Voices from the Backwoods
Gary Endsley
Gary Endsley is the Director of Collins Academy in Jefferson and a proponent for rural sustainability in Northeast Texas. He believes the rural way of life is in jeopardy and works to develop available human, natural, and cultural assets so communities can pull themselves up by their own boot straps. Currently, he is working to establish a national heritage area across the Caddo Lake region to create a major destination based on nationally important interpretive themes.
Gary was born and raised in Atlanta, Texas, where he graduated high school and still resides and matriculated through higher education at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University – Texarkana. He has worked in industry as an environmental scientist, operated a private business for 10 years, more recently made significant contributions to science education and its reform, and now seeks to leave a permanent mark on Northeast Texas by helping to blaze its future.
