Nine Ā鶹ֱ²„ Alumni honored during Homecoming 2023-Legacy Award
ELLISVILLE ā Ā鶹ֱ²„ās Alumni Association and Foundationās expanded Alumni recognition program during Homecoming celebrations on October 28, 2023, honored āRising Stars,ā Lewis S. Bateman of Laurel and current Starkville resident, Mason Irby of Meridian and current Madison resident, Alise Mathews of Laurel, and Jermarcus Ross of Laurel. Three Ā鶹ֱ²„ alumni, Dr. Leander Bridges II of Laurel, Ashely Dean of Clara, and current Lebanon, Tennessee resident, and Richton native and current Petal Resident, Austin Smith, each received the āAchievement and Excellence Award.ā Jim Rasberry of Laurel was honored as āOutstanding Alumni of the Year,ā and Dr. Dewey Garner of Raleigh, and current Oxford resident, received the āLegacy Award.ā
āWe are so happy you are with us at Ā鶹ֱ²„,ā Dr. Jesse Smith, President of Ā鶹ֱ²„ said, greeting hundreds of alumni at the Homecoming Luncheon and Awards Ceremony. āWe represent the past, present, and future. It is such a pleasure to have all of our honored alumni back on campus as we gather to celebrate your accomplishments and the lasting impact you have left on your communities. You are the embodiment of our schoolās legacy, and we are proud to call you our own, as part of the JC family.ā
The Legacy Award spotlights an alumnus of Ā鶹ֱ²„ who has illustrated over the years continued support and has made consistent contributions to honor the College, like Dr. Dewey Garner. The retired pharmacist and pharmacy professor at the University of Mississippi and the University of Houston, graduated from JCJC in 1960, taking 18 hours every quarter. At the end of his freshman year, he said he was still undecided on a major until he won the Chemistry Award.
āI’ve figured all this is general and it will transferā¦and I said well, I got this chemistry award so I must have some talent here,ā Garner quipped. āBut I donāt want to be working with test tubes and beakers for the rest of my life. I read pharmacy was a very people-oriented profession, but Iāve never been in a pharmacy in my life other than to sit at the fountain before the movie in Raleigh. I wound up coming to Ole Miss because itās the oldest pharmacy school in the state. I had only been on this campus one time in my life to see a football game.ā
Upon graduation from Ole Miss, Dr. Garner practiced pharmacy for 2 Ā½ years in New Albany, when the Dean of the Pharmacy School convinced him to return for graduate school in 1966. He joined the faculty at the University of Houston after graduation in 1970 for a year, before joining the faculty at the University of Mississippi. Garner retired in 2009, as professor emeritus of pharmacy administration and research professor emeritus in the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences after serving 38 years on the faculty with 14 of those years as the chair of the department of pharmacy administration.
He served the Kappa Psi Pharmaceutical Fraternity, the oldest and largest professional pharmacy fraternity in the world, in nearly every national office and as a member of almost every national committee. He wrote a book in 1993 on the fraternityās history. The fraternity recognized him for his extraordinary service to the pharmacy profession with the A. Richard Bliss Grand Council Citation of Appreciation in 2009. Professor Garner served as faculty adviser to the Beta Rho Chapter of Kappa Psi at Ole Miss, and the student chapter of the National Association of Community Pharmacists.
The School of Pharmacy selected him as āAlumnus of the Year for 2009-2010, and the Mississippi Pharmacists Association inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2009. He served on the Mississippi Medicaid Commissionās Drug Advisory Committee from 1971 to 1985 and was one of three pharmacists appointed to the Center for Medicare and Medicaidās Stateās Pharmaceutical Transition Commission.
Of all his awards and honors over his lifetime, Garner shared, the Legacy Award from Ā鶹ֱ²„ is the most treasured.
āThose lifetime awards are for different constituencies, but this one is a little overwhelming because when it said Legacy from Ā鶹ֱ²„, it goes back further than any of those others. I mean, it was 64years ago that I entered JCJC as a freshman,ā said Garner, who met his wife Barbara of 60 years during his sophomore year at JCJC, thanks to his cousin. The couple has two children, two grandchildren, and one, great-grandchild.
All the honored alumni were recognized with a medallion during half-time of the football game before recognizing the Homecoming Court.
Another first for JCJC PTK Alumnus of the Year, Sara Landrum
ELLISVILLE ā Hundreds of Jones County Junior College alumni gathered recently for Ā鶹ֱ²„ās Homecoming Luncheon which honored several alumni for various accomplishments. During that event, the Alumni Association of Phi Theta Kappaās International Honor Society, Rho Sigma Chapter bestowed a unique award to one of its members, a 1970 JCJC graduate from Clara, Sara Smith Landrum. She was the first of the recently formed Alumni Chapter of PTK at Ā鶹ֱ²„ to receive the honor of, āPTK Alumnus of the Year.ā
āThe activities and projects I participated in while in PTK broadened my knowledge of working with others of academic excellence,ā said Landrum. āWhen current PTK Advisor at Ā鶹ֱ²„, Mark Brown expressed his desire to contact former members and to learn about the early days of the Rho Sigma Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, I knew that I could help him, thanks to information that I had noted in my 1968-69 and 1969-70 yearbooks, The Lair.
