Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Tim Summers is a second-grade teacher at Oak Grove Elementary in Roanoke County. He is one of just five males who teach kindergarten, first or second graders in the county system.

Angie Baughman started her career in architecture but prefers construction, because she's able to work on building sites instead of sitting at a computer.

Shilah Scarry is an express-service technician at Rick Woodson Honda.

Andrea Andrews is a full technician at the Roanoke dealership.

Large, uncooperative dogs are no match for Bill Cosgrove, a licensed veterinary technician at Vinton Veterinary Hospital.

There's a second-grade teacher on Principal Cristina Flippen's staff who's especially nurturing and affectionate.

In this Oak Grove Elementary class, pupils watch chickens hatch each year, then the teacher takes the baby birds to the family farm to live.

Each November, the classroom filled with little chairs and little crayon- and glue-stick-stuffed desks becomes the site of a Pilgrimesque Thanksgiving. The class spends days churning butter, grinding wheat for bread and making soup before inviting parents to share in the feast.

Who is this Old MacDonald-style leader of two dozen 6- to 8-year-olds?

Tim Summers.

He's a 46-year-old with two teenage daughters, a former career in carpentry and a current gig playing with a Celtic band. With his bushy hair and handlebar mustache, he's more David Crosby than Mr. Rogers.

He's also one of five males teaching kindergarten, first or second graders for Roanoke County.

While low pay often deters men from entering teaching, Summers said the traditional role of men as breadwinners "is not really my bag."

Summers and his wife, a school instructional assistant, live in Botetourt County. When his daughters were young, their male Montessori school teacher became his role model, and he enjoyed volunteering at his children's campus. It prompted him to begin a second career 12 years ago in education, he said, because he wanted to make a difference.

"I don't know that I become a parental figure," he said. "You try to teach skills to be gentlemen and treat each other nicely."

For this reason, some parents in the county seek him out. "He's much requested by moms who want a positive male influence, or moms who feel they need someone good with boys," Flippen said.

Sometimes, Flippen said, parents meet Summers with surprise, telling her, "Oh, my child's never had a male teacher before."

But as far as being one of just two men teaching at his school, Summers has yet to see a downside. He just enjoys working with the kids, telling himself when they strain his patience that they are still learning to be people.

"It's the right job for me," he said.

She keeps the work on schedule

ANGIE BAUGHMAN

CONSTRUCTION PROJECT MANAGER

The atmosphere often changes when she steps onto a job site.

Suddenly, hard-hat-wearing construction workers apologize when they curse. They also don't chew. Or spit.

At 33, Angie Baughman is the only female project manager for Roanoke's Lionberger Construction. In May, she earned her master's degree in construction management from Virginia Tech after a short career as an architect.

Her job means overseeing several projects at once -- right now, it's the renovation of a Blacksburg church and building new retail space at Valley View Mall.

While an on-site supervisor runs daily operations at a job site, it's up to Baughman to handle the budget and the bills, correspond with architects, line up subcontractors and compile estimates.

Essentially, she's charged with keeping the guys working, keeping the job on schedule and making money.

"It ultimately rests on my shoulders to make sure it happens," she said.

After working in architecture for five years, Baughman decided she didn't like spending her days in front of a computer. Architects she worked for in Roanoke encouraged her to return to school for a master's in construction, leading her to attend classes while working full time.

She quit her job in December 2006, planning to focus on school. A week later, she received an e-mail about a part-time job at Lionberger from her department head at Tech. Starting work part-time, she thinks, eased her transition as a woman. And in construction, she found everything she felt her former career lacked.

"I get to go to the job. I get to talk to the guys. I get to see the project happen," she explained. "I like being able to keep busy on the job."

Even in school, Baughman knew she was outnumbered. She estimates 75 percent of students in her master's program were men. Even when there were speakers from construction companies, seeing a woman was rare.

Yet when she decided to switch careers, no one was less surprised than Baughman's mom. She knows her daughter is a self-proclaimed tomboy who hates shopping, except for a weakness for shoes. Baughman loves sports -- helping coach high school soccer and playing pick-up basketball. With her dad, she is making improvements on her Roanoke house.

On the job, Baughman tries to balance being confident with taking the guys' advice. If a man with 20 years' experience tells her a certain fastener will work, she'll likely listen.

On the other hand, she believes some guys at a site will ask her questions just to see if she knows the answer.

"You're a little bit discriminated against at first until people know you," she said.

A few weeks ago, for instance, Baughman was picking up a tape measure at Lowe's. A couple of guys saw her shopping and tried telling her, "Honey, you need this one."

Baughman just let them talk.

There's time enough for them to figure out she's the boss.

'It’s a physical and mental job’

ANDREA ANDREWS AND SHILAH SCARRY

AUTO TECHNICIANS

The man on the other end of the phone laughed when she called. He had never hired a woman before, he said, and his business was not the right place to start.

