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1999 Corinth High School |
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"Class of '79 Reflects on Their Years at CHS"
By Kim Jobe
News Editor
The Daily Corinthian
Twenty years, as most everyone who has ever had basic math knows,
equals two decades -- a lot of time in order for various life-changing
events to occur.
For more than 150 people, 20 years have passed since they have walked
the hallowed halls of Corinth High School. In fact, the CHS Class of
1979 graduated from has become Corinth Junior High School after Corinth
High School Academic and Performing Arts Center opened during the
1992-93 school year.
Many of the class members are returning to the Crossroads area for
their reunion this weekend. Most of the reunion was done via the
Internet, a technology that was not available when the class graduated.
A class web page was built by class members Demmy Holt and Scott Monroe
and members have posted their personal information there.
From this page, 12 class members were contacted by The Daily Corinthian
through e-mail to reflect on their memories of CHS. Below are the responses:
David Waring Biggers
“Each of my memories of CHS are fond, particularly when Leigh Ellen
Martin would tease the guys,” Biggers stated in his e-mail response.
“It really was a superb place to attend school. The efforts put forth by
teachers, coaches, music directors, and school administrators was
remarkable.”
Biggers said he didn’t have a 20-year plan when high school was over
for him.
“I simply assumed I would have the opportunity to attend college,
assuming the draft was not reinstated,” he wrote. “It wasn’t until
middle way in college that I was directed toward medicine. That would
have been 18 years or so ago. Medicine is my current vocation.”
While attending Millsaps College, chemistry became his major. Because
of CHS, this was not a foreign subject to him.
“The foundation taught to me by each of my CHS teachers well prepared
me for college. In particular the chemistry and math taught by Mr.
(Dean) Pearce and Mr. (William) Cole enabled me to pursue the college
major. It’s amazing to realize Mr. Cole taught me math for five
consecutive years. Mrs. (Ruth) Sharp’s, Mrs. (JoAnn) Warren’s, and Mrs.
(Mavis) Labas’ teaching aided greatly in the humanities. I could never
thank them fully.”
Presently, Biggers practices emergency medicine at Gaston Memorial
Hospital just west of Charlotte, N.C.
“The hospital is similar to that of Tupelo,” Biggers explained. “I
moved
here in 1992 following training. My parents, Buddy and Anne Biggers,
reside in Corinth.”
Biggers is a dad, too. He has two daughters, Laura, 10, and Katherine,
9.
“We spend a lot of time together, and I enjoy the father-daughter
relationship immensely with both,” he said.
Unfortunately, Biggers will be unable to attend the class reunion this
weekend.
“I will be on a family trip at the time the reunion is scheduled,” he
explained. “Our previous reunion was a treat, and I expect the 20-year
reunion will be equally enjoyable.”
Though he has been away from CHS for 20 years, Biggers keeps in
contact with several of his classmates.
“Andrew Grady and Barney Hammond are two with whom I’ve kept in
touch
over the years,” he said. “Andrew certainly leads the way in
maintaining the correspondence. Each are wonderful friends.”
As a senior, Biggers was chosen “Most Likely to Succeed” by his peers.
“It’s much too early to determine if I have lived up to that honor,”
he said. “The important point is the adage Coach (Jim) Horton frequently
spoke, ‘It’s not whether you win or lose, but how we each play the
game.’ Or as Mr. Pearce would phrase it, ‘Being faithful is more
important that being successful.’ ”
Biggers has no “inkling” what his classmates may think his life is
like now.
“It has been abundant in unexpected ways,” he said. “The Lord’s
mercies are new every morning.”
If given the opportunity and could go back to CHS, Biggers said he would
do several things.
“The one additional thing I would do if back in school at CHS, would
be to listen more to Coach Jim Horton and Mr. Dean Pearce,” he said.
“Each were gifted with wisdom, discipline, and dedication in their
pursuits. Secondly, I would have spent more time at Bill Reid Jones’
corner store, and taken more bus trips with “Scoop.’ ”
And Biggers left a message for his classmates.
“Should you print any of this, give my best to the Class of ‘79, the
teachers, and administrators,” he wrote. “I am thankful for having grown
up in Corinth and attended school there.”
Lisa Dickens
Dickens could probably win the title of the most unique member of the
class of 1979. Though she graduated from Corinth High, she only attended
school there one year.
