Hard-Working VGCC Grad Finds Success On West Coast

Ernest Hinton is a long, long way from home… and working long, long days…and loving every minute of it.

Henderson native Ernest Benjamin Hinton went off to St. Augustine’s College after graduation from Northern Vance High School, but he found the Raleigh school was not for him. He returned home after one semester and entered Vance-Granville Community College.

“It was absolutely wonderful,” Hinton said. “There were small classes, few disruptions, and everything was perfect for learning.”

Hinton graduated from VGCC in 1982 with an Associate in Applied Science Degree in Business Administration. While at Vance-Granville, Hinton also served as a tutor in English and in accounting.

Degree in hand, Ernest went to work for IBM in Research Triangle Park. After about a year, he was on vacation in New York and saw the Internal Revenue Service was hiring seasonal workers. He applied, was hired and expected to work the 3-month tax season. When it was over, he was called back for the summer and ended up working 11 years for the IRS.

“The IRS put me on the phone answering tax questions, and the accounting courses I took at Vance-Granville were really helpful to me then,” Hinton said. “I was the only one who could answer some of the questions, and that was because of what I had learned at Vance-Granville Community College.”

In 1994, Hinton said his “traveling genes” took over, and he went out to Los Angeles to work for American Airlines as a meeting planner. The airlines phased out his job, and Hinton returned to Henderson for a while. He worked as credit manager for Heilig-Meyers Furniture and enjoyed being back with his parents, Andrew and Willie Ernestine Hinton, who still live in Henderson.

But the lure of the West Coast called again, and Ernest went to Seattle to visit his sister, Betty Hinton Crockett. That city in the Northwest hooked him.

“Seattle is beautiful, it is clean, and I just love it,” Hinton said. He also still likes Los Angeles and finds it easy to hop a flight down the coast to visit there.

The VGCC graduate went to work at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle as a nurse’s aide, but soon was promoted to Medicare/Medicaid DRG Coordinator and Discharge Planning Coordinator. But that’s only a night job and, apparently, Ernest Hinton has too much energy and ambition to be tied to one job.

So he took a job in security for Kline Galland Corp., which operates five luxury, assisted-living communities in Seattle. He now works days as the administrative assistant to the chief executive officer with this company.

“I am gone from home from 8 in the morning to 10:30 in the evening every day, and I also work Saturdays,” Hinton said. “I have very little spare time.”

Vance-Granville Community College did not provide Ernest Hinton with his tremendous work ethic, but he says VGCC gave him “a superior education” that has helped him succeed at every job he has attempted on both coasts of this land.