i call hattiesburg, mississippi my home eventhough i haven’t lived here my whole life. i grew up in the military, so i moved allover the united states. i lived in japan for a year and graduated from high school in germany,but i went to junior high here. my daddy and mother made hattiesburg their home. so i regardit as my home regardless of how many destinations i have landed in.my wife holly and i live in flowood, mississippi.
Brookhaven Wedding And Party, we’ve lived in rankin county for about 30years. prior to that i was born and raised in hattiesburg.i was born in sandy hook, mississippi. my family moved to d’lo/mendenhall when i wasabout two years old. so basically i grew up in simpson county and mendenhall, mississippi.i was born in brookhaven, mississippi to kenneth
and thelma rushing. we moved to clinton inmy school years. i was very young and grew up in clinton public schools and came to southernmiss. i currently live in brandon, mississippi with my wife and children.i’m from jackson, mississippi born and raised, i grew up there.i was raised in biloxi, mississippi and born in new orleans, louisiana.i grew up in hattiesburg. i have one sister who went to another school. then i had myparents and a whole bunch of kinfolk around here in this area, and of course some in covingtoncounty and around. i'm married to holly. she and i have beenmarried for 32 years. we have two children, both girls. emily is our oldest child. shelives with her husband nick and their daughter
auria in ashville, north carolina. our youngestdaughter katie lives with her husband will in tampa, florida.i'm from a family of 18 children. my father was married and had seven children beforehe married my mother. my mother was married and had two children before she met my father,and then my mother and father had six children. my father unfortunately deserted the familywhen i was four years old. he left and went back to louisiana area and got married againand had two children, and my mother got married again and had two children. thank goodnessonly eight of us lived in one house at one time.my wife is margaret leflourof wetumpka, alabama. we married september 22nd of ’84. we havetwo children: chelsea who is at mississippi
state and is a teacher in technology educationand will graduate this year, and a son brett who is at southern miss in honors collegeand he will graduate in business entrepreneurship. i'm married to janet trimmel. we got marriedaugust the 26th, 1955. we went on a honeymoon in new orleans, louisiana where we just lastmonth celebrated our 55th anniversary. we have five children, four boys and one girl.the second son was born here in hattiesburg at forrest general hospital we have two, eight,16 grandchildren. eight boys, 14 grandchildren. eight boys and six girls, two are deceased.two of our granddaughters, laura and ashley, are both attending usm on leadership scholarshipsand graduated with honors. laura is out in california at berkley at a jesuit universityon scholarship, and will receive a degree
in theology. ashley works for usm, has receivedher master’s degree and has enrolled and working on her doctorate’s now. ricky ourgrandson, who’s ashley’s older brother, graduated from southern in 2008 and just thissemester has enrolled in nursing on the gulf coast campus. we have one great-granddaughterwhich she’ll be a year old soon. my father was career military; he’s fromstone county and my mother’s from southern forrest county. my dad was one of 11 children,and my mom was one of seven. her father was sheriff of forrest county and she’s a memberof the boon family which is a large group of southern alumni who certainly support thisschool. i have one brother, who is four years younger than me, and i have no children andhe has four sons. so, they’re sort of the
apple of my eye.my family, i tell you there are only a couple things i see as support and that’s god andfamily. mother raised us, born and raised in jackson, and i have two sisters and a brother.i don’t have any kids yet but i do have a 19 month old niece named mackenzie and shehas taken the family by storm to say the least. but you know, the thing is that we have agreat time together and they are why i'm here to be honest.today, i work with an organization now called mission mississippi. it’s a statewide movementto try to work with the christian church and to eliminate the racial barrier. we believethat if there’s any place in the state of mississippi, or in the country period thatrace should not be a factor it should be a
church. so i get the wonderful privilege ofpreaching at a black church one sunday, and a white church next sunday throughout thestate of mississippi trying to engage people from the pulpit to the pew that it’s reallyokay for us to love each other; and race should never be a barrier in that process. i've beendoing this for about 13 years now. i help people solve problems for a living;i do that by practicing law with adams & reese. our firm is a regional firm; we have13 offices in six states and washington, d.c. i am a cpa, and i’m currently employed bytelus operating group as their controller. i've been there since 2003. we operate oiland gas wells in mississippi and louisiana and we drill for oil and gas.well i work at the university.