According to Dickens, her father, Tom, worked at Hall of Mississippi
(known as World Color Press and now Quebecor World Inc.). After 18
months of commuting between Mississippi and Illinois, the company
decided to transfer him to Corinth for her senior year.
“As you might imagine, I was not thrilled by this idea,” Dickens said.
“I had gone to school with the same people from kindergarten up through
my junior year and was looking forward to that last, exciting year with
all that was familiar to me.”
The Crossroads area was very different to Dickens.
“Corinth was an entirely new planet to me,” she said. “Science had
always been easy for me, but I was afraid that I would fail my Physics
class because I couldn’t understand what language the teacher was
speaking. I could tell he was a very nice man -- and he ended up being
one of the most influential people of my life -- but I just couldn’t
figure out what he was saying.”
Getting adjusted to the school was tough at first, too.
“In Illinois, I ran track every morning, then took a shower and
hurried to class. The girls in Corinth ‘rolled their hair’ -- it took me
a minute or two to translate that to the Midwestern equivalent; ‘curled
their hair’ which I usually did only for special occasions -- and put on
makeup every morning,” she explained. “I was expected to be part of
something called a ‘beauty review.’ Didn’t they get it the first
time?
Was there going to be a test?”
But Dickens survived.
“Fortunately, with the help of some lovely, warm and supportive
friends (thanks Nancy, Lantz, Jana, Becky, Becky, Stephanie, Leigh
Ellen, Ann Lee and many others), I started to catch on. People laughed
at me from time to time --OK, sometimes a lot -- but I managed to come
out mostly unscathed.”
After her year at CHS, Dickens went to Northeast and then Mississippi
State. She stayed around Corinth until her family moved back to Illinois
in 1983.
At MSU, she majored in chemical engineering on the advice of her
beloved physics teacher Dean Pearce, and received her degree in 1984.
“After a few detours, I ended up in California,” Dickens said. “I
started teaching junior high school science in an inner city Los Angeles
school in 1987 and am currently teaching high school chemistry in a
suburb of Los Angeles.”
The Corinth experience was good for Dickens.
“I learned a lot from living in Corinth,” she said. “My whole family
hugs each other every time we come for a visit or leave each other now -
that’s something I started from my friends there. I learned how it feels
to be an outsider -- if only for a short time -- and I have much more
empathy for people confronted with a totally unfamiliar situation. I
learned that even people who don’t look or sound like me still have a
lot of the same feelings that I do and that even I have some
intolerances that I need to guard against.”
Dickens has been thrilled with the website.
“I have heard from some very dear people that I had lost touch with,”
she said. “As a very busy person, e-mail is so convenient and I don’t
have to worry about waking someone up or missing someone because of the
differences in time zones. It has been great fun to see the responses
to the e-mail that Scott sent us.”
Dickens will be in Corinth for the reunion.
“I haven’t been to Corinth in more than 10 years (last time was for
the 10th reunion, I think) and I can’t wait to see everyone,” she said.
Mary Ann McFall Brown
Brown was well-known on the CHS campus. She was a cheerleader and also
played tennis. During her senior year, Brown was selected for the CHS
Hall of Fame, was chosen Homecoming Queen, won the Most Beautiful title
and was given the honor of being named Miss CHS by her peers.
But her fondest memories are not what she achieved but what her class
did.
“I suppose the fondest memories that I have from CHS were all the
extracurricular activities that really brought our class together as a
team and developed friendships that you don’t get from sitting in the
classroom, including the senior Follies, working on the homecoming
floats or other class projects, playing on the tennis team and working
on the annual staff,” Brown stated. “I can’t forget being a part of
the
junior high band with Mr. (Ronnie) Smith as our director. I also have
many fond memories from Mr. Cole’s math classes and Mr. Pearce’s
chemistry class. I think we all learned much more than math and science
from those two teachers.
“Finally, my list would not be complete without mentioning the daily
social walk to and from school to Bill Reid Jones’ grocery,” Brown said.
Twenty years ago, Brown’s plan was to be a housewife and the mother of
four children. Though she is a mother today, she also “played” in the
corporate world for about 14 years.
“I have just recently become a ‘stay at home’ mom with two very
active
boys, ages 4 and 7 (William and Preston) and I love it,” she said. “I am
not sure I would survive if I actually had four children, though.”
