Volume 12, Number 1 April 2015
imPACK Alumni and friends investing, improving and impacting.
Alumna to celebrate 100th birthday along with Co-Lin
Foundation Hall of Fame inducts five
Copiah-Lincoln Community College Foundation inducted five new She’s lived through World War II, the Great members into its Hall Depression, the Civil Rights Era, and the of Fame at a major Millennium, and Wilma Cole (’36) is still donor appreciation sharp enough to tell about it. Cole was born dinner held March 21 in 1915, the same year Copiah-Lincoln at the Thames Center was established as an agricultural high on the college’s Wesson school. Eighteen years later, Cole came to Campus. Those inducted Wesson as a freshman at Copiah-Lincoln were Sonya Cowen of Community College, beginning a legacy in Wesson, David and her family for three generations. Debbie Massey of Cole’s time at Co-Lin was in the height Mendenhall, Randy of the Depression, or as she called it, “the and Cherry Morris of The Foundation Hall of Fame Class of 2015 includes: front row, from left: Cherry Morris, hard times.” A bus picked her up at her home Oak Grove, Louisiana, Sarah Foster representing Silver Cross Home Foundation, Sonya Cowen, Sandra Wojcik, in Simpson County on Sunday, and took her and Debbie Massey. Back row, from left: Randy Morris, Ronald Wojcik, and David Massey. Silver Cross Home home one weekend a month. At that time, Foundation, and Ronald and Sandra Wojcik of Brookhaven. students were required to work on campus. Sonya Cowen The young men worked on the campus farm, Sonya Cowen was honored for her contributions to the N. B. and Catherine White and and the women worked in the cafeteria. Cole Calvin White Memorial Scholarships, established in memory of her parents and brother. planned to become a librarian, and when she told Cowen is a 1963 graduate of Co-Lin High School and a 1965 graduate of the college. administrators that she liked to read, Mrs. Evelyn She received a B.S. degree in education and library science from Mississippi College Oswalt (for whom the Wesson campus library is now and has completed additional study at Mississippi College and The University of named) gave her a job working in the library on campus. When asked if she participated in any extra-curricular Southern Mississippi. activities, Cole responded that she “just read a lot.” That Cowen established the first library at Wesson Elementary School and worked love of reading would eventually lead to a 40-year teaching there as a teacher and elementary and high school librarian for 30 years. She career. Besides reading, Cole enjoyed attending church. She has worked as an assistant librarian in the Evelyn W. Oswalt Library at Co-Lin remembers a bus coming to campus each Sunday morning to for the past 12 years. She is a member of the Delta Kappa Gamma Society pick students up to attend services at International, where she was chosen as a Woman of Distinction in 1990. Wesson Baptist Church. Cowen is an active member of the Co-Lin alumni association, the Band and “They didn’t make you go, but they Colette Alumni Chapter, and was chosen as Alumna of the Year in 2010. She made you feel like you should go,” was selected as Wesson Elementary Teacher of the Year, Wesson High School she said. Teacher of the Year, and Wesson Chamber of Commerce Educator of the Year. After Co-Lin, Cole received She is a member of the Wesson Garden Club, the 50+ Club, and the Old Wesson bachelor’s, master’s and specialist School Community Center Committee. She has also been honored by the degrees from Mississippi Southern Chamber of Commerce as Wesson’s Ageless Hero. She is a member of Wesson College, now known as the Baptist Church, where she serves as a Sunday School teacher and a member of University of Southern Mississippi. the choir. Cole She began her teaching career in She was married to the late Hollis J. Cowen, Jr. and they have two children, Magee, and later taught in Monticello, and then worked Hollis J. Cowen, III (Trey), of Wesson, and Katrina Smith and husband Lane, of in the reading lab at Southern Miss. While Cole was at Flagstaff, Arizona. Southern Miss, former Co-Lin president James Ewing David and Debbie Massey brought his children to the reading lab to be tested. Cole David and Debbie Massey were honored for their contributions to the Wilson(continued on page 2)
(continued on page 2)