MARIETTA - Although Betty Gray joked that she was glad Tuesday afternoon wasn't a rainy day because that meant her hair wouldn't curl too much, she did say in her 57 years of education she was hardly concerned with how she looked. That's because her main concern was teaching kids, she said.

"I am concerned, and I want you to remember one thing, that education is what we're about." Gray, 76, said during her speech at the seventh annual Betty Gray Teacher Education Scholarship Luncheon on Tuesday. "Whether it's teaching a 3-year-old their name and the letters in their name, or whether it's at South Cobb High School congratulating a winner in an athletic event, we are about our kids."

Gray, who was a Cobb teacher and principal, and served on the school board for 16 years before stepping down in December 2009, was honored at the luncheon along with several Cobb students who received scholarships from the Betty Gray Teacher Education Scholarship. The scholarship program, which began in 2004, awards high school seniors in southern Cobb who intend to become teachers.

This year's award recipients include Reanna Daniels, 19, Jessaca York, 17, and Uxivyon Pearce, 17.

Daniels, a recent graduate of Cobb Performance Learning Center, has already finished a semester at Chattahoochee Technical College and plans to transfer to Kennesaw State University within the next year. She said she wants to teach fifth grade in Cobb Schools in order to give back to her community.

A senior at South Cobb High School, York said she hopes to teach high school forensics or college criminology. In the fall, she plans to attend Duke University, where she has already been accepted, or Emory University, where she is still waiting to hear back from. York said she sees the award as her opportunity to touch a young person's life through teaching.

Pearce, a senior at Pebblebrook High School, wants to teach early childhood education because she said she feels a basic educational foundation is the key to opening doors later in life. Next fall, she will be a freshman at Valdosta State University.

Several current and former Cobb principals reminisced about Gray's impact on their lives and careers Tuesday, including Superintendent Fred Sanderson. The superintendent was introduced by South Cobb Area Assistant Superintendent Ed Thayer, who confessed that Sanderson said to keep it short and tell the audience that Sanderson owes everything that he knows to Gray.

"For more than half a century, Betty stood in front of a class, stood in front of faculty, chaired a board in a room full of people, but she never lost her dedication or committement to what was important, and that was the kids and their education," Sanderson said.

The luncheon, at Roswell Street Baptist Church, was led by Barbara Hickey, president of the Etiquette School of Atlanta, and featured Michael Thurmond, Georgia Labor Commissioner, as keynote speaker.

Thurmond thanked Gray for her commitment to educating young people and called her a living legend. He also said he was a testament to what public education offers, being a son of a sharecropper who could not read or write and growing up in a house without running water.

"But our speaker today, because he had access to public education through his state, that in one generation from that sharecropper grew a lawyer, an author and a labor commissioner," Thurmond said of himself.

Gray, who began her teaching career at South Cobb High School in 1957, after transferring from a teaching job in St. Augustine, Fla, counts former Gov. Roy Barnes among her students.

"I think that it really was a unique experience for me today, to say to these young people coming into teaching and to the crowd that supported them here that it's always important to remember that education opens doors," Gray said. "And that it has to be considered in any budget process, any personal budgets or anything else. It is that key that opens doors for the future - we owe our kids that."

The Betty Gray Scholarships are presented by Foundation 200 for Children, whose president is Wallace Cooperwood, a lobbyist for Waste Management and a member of the school district's Facilities and Technology Review Committee.

Others attending the luncheon included board members Dr. John Crooks and Holli Cash; Associate Superintendent Dr. Gordon Pritz; district spokesman Jay Dillon; Deane Bonner, President of the Cobb NAACP; Rep. Terry Johnson of Marietta; and State Rep. Don Wix, of Mableton, who introduced Gray.