Following high school graduation, Brown attended Mississippi State
University and majored in accounting.
“I had a lot of fun while at Mississippi State, especially after the
first year, and certainly wish I had opted for a five-year degree,”
Brown said. “Upon graduation in 1983, I moved to Memphis and began my
career as a staff accountant for Ernst & Whinney (now Ernst & Young).
Somehow, I managed to pass the CPA exam the following year.
“While at Mississippi State, I met Joe Brown from Leland (another
accountant).” Brown added. “He accepted a job in Dallas, Texas, and I
guess you could say I followed suit and relocated with Ernst & Whinney
to Dallas in the summer of 1985 and moved in with three college friends.
Joe and I were married in 1986 and stayed in Dallas. I left public
accounting to get away from the travel and became an internal auditor
for Texas Independent Bank, but knew right away that was not for me.
For a while, I enjoyed climbing the corporate ladder, but finally the
stress of juggling a career and family got to me. I knew I wanted to
spend more time with my children. As a result of two bankruptcy filings
by Lomas, the company was forced to sell most of its assets and
reorganize as a much smaller company downsizing from over 2,000
employees to about 10 remaining in 1997. In August of 1997, Joe was
offered a transfer with his employer, the Trammell Crow Company, to
Memphis. My job had dwindled to less than full-time and I was able to
convince my employer that I could continue it from Memphis. With the
current technology available, I am still working part-time from home for
the reorganized company, Siena Holdings, Inc., preparing its quarterly
and annual financial statements and SEC filings.”
Brown has been looking forward to the class reunion.
“I think we have a unique class in that we were very close as a whole
group,” she said. “Certainly we all had small groups of friends that we
were much closer with than others, but we enjoyed our time together as a
class. I look forward seeing everyone, especially those that I’ve had
contact with on the Internet the past six months and those responsible
for planning the reunion -- they have done a fantastic job! I think
everyone is looking forward to seeing our “webmaster” Scott Monroe to
thank him for pulling us all together as a group once again.
Brown has kept in contact with several of her classmates over the
years including Carole Taylor Counce, Sherry Hathcock Prescott, Leigh
Ellen Martin England and Pam Guynn Smith.
“It is so easy to lose contact with people through the years as our
lives change and people move around, which is the primary reason I have
had so much fun helping to locate classmates on the Internet and finding
out what has been going on in their lives the past 20 years,” Brown
said. “There are so many people with which I share fond memories that I
look forward to seeing again and maybe, with the help of the Internet,
keeping in better contact the next 20 years.”
Leigh Ellen Martin England
England has managed to maintain friendships from high school over the
past 20 years although she has not lived in the Crossroads area for most
of that time.
“I have a lot of good memories from CHS,” England said in her e-mail.
“Most of my friends from CHS are still friends with me now. We have
kept in touch over 20 years.”
One of England’s favorite high school memories includes classmate
David Biggers.
“(He) took my car keys without me knowing it during a Follies practice
and moved it,” England recalled. “When I came out from practice, my car
was gone. I almost called the police when David confessed to moving it
over by the stadium. Another funny one was when Mrs. (Dorothy) Mayhall,
our English lit teacher, was reading Julius Caesar during homecoming
week, and it was “cowboy” day. As she was reading, I was dared to lift
up my cowboy hat and say “Hallelujah!” Of course, I did it and the
whole class fell out laughing - except for Mrs. Mayhall.”
When she graduated from high school, England thought that 20 years
later she would be teaching school and be married to someone else.
“I am not doing either, but I am working on obtaining a teaching
certificate,” she said.
England attended Northeast Mississippi Junior College after high school
and then transferred to the University of Mississippi where she received
a bachelor’s degree in marketing. She is currently a stay-at-home mom
with her children -- Neely Clair, 8, and Maryasa, 3.
“I recently quit my job as an insurance agent to stay home
with my kids,” England said. “My husband, Jed, is from Jackson. We lived
in Jackson for 10 years and then he was offered a job in the Memphis
area, so, we now live in Hernando.”
England, too, is looking forward to the class reunion.
Kim Jobe has been news editor of The Daily Corinthian since 1988. A 1981
graduate of Corinth High School, she had several friends in the '79
class.
This web page was last modified on 04/05/00.
