STARKVILLE, Miss. —
The memorial service for the late MSU President Donald W. Zacharias was an emotional, meaningful day for those who bleed maroon. Much has been said and much has been written about Dr. Z’s contributions not merely to Mississippi State University, but to higher education in general in Mississippi.
But when the day was done, my thoughts centered on the presence of two people among the mourners who are decidedly not members of the Bulldog Nation. I thought about the presence of former Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat and current interim University of Southern Mississippi President Aubrey K. Lucas, both of whom served during the Zacharias era at MSU.
The presence of MSU alumnus and renowned author John Grisham was a comfort to the Zacharias family and the humor and warmth he brought to the proceedings were sorely needed. Yet I can think of few people who attended the memorial service whose presence would have pleased Dr. Z more than that of Khayat and Lucas.
Outside the memorial service, Khayat and Lucas met in a warm embrace amid smiles and quiet laughter. Both spoke to me of their admiration of Don Zacharias and the respect they had for his quiet but effective advocacy for Mississippi higher education.
“The usually healthy competition between the University of Mississippi and Mississippi State didn’t affect our friendship one bit,” said Khayat, who journeyed to Starkville to represent Ole Miss at the funeral. “He was giant in the history of Mississippi higher education and a really genuine person.”
Lucas echoed those comments, recalling struggles for funding that he and Zacharias weathered together.
I have a hard time reading the sports message boards, where the rivalries between State and Ole Miss and to a somewhat lesser degree, State and USM, reach significant depths of rude and insulting behavior. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the rivalries — nobody enjoyed State’s recent upset of Ole Miss in basketball more that this old ‘Dog.
But Zacharias, Khayat and Lucas — and I think that the same is true for the current crop of higher education leadership in Mississippi — understood that Mississippi has too many miles to go in educating our populace and equipping them to embrace economic opportunity to take the sports rivalries too seriously.
It made me really proud to see Khayat and Lucas join in the memorial service for Zacharias. Zacharias’ death came just days after a medical breakthrough in AIDS research at the University of Mississippi Medical Center that could have global ramifications and weeks after a tornado slammed USM’s campus and left a multi-million-dollar wake of destruction.
Higher education and the research conducted on the campuses of Mississippi’s eight universities are the ladders that Mississippians must utilize to climb out of poverty, insularity and poor health. The sports rivalries are fun and provide needed diversions. But so much serious work remains to be done.
A few weeks back, current MSU President Mark Keenum and Ole Miss Chancellor Dan Jones unveiled a new joint program called the Mississippi Excellence in Teaching Program, one designed to raise the prestige of the teaching profession in Mississippi high schools and middle schools by creating a virtual honors college in the field of education at both schools. On days like that, and sad days like Dr. Z’s homecoming, Mississippians rather easily rediscover their brotherhood.
(Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com)
Opinion
Khayat, Lucas demonstrate a reliable Mississippi brotherhood
- Opinion
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
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Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
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When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
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Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
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Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Opinion Headlines
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