One company was convinced she was calling on behalf of a man.

Fresh out of New River Community College with a degree in automotive repair, Shilah Scarry called every phone number in the book and looked up every car business on the Internet before a newspaper ad led her to a job last year at Roanoke's Rick Woodson Honda.

The 24-year-old with a long brown ponytail, diamonds high in each ear and a peaches-and-cream complexion was hired as an express-service technician -- a job whose duties include changing oil and rotating tires.

All this from a young lady from Giles County who, as a girl, was called "Miss Priss."

She says she's still pretty feminine, wearing a strapless gown with a burgundy belt for her June wedding, then returning from her honeymoon to a uniform of shorts and a button-down shirt with her name stitched on a patch.

This newlywed says she has always been mechanically minded. Her dad fixed his own car problems out of necessity. She inherited his love of trying to figure things out, seeing how they work, moving parts around.

At the auto shop, many customers say it's great there's a lady who knows cars. One man, though, refused to have a woman work on his vehicle.

"I try really hard not to let it bother me," said Scarry, who commutes every day from Christiansburg.

The company hopes to promote Scarry to a full technician, auto-industry speak for "mechanic."

When that happens, she will join Andrea Andrews, 42, who has worked as a Rick Woodson technician for 12 years after a childhood spent tinkering in her uncle's Roanoke junkyard.

The Roanoke resident came to the Honda dealership with no schooling, after working odd jobs and delivering pizza. Like Scarry, she was hired as an oil changer until the dealership sent her to Richmond for technician school. She was in class with people from Maryland to the Carolinas, but never encountered another woman.

"It's a physical and mental job," Andrews explained. "You figure out what's wrong, then physically fix it."

At the auto shop, a staff of 11 repairs vehicles and performs oil changes. While Andrews and Scarry are the only women, Assistant Service Manager Duke Meador said the company has no problem putting women to work on an engine.

In fact, when Andrews submitted her application a dozen years ago, prompted by a friend whose husband worked at the dealership, she was asked: "Can you start tomorrow?"

After all these years, people outside the garage will still say, "Wow," when Andrews explains what she does for a living. Then, they often ask her professional opinion.

"Nine times out of 10, they see you out of uniform and say, 'Well, I've got this problem with my car ...' "

Muscle and size give this vet tech an edge

BILL COSGROVE

VETERINARY TECHNICIAN

Rottweilers. German shepherds. Black and yellow Labrador retrievers.

What do these big dogs have in common?

They don't like visiting the doctor.

What happens when these unhappy animals act up at Vinton Veterinary Hospital?

"The big guy" gets called in.

That guy is Bill Cosgrove, 41, a licensed veterinary technician who's been at the clinic 19 years. He's 6 feet tall with burly arms and a salt-and-pepper beard. He wears New Balance sneakers, purple scrubs and a plastic nametag flanked by pictures of puppies.

Officially, Cosgrove's job involves nurse-type duties -- taking X-rays, drawing blood and, under a doctor's direction, giving animals medication.

Unofficially, as the clinic's only male vet tech, Cosgrove is often called to restrain the mean dogs.

"We definitely depend on Bill a lot with holding some of the big, bad boys that we see," explained Kathy Wickham, one of three fellow vet techs at the Vinton hospital. "If Bill's here, Bill gets first dibs."

His technique is simple: If a dog jumps, Cosgrove doesn't let go. Instead, he moves with it.

Holding animals is a skill Cosgrove learned while earning his associate's degree at Blue Ridge Community College. Originally from Smith Mountain Lake, Cosgrove graduated from Staunton River High School in 1984, then entered Virginia Western Community College.

A love of dogs and cats made Cosgrove want to be a veterinarian, but he did not think his grades were good enough. At Virginia Western, he heard about Blue Ridge's vet tech program and decided becoming a technician would keep him in the field.

He interned at the Vinton clinic as he was finishing school, got hired and has worked there ever since.

"Some doctors do seek me out for certain things," admitted Cosgrove, who currently lives at the lake.

The veteran vet tech believes he's one of just a few men to hold such a job in the Roanoke Valley. The only other man who worked as a tech with him left after a few years for veterinary school.

Like any job, Cosgrove knows that being a vet tech comes with good days and bad. It's hard seeing animals he knows die from euthanasia or sickness.

"Usually, I keep myself in check," he said. "Sometimes, you let your emotions show, [but] it's like, 'I gotta be professional.' "

On the other hand, his job led him to Big Mac, who, while beefy, is not from McDonald's.

Big Mac is an English bulldog that one of the clinic's clients picked up from the streets. The client thought about keeping him, but the dog was too powerful. She had the dog neutered, then asked the clinic to put him up for adoption.

It wasn't long before the big guy decided he and this big dog were a match.