currently i have a unique opportunity. i havebeen working in the financial service business now for about 14 years. i currently am inthe insurance business, i'm and insurance agent but i also work as a real estate consultantfor a small firm in jackson, beacon realty. i'm having a great time. i'm having a chanceto do what i love which is sell people the products that fit their need.i was an employee and shareholder in companies that were affiliated with the oil field for50 years now. i presently am vice president shareholder officer and director of crossoverincorporated. crossover is an api which is an american petroleum institute licensed threaderfor down hold exportation and drilling operations for the oil and gas industry. our productsare sold to customers all over the world.
i'm retired now; i got my ph. d at southwesternmedical school in dallas, texas and entered the biotechnology industry in 1983. my degreeis in molecular biology. oil spent somewhat over 20 years in the industry working on recombinantdna approaches primeritantly to diagnostic development. the last 13 years of my careeri worked at a subsidiary of hoffman lerouge. the thing i'm proudest of in my professionallife is i was fortunate enough to be able to participate in the development of assaysto measure the level of hiv in aids infected patients, and we introduced that right atthe time that the new drugs were coming out. so it was a very exciting time to be involved.i ended up at southern miss because my dad gave me the option to go anywhere i wantedto go for college, but he said if i went to
southern miss he'd pay for it. that seemedlike a pretty good proposal to me, and quite frankly i don't think i would have consideredanother school. i grew up in mendenhall, and went to schoolin california. when i left mississippi to go to school in california i made the statement:"lord, i'm never coming back to mississippi", but ended up coming back after graduatingfrom college and seminary. i have a seminary degree. i came back to mendenhall, ms, andwe began to ask to question "is our christian faith strong enough to impact the needs ofa poor community"? and one of the things in asking that question was we wanted to developa christian school. so in the early seventies when we got ready to develop this school asthe head of the ministry i wanted to make
sure we were not just a babysitting servicebut that we were a legitimate christian school so when the state looked at us, they wouldsee us as a legitimate christian school. university of southern mississippi had a master's programin education administration and supervision. i said i want to go to usm so that i can getthis master's degree in education administration and supervision, so that i would be the personthat was head of the school. so when anybody looked at us, they would have to look at meand look at my degree and look at my credentials as the head of this particular area of ministry.i have friends in clinton; one of my friends was susan vasana williams who was in studentrecruitment here at southern miss so she recruited me there. and i went on the hines communitycollege, and a lot of my friends from hines
community college we all migrated down here.it was just a big group of us that came. i was really impressed by the accounting programat the time and that's what i was planning on going into.because my dad came back here, i have to say i was totally non-discriminating. i graduatedfrom high school in heidelberg, germany. daddy had asked to come back for a second tour ofduty as head of the rotc department here. and frankly i couldn't imagine since we werea little small intimate family unit that travelled all over the world that i would go anywhereelse. i came to southern. i came to southern miss off a basketball scholarship.it started back in cornville, ga where i had a chance to meet at the time, coach rob mcinnisand ralph moore. they at the time were two
assistant coaches here, under coach turk andi need to back up though. the, i remember as a youth we would pass the stadium everydaygoing to the coast where my aunt lives in ocean springs. on saturdays, we would alwayssee the cars and the windows being down at the time, you could hear the people yell.you would hear names like sammy wilder or reggie collier to name a few. i always hada chance to say there's something special going on at that place over there. and yearslater i had the opportunity to go here on a basketball scholarship and it's been specialever since. you know that a good story. i was acceptedto some other schools, i had scholarships to some other schools, and until almost the11th hour i thought i might go to another
school that i will not name. and kind of atthe last, almost the last minute i just started having doubts. and i thought "southern misscan get me where i want to go. i have big plans for my life and i can get there withsouthern miss." so i made the decision to go to southern miss, and it was absolutelythe right thing to do. and i never looked back.out of high school i actually signed a scholarship, football scholarship, for tulane university.tulane back then was a real good football program. they were in the south eastern conference.unfortunately, i didn't like it there and after six weeks i called up coach a.j. "bear"smith who was here at southern, and asked him if i still had a scholarship ad he saidyes. that was on a thursday night. friday,
withdrew from school and monday i enrolledhere at southern. i think that most of my interesting or amusingstories wouldn't be suitable for publication. i will say that i was very active in my sorority,and i was also active in things like women's affairs board. so i was supposed to be a pillarof conscienciousness and a good example. i managed to have some good times, i recallan amusing story was one rush season when i was president of the sorority. we were havinga party for the rushes, where the president was there in the middle delivering a speech,and everyone was singing around her. i missed the practice and i didn't know we were onlysinging one stanza. after everyone sings the stanza, i proceed to break out in a solo,i have a terrible voice. so of course i couldn't
stop, so everybody in the chapter is standingthere staring at me like "what a disaster". now i personally think this is why martha,martha saunders, i'm not sure this is the year she went through rush, but i think thisis why she made the mistake of pledging chi omega, instead of tri delta. i forgive herfor that, and i hope it hasn't impacted negatively on her career that she decided to go thatroute. you know i have a lot of amusing stories orperhaps interesting stories, but most of them are things that my mother does not know. soi'm going to choose not to expose those to her for the first time when she hears thisvideo. most of the things that i remember would be things that i remember as a studentor in student groups or with my fraternity.