Brown described Landrumās work as invaluable. Building the JC database is just one of the many reasons she earned the first honor bestowed to an alumnus of the recently formed Alumni chapter of PTK at Ā鶹ֱ²„.
āShe has been integral in helping us contact past members from that time. The Phi Theta Kappa International Office maintains a database going decades into the past but much of the information is outdated. Most of the PTK members before 2000, do not have email addresses. Ms. Landrum has been instrumental in providing contact information for numerous past members and helped us develop our database at JC.ā explained Brown. āSara has continually been supportive of our efforts to develop a Ā鶹ֱ²„ Phi Theta Kappa Alumni Association.ā
Returning to the Ellisville campus for Homecoming recently was an eye-opening event for āSara from Clara,ā as she is affectionately known to many.
āHomecoming weekend was thrilling, walking on a completely different campus compared to my memories of 53 years ago. Iāve always considered my two years at Jones to be the happiest time of my educational career.ā
The Wayne County native earned the title of Valedictorian of the Clara High School class of 1968. Living in the Strengthford Community allowed Sara to live at home and take the Jones County Junior College bus to Ellisville. She shared, āJCJC was a gift to the community. I could ride the JCJC bus that originated in Clara, just like my older brother Al Smith (1967), and my siblings, Dan Smith (1975), and Syble Smith Courtney (1979).ā
While at JCJC, Sara continued to earn accolades as she actively engaged in academics and related organizations on campus. She joined the first chapter of Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society at Ā鶹ֱ²„, serving as the first secretary of PTK. Coming from a family that encouraged, promoted, and even pushed education, itās not a surprise she thrived and earned many honors and leadership opportunities. In addition to her PTK responsibilities, Landrum also served as President of the National Student Education Association and was a member of the Executive Committee of the Mississippi Student Education Association. She was named to the āHall of Fameā in the JCJC Yearbook for Academic Excellence. She also received the Letter āJā Award for maintaining Honor Roll and Presidentās Lists and she was the recipient of the Robert H. McFarland Scholarship. Landrum was also honored for having the highest average of all the female JCJC students graduating in 1970.
While serving on NSEA, Sara was inspired by the NSEA advisor and her biology teacher, Shelby Price to major in biology. She continued her education at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee where she was a member of the academic honors organization, Alpha Chi. She graduated summa cum laude in 1972 and returned to Clara to teach biology and chemistry at Clara High School.
Landrum began her education as a first grader at Strengthford School before it consolidated to become Clara School in 1957. Much to her dismay, there was never a reunion until it became a āburning desire in her heartā to organize the first Strengthford School Reunion in 2004, which brought 329 people from nine states to the gathering. Landrum spearheaded the reunions which were held every year except in 2020, when Covid canceled everything.
āHaving a teacher’s heart is all about helping others. I find that the Strengthford School Reunions are fulfilling to me because old friends have reunited after many years of being apart. The happiness and joy in their faces brings me great satisfaction.ā
Her husband of 53 years, Albert Landrum also graduated from Clara as did their daughter, Melody. Their two grandsons are currently at Clara Elementary School. In her spare time, Sara serves as the pianist/organist, Bible School teacher, and Sunday School teacher at Clara Church of God.
Ā鶹ֱ²„ Pageant slated for November 8, 2023
Ā鶹ֱ²„ will hold its annual Most Beautiful Pageant on Wednesday, November 8, at 7 p.m. in the M.B. Bush Fine Arts Auditorium. Thirty-two contestants will vie for Most Beautiful, Top 10, Top 5, Best Essay, and Most Photogenic. There will also be a Peopleās Choice award for the contestant with the most votes from the audience. Each vote costs $1. General admission is $8, with admission for Ā鶹ֱ²„ students with proper I.D., and K-12 student admission only $2. For more information, contact Emily Sullivan at 601-477-4030.
Photo by JC student, Marlee Brewer:Top Five: The Top Five contestants recognized at the Most Beautiful Pageant held last spring are pictured left to right, Amberlyn Holifield of Leakesville, third alternate; Taylor Garretson of Leakesville, first alternate; Summer Boyd of Laurel (Most Beautiful), Halle Myrick of Petal, second alternate; and Kailee Pipkins of Richton.
Ā鶹ֱ²„ costume contest winners
ELLISVILLE ā Several hundred superheroes, princesses and ghouls came out to have fun at the annual Ā鶹ֱ²„ Treats in the Streets on the JC campus in Ellisville. Kids played games for treats in the booths set up by JC faculty and students as a way to give back to the community. Some children participated in the costume contests for babies through teens, with the winners of the creatively dressed kids receiving a variety of goodies and sweet prizes from the JC Office of Student Affairs.
Ā鶹ֱ²„ students who dressed and impressed the judges, received prizes for their efforts. The top five winners of the Costume Contest for JC students included JC childcare employee, Christina Nixon as the cowgirl, winning the overall top prize. Ā鶹ֱ²„ students from Morton, Meghan Toranno, Tristen Goss and Ghenessy Lopez who dressed as The Lorax, took third place, and from Enterprise, Lainey Parker who dressed as the Balloon Dog, won second place. Honorable Mention went to Maddie Smith of Sumrall who dressed as Barbie in a Box and Mekhiya Bates of Pascagoula who dressed as Steve Harvey.
