports and their parents.”
Throughout the day, students and their parents joined Carroll on his trek.
“It’s been really nice,” he commented as he made his rounds on the track. “It’s just a way to give back to the school. That’s important to me to do that. I became principal in 2003 at the middle school. I’m 54 years old and I’ve spent almost half my life as principal of this school.
“You develop deep feelings for it, the community and all the kids.”
It also tugs at the heartstrings, he added. Carroll has been principal long enough to see generations come and go.
“We had three volunteers at our table …” he noted. “I was their principal when they were students and now, I’m their boss. (For) three of my students at graduation last year, I was their parent’s principal here and they stayed in town.”
Ali Ferrell, president of the Indian Mills Home and School Association, shared that Carroll originally planned to do the walk by himself.
“I said, ‘You are not doing it by yourself,'” she recalled. “Let’s make it a community event where people can come out, so we got some food trucks to come and I advertised it with Seneca High School to try to get some alumni to come.”
And some did just that.
“It was nice to see this morning people with strollers and people that he hasn’t seen in years,” Ferrell added.
For Carroll to raise money for the booster club, she said, just shows what a “great guy” he is.
Carroll walked 24.2 miles in all. Eighth-grader Casey Babbitt decided to join him for the entire trek.
“I started in this district when I was just 3 years old,” she recalled, “and now I’m in my final year. I didn’t want to miss anything these last few months, so I decided to join Mr. Carroll on his walk.”
Babbitt admitted she had never walked more than six miles before.
“I definitely didn’t expect to finish all 24.2,” she said. “But he kept encouraging me the whole way, and that pushed me to keep going until I completed it with him.
“I’m really grateful I got to be part of that, and I wish him the best in his retirement.”
When he retires in June, Carroll will have ended a 33-year career in education that began when he taught at elementary school in Trenton and Flemington.
“I taught first grade, second grade, third grade and fifth grade,” he remembered. “It actually started to hit me recently that I’m going to stop doing this. It’s more emotional than I expected, especially when you have been somewhere for so long.
“This is a great place,” he added of the Shamong school district, “This town has treated me very well.”
Donations can be made to https://my.cheddarup.com/c/mr-carrolls-23-for-23/items