that's probably better just stories amongfriends. my roommate was p.w. underwood. you only hadto see p.w. in the nude one time and know why he was named bear. his nickname was bear.he had more black hair on his body than most black bears do.actually this is kind of an amusing story that started when i was a students, and endedsome years later. we had a professor here and she was a little eccentric. so collegegirls being kind of cruel, we made fun of the way she dressed. what she would do isshe would darn her stocking, like if her nylon stockings had a run in them she would actuallytake a needle and thread, and darn them. so one night when i was a student, i had a nightclass, and i saw her trudging the class with
those raggedy stockings and her books in sortof a shamble. i remember sitting there and thinking, "that will never be me". so, fastforward many years later, i'm on a faculty at another university and i'm trudging upa hill to night class, i had dropped all my papers so i had them all in my arm. i lookeddown and my stockings were just shredded, and i instantly flashed back on that moment.i thought "well, careful what you say you won't do because it will just come right aroundand bite you!" for me, i had grown up in small town mendenhalland went to a small christian college in california. total student body was 300 students, likea small library. coming to usm and having to go in and do research in the library, towalk in and go "wow, look at all of this".
it took me a long time to really began to,but here's the good news people where able to help me and walk through those challengesof what it was like to go into a major library and do research. and people at the libraryreally helped me through that process. in english i had a lady, ms. hopkins, andi had a terrible habit of cutting classes and i'd missed quite a few of her classesand i was quite concerned that she might not be able to pass me. so, i borrowed a pairof crutches and two ace bandages from the training room and wrapped up my knee realgood and went in the classroom with crutches. she saw me and asked, of course, what happened.i told her i got my leg hurt in practice. and she said well since you were on the secondflood building i shouldn't be manipulating
those stairs coming to and from class. so,she said she was going to give me some outside work to do for me to stay away from classuntil my leg got better. at southern miss i was involved in a lot ofcampus activities. i enjoyed participating in a wide variety of events and activities.in student government, i began the senate and i was the vice president and later thepresident of the student body. in my fraternity i held a number of offices, and was president.my senior year i was elected as the international kappa sigma graduate of the year for the fraternityas a whole. i worked with bsu; i sang in the chorus, played in intramurals, i was presidentof odk and a number of academic and religious honoraries. i sent a lot of time wit organizationshere at southern miss and enjoyed it.
