Sweet Home: Vanessa’s Journey This YouTube piece was shared with me by my dear friend and colleague Phyllis Morris. The subject and narrator of this video is Vanessa Jackson, Ph.D., Phyllis’ sister, who grew up in Eola less than a mile from where I lived as a child. This clip features people and places familiar to many who reside in the Bunkie-Eola area. Vanessa hails from a large, working class family and overcame an abundance of adversity on the road to academia. Today finds Dr. Vanessa Jackson Chair of the Retailing and Tourism Management Department of the School of Human and Environmental Studies at the University of Kentucky. Phyllis forwarded this video to me due to the fact that Vanessa pays tribute to my father, Leonard Armand, who was her English teacher at Bunkie High School in the 1970’s. Although her heartfelt comments are greatly appreciated, what I value more in this inspiring piece is Vanessa’s perseverance, honesty, humility, and deep devotion to both education and home. Although only a blip on the radar, Eola has spawn at least two Ph. D.’s of which Im aware, Dr. Jackson and Dr. Lucy Johnson Sims. In conversation I once mentioned to Phyllis in jest, “Eola’s known for Ph. D’s, while we became special ed. /classroom teachers with the Avoyelles Parish School System. We must have eaten contaminated dirt from the Columbia Carbon Plant or drank cistern water tainted by the Anchor Gas Plant. Perhaps our academic growth was stunted.” Without drawing a breath Phyllis cracked, “Could be….plus I drank all of that Falstaff Beer from the train wreck.” (Dr. Jackson alludes to the infamous 1970s “beer train” derailment at intersection of the Southern Pacific/Mopac lines in her remembrances of Eola.)
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 05:52:00 +0000
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