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THE SEA COAST ECHO
Reunion ? Valena C. Jones
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tables were filled with laughing, talking people all dressed in (heir finest as people ran across Uie gvni to hug yet, another old friend or teacher or student.
An endless array of?food was served buffet style, the only drawback to the whole affair being I hat the old gym hail no air conditioning on one of the wannest nights of the summer. But even Ibis inconvenience seemed to just serve to bring everyone together as they fanned themselves with their programs and talked about old times.
Guest speaker, Roger James, recalled that in 1955 the gym was brand new and he scored two points in a basketball game and then went on to more serious issues.
?We are here tonight,? Janies said, ?not by a haphazard effort ...We are here because we rode here on the backs of a long line of men and women who were dedicated educators, who loved
children, and who worked endless, tireless hours for very little money, because I bey saw a future for ns, they loved their work.?
?Now you and I say we have made if, we saw rough times and the rough side of the mountain and we have made it-but have we made it? There are more teen pregnancies, more people in jail, more drugs, more poverty and less church attendance than over before in history ... so have we made it,? James said.
?We?ve come a long way, but we have a long way to go, so please when you go home, remember this, and how you got here and continue the work to make things better,? James concluded.
1948 graduate, Gloria Payne recalls attending school in a two story wooden structure that burned down. Alter that the elementary school students were housed in Mt. Carmels Church while the older stu-
dents attended school in the Odd Fellow?s Hall. Neither structure still stands. Payne graduated from the Odd Fellow?s Hall because the new school wasn?t finished yet. Neither building still stands and the 1949 class went into the last location in the building that now houses Bay St. Louis Police Department.
?When the school burned I told my parents that I would just get a job, but they insisted that I finished school,? said Payne. ?The teachers back then were dedicated, and they saw that you learned ... if a page was missing from a book, they would copy the page on the blackboard; if you couldn?t afford your supplies, they would take money out of their own pockets to get them for you.?
Payne said that the school played basketball games at the 100 Men?s Pavilion near the railroad tracks.
The last graduating class of
Valena C. Jones School, in 1969 had 25 members and at this time the high school was closed. A free choice system had been in place since the 1966-67 school year allowing students to chose to attend previously all white schools and an increasing number of students chose to do so.
By 1969 only about 75 students remained in the high school and the school board voted to close the school.
Valena C. Jones was born in Bay St. Louis in 1872 as Valena Cecelia MacArthur and began her teaching career in rural Mississippi in 1890.
She was revered for her work in education and the community and a school in New Orleans was also named in her honor as well as The Valena C. Jones Methodist Church in Bay St. . Louis. Her husband, the Reverend Robert E. Jones was the Resident Bishop of the New Orleans area Methodist Episcopal Church.
Bay native awarded top advertising honor
Longo
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close on some of his cases and said that he would work overtime to make sure that nothing in the city was neglected, and asked if? anyone had a problem with it... as near as I can recall, not one person spoke up to say they had a problem with it,
that he has attended every meeting, workshop, special meeting, and board meeting or any meetings required of him.
?The city is a priority to me and always has been,? said Longo.
?What really hurts me is how
The 7-8-year-old Bj District Tournament Tournament in Jacl< from left, Joshua P( Philip Prieur, Tyler Jacob Lichtenstein, Keel, Tyler Jordan a Gary-Wayne Necaise
Johns
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