my favorite moment was, again my backgroundis small town mississippi. then went to a small christian school in california. forme to be lined up with all of these individuals who are receiving their master's and bachelor'sdegrees and i'm standing there in line wondering what am i doing here? but i knew that usmhad prepared me to be able to step out in the world. so, it was a sense of pride, asense of fear, and a sense of accomplishment that here i am standing with all of theseothers getting ready to march and receive my master's degree at usm.it would have to be out of all, and there's so many, it would have to be my inauguration.that was such an important day for me and my family. my heart was so full to have everybodyaround me and having the honor to come back
and getting to serve this university. thatwas probably my finest southern miss moment. i remember two occasions. one occasion iswhen the university of louisville, coached by denny carr at the time, came into reedgreen and everybody in the stadium and stands had a newspaper. everybody had a paper up,and once we came out of that tunnel before announcements and you just saw everybody hadthat paper up, the stadium only holds like 8,000 but to see 10,000 plus with everybody.even the concession stands, the people had this paper up. and to see that, you reallyknew you were in a special place. and man, the noise at that time. and the other timeis again a louisville moment, is when we actually went up there and beat them on national television.the guys - clarence, daron jenkins, to mention
a couple. bernard hensley had unbelievablegames. and to be in that stadium and see 20,000 people almost muffled that's really a veryspecial moment. when we introduced my father's lecture serieshere, and had a lot of students there a lot of administration and faculty. it was a greatthrill for me to be able to honor my dad at his university in that way.when i was in school i went down, and one of my first experiences of being in the superdome was when reggie collier took us to a victory over tulane on regional tv. i thinkthat was the first time we had ever been on regional tv. it's not like we're on tv everydaynow seems like. i went over that with jim carmen and the crew when they beat bear brianat tuscaloosa and broke his streak. i been
to the game against state after they had beatalabama, the one in jackson. i been to florida state, i've been to the brook college worldseries. i've been to the basketball tournament nit championship in new york, the game whenwe beat ole miss on the way to that tournament championship. i was there when derrick hamptonslammed a dunk against louisville on espn national television. so, i've been to a lotof moments and it's hard to say what the favorite is. it's just been a lot of good times.my mississippi southern college highlight was chattanooga game. we held them the fourthquarter, goal line stance and won the game. we competed the undefeated season and werenamed the upi national championship for college division, and then i was fortunate enoughto be elected captain from my teammates. my
usm highlight was being named center on theall-century team back in 2000. i have a lot of favorite southern miss momentsi probably don't have any that are that dramatic. things like seeing my wife for the first time,and meeting her. mostly events with friends that had to do with groups i was involvedwith, whether that was student government or my fraternity. i don't think any of themwere ground shaking events, but they were things that were fun for me. some of the thingsthat i remember doing are spending a lot of time with my fraternity brothers, whetherwe were playing sports together, hosting an event for disabled children, or having a partyin new orleans. we had a lot of fun at southern miss.every now and then, as i deal with other universities
in this state i am proud to be a graduateof usm because i see usm moving in a wonderful direction. the direction in terms of academicsis fantastic. i think the leadership of the new president is wonderful. i love the diversityat usm. it's like what i deal with all the time is diversity when in places where itought to look like the state of mississippi, and i'm thrilled that usm looks like the stateof mississippi. so, i'm excited about that direction that we're going and i see in thefuture that we're going to be the number one if we're not already the number one universityin the state of mississippi. to the top! and i absolutely think we aregoing in the right direction. we are refining our mission, we are becoming a competitiveand agile organization that i think can endure
in a changing economic environment, and achanging technology environment. so we are absolutely going where we need to go.i think southern miss is headed in the right direction. we have great leadership. outstandingfaculty and students who are eager to learn and have fun in a wide variety of experiencesthat are important in college. where we're going, i'm not sure. i hope we're going inareas that are challenging, areas that demand excellence from all of our staff, all of ourfaculty, and our students. and i'm sure that we'll be looking at those areas that willhelp our students to be best situated to work in our careers throughout or state and country.as well as to be good citizens in life. at southern miss it's always been a strugglefor southern miss. it kind of passed along
to me while i was here that you got to workhard to get somewhere. you really appreciate things when it's been because of hard work.you know you have professors here that always, kind of, impressed on you that a southernmiss degree is a very valuable degree. don't let anybody tell you it's not a valuable degree,it's on par with anybody in the country. and be proud of what you obtain from here.i'm most impressed with the growth of the university, and the academic standing thatit has achieved. i think it's come a long way. i think we're making strides; i'm reallylooking forward to the gulf coast campus being built. the new gulf coast campus being built,expansion will take place there. i hope we continue to get public officials elected thateither attended, or support the university.