Treats in the Streets is an annual, free, community event hosted by the Ā鶹ֱ²„ with various student organizations and academic and technical divisions setting up games and offering candy gifts.
JCJC alumnus & author returns to Laurel for āAuthor Eventā
ELLISVILLE- Jones County native, former New York City resident and current Athens, Georgia resident, Noel Holston will be returning to Laurel as the guest author for the Laurel-Jones County Libraryās āAuthor Event.ā The 1968 Jones County Junior College alumnus is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and critic, songwriter and photographer, who has recently published his second book, As I Die Laughing: Snapshots of a Southern Childhood. Holston will be sharing some of the stories he wrote about growing up āfree-rangeā in Laurel, Ellisville and the Pendorff community at the Laurel-Jones County Library on Thursday, November 9, from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m.
āAs tickled as I am to have a chance to read chapters from As I Die Laughing to people I grew up with, what I really look forward to is the stories they’re going to tell me. Yarns will be swapped, I’m sure,ā said Holston,. āI don’t go home as much as I once did now that my parents and extended family have all passed on, but I still get up that way every couple of years. I did a book signing at the library in Laurel in 2020, when my book, Life After Deaf was newly published. Any time I visit, I see my only sibling, my younger brother, (a JCJC graduate and retired professor at the University of South Alabama) Tim, who lives in Mobile. We drive up to Jones County for the day. Itās sort of a ritual: We visit our folksā graves to pay respects, go by my grandmotherās old house on 5th Street in Laurel, drive by our familyās house in Pendorff, cruise on down to Ellisville, and eat chili cheeseburgers at Ward’s.ā
Holstonās humorous account of his childhood adventures in Jones County with his boyhood friends, family and residents of Jones County in the 1960s, earned him the nickname, the āMark Twain of Laurelā by reviewers of his new book. Some readers may remember the authorās relatives like his uncle, M.D. āShortyā Holston who owned a car dealership in Ellisville and his first cousins, David and Dr. James Holston. Other friends he remembers fondly include, Freida Gunn Collins, Jim Clark and Eddie Endom.
āAbout half of the stories and sketches are things Iāve been telling for years as a āstand-upā storyteller. Pretty sure it will amuse most everybody who came of age in the 1960s and ā70s,ā shared Holston.
The semi-retired writerās first book was a memoir called, āLife after Deaf,ā which chronicles his efforts to recover from a near total hearing loss in 2010. The book was published in 2019 and continues to sell and make Amazonās Best Sellers List.
Ironically, the author of now two books and a long-time newspaper columnist at Newsday in New York City, was inspired by his JCJC teacher and campus newspaper/yearbook advisor, Hunter āMackā Cole to change course and be a writer. Holston was in Coleās English class his freshman year at JCJC. After finishing the semester, Cole recruited Holston to be the yearbook editor and to write a column for the student produced, Radionian newspaper. His assignment was to write what was āINā at JC.
āI was supposed to suggest stuff that was āhappāninā at the school and elsewhere or what struck my fancy. My output included a review of The Beatlesā then new, āSgt. Pepperā album and columns about the blues music revival that was underway, the impact of the murder of Martin Luther King and silly stuff such as trying to calculate whether all the cigarette butts tossed on campus grounds would eventually bury the school. To my shock, I won a state student journalism prize for some sample columns Mr. Cole submitted without telling me!ā said Holston.
The JCJC 1968 graduate never thought about being a writer before this chance encounter with Cole. He enjoyed āplaying with wordsā but believed like his parents, that he should pursue a practical career, so he earned a finance degree at USM and then his MBA degree.
āThe game changer was editing the USM yearbook, The Southerner, which was a paid position I got thanks to my JC Lair yearbook experience. I oversaw the 1970 and 1971 yearbooks which led to an invitation to a summer program at Harvard for students involved in campus publications. The encouragement I received there for my writing led me to seek a journalism job rather than something in banking or corporate management. My folks felt like I had run off and joined the circus, but I never regretted my choice. I got paid to write a popular culture, news, politics and social issues column for almost four decades, kind of like my āIN JCā column but on a national scale.ā
In 1972, Holston was hired by the Orlando Sentinel newspaper as a general assignment reporter. He later became a contributor and editor of its Sunday magazine a year later, and then was asked to be the paperās TV-Radio columnist. Occasionally, he wrote about music, movies, theater, food, and visual art, but TV became his āmeal ticket.ā In 1986, Holston worked in Minneapolis and then New York, in 2000.
At Newsday, he reviewed TV shows, commented on the industry and the electronic mediaās impact on society, as well as interviewed and profiled dozens of entertainment and news personalities.
āIt was great fun, and it was great training for the writing Iām doing now,ā said Holston.
Currently, Noel lives in Georgia with his wife, singer-songwriter, Marty Winkler and they have two sons, a stepdaughter, and a couple of grandchildren.