Sharon was born and raised in Morganton. Her parents moved here from Cleveland County and got jobs in the factories -- mother in textiles, dad in furniture.  Although they started out poor, Sharon never realized it.  Her parents made sure they always had food on the table.  Her parents made Morganton their home and became mainstays here. Her mother, Ruby, started at Shadowline as a seamstress -- convinced owner Sherrod Salisbury to let her design some garments, and ended up as Head of Design at Shadowline.  In addition to running design at Shadowline, she became an established painter and helped establish The Jail House Gallery.  Today there is a dedicated memorial to her at the Burke Arts Council on Sterling Street where many of her paintings are housed.  Sharon's father, Loyd, started as a cabinet maker at Drexel Furniture.  Then he resigned to start his own business “Ridgeline Framing and Gallery” on Green Street here in Morganton.  He often said he was spending so much time framing Ruby’s work, that he started a frame shop to keep up.  Sharon's parents were strong in their beliefs of the power of education, and Sharon and her brother grew up with that same belief.  The strong basic High School education they got in Morganton gave both of them opportunities and options in their lives
 
Sharon is running for the Burke County School Board. Our Burke County School Board has been under assault for months by an extreme group which is now a national movement to control school boards across the country. They cover with wanting to ban books, but their real agenda is to teach their version of religion in our schools, revise history, deny slavery was wrong, dumb down education, and limit freedoms for all. President Biden made a point in his 2024 State of the Union that we should not be rewriting history, we should be making it.