i think we've made a lot of progress in thatarea. in the next 100 years, happy 100th southern,i would like usm to become clearly acknowledged as the 'jobs' university in the state of mississippi.so where as i would like to focus on certain academic programs i think were already strong.just to name a few: the polymer science, fine arts, business, our entire college of healthportfolio. yes we should continue to bring up our academic programs, but i would alsolike for us to be the university that supplies the most local jobs. through training peopleto go into existing businesses, to encouraging entrepreneurs to start their own small businessesor medium sized businesses, but instead of leaving the state and taking them somewhereelse. it would be my sincere wish that we
could really improve the whole economic situationin mississippi by the activities of usm graduates. i think that the next 100 years of southernmiss are things i can't even imagine like what the school will look like at that time.it’s hard for me to believe that anyone who came here looking to be a teacher whenthe school first opened could imagine what it would look like now. i think we're probablyjust as short-sighted when we tried to picture what 100 years from now it will look like.what i hope that it involves is at each stage of the process our leadership determiningwhat's important for the university, what's important for education, and what's importantfor the students. and setting demanding and rigorous schedules and expectations that requireexcellence for everyone.
for us to be better than we were the first100, my hope is that we consistently take the baton and actually that our professors,that our staff, that our athletes, that our students, that our community know that weare not the third tier in mississippi. we are actually the top tier, and we are theflag ship. we have the trent lott center there, we are really best positioned to be a notonly regional school, but also to be an international school in terms of where people want to comebe. i am very happy about the students that are here and the opportunity that they'regetting a chance to realize. i see that we are going to be so far ahead in terms of wherewe can be the next 100 year. if we spend the next 100 years growing, andrefining, and improving as much as we have
the last 100 years we'll be all set.it’s a really special recognition for 30 years of service. i've been involved in alumniand supporting this university for 30 years. it's an honor. it's not just an honor to me,but it's an honor to all the volunteers that's worked alongside me in the inner jackson areaespecially all the people that have contributed to the activities and functions that we'veput on in jackson. when i received the call i said "no, not me".when i received the call i said "they might have made a mistake". i've not done anythingsignificant in terms of giving, per say. so it overwhelmed me. so as i look forward tothis opportunity, i'm overwhelmed that i would be considered a part of this illustrious groupof people who call usm their school. for me,
i'm proud to be counted as a part of thisfantastic and marvelous school. when jerry defatta contacted me and told methat i had been nominated for the alumni hall of fame, i was i was thrilled, i was surprised.occasionally, i would feel like, and this is not in a mean way, that the token californiademocrats so we have to be careful with her. so, it was really wonderful to be acknowledgedby my colleagues as someone who clearly cares about the university and wants to make itbetter and better going forward. it's quite an honor for me to inducted intothe usm hall of fame. both my mother and father are members of the hall of fame. my dad essentiallyin the alumni association was the first full-time person who served on the staff here, and hadworked here for many years. so my family's
roots go deep with southern miss, and thisis quite an honor for me and for my family. words can't describe it. it means so muchto be recognized by your school, to be a part of something that's large in itself, to thinkabout the hundreds of thousands that have touched this campus and came through and foryou to be recognized it's very, very humbling. i think back to my mom, those aluminum coverplates that she used to send on the weekend for sunday dinner. i think this all, personally,i owe it to her. and of course the lord. it means a lot to be here, i'm very, very humbledby it. when jerry defatta called me i was going tobe inducted i was extremely elated and humbled to know that i was going in to what i considerthe highest honor alumni can receive. and
especially with this being the 100 year centennialclass, later finding out that dr. saunders our university president was being inducted,and also my good friend ricky jones who was an outstanding basketball player and alsoserves with me n the board of the 'm' club was inducted just really was rewarding. ilook forward to joining what i consider a tremendous group. i know that my long timepersonal friend ken shear probably had something to do with me being considered. i really wantto thank the selection committee for allowing me to receive this honor.well it's very humbling. i've seen the list of others who are in the hall of fame andi feel like i am not worthy, and that i have a lot of work to do to be in that good companyand that's what i intend to do.
southern miss to the top!southern miss to the top! southern miss to the top!southern miss to the top! bob pierce, this is for you. southern missto the top! southern miss to the top!southern miss to the top!
0 Response to "Brookhaven Wedding And Party"
Posting Komentar