ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 13, 1996 TAG: 9609130126
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-10 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: DUBLIN
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Radford University President Douglas Covington could not resist a plug for Pulaski County High School seniors to consider his institution for continuing their education, when he addressed students in their annual Investments in Learning assembly.
But education is of value both inside and outside the classroom, he said, and being a student should be a lifetime job.
The school also named its Most Valuable Cougar for 1996-97, senior Penny Kay Beckner.
Beckner is class secretary, a position she has filled for two years, and active in her church youth group and as a volunteer with a local child-care center and organizations ranging from the Dublin Ruritan Club to the New River Valley Association for the Education of Young Children. She has been a leader in the school's Future Farmers of America and Future Homemakers of America clubs.
Another assembly highlight was the induction of four graduates into the school's Hall of Fame, a tradition that started in recent years.
This year's inductees were 1976 graduate Stephen Paul Smith, who has created tool and engineering devices for rocket engines, satellites and the space shuttle; Gwendolyn Jean King, 1976, who works in the hotel industry and has overseen the construction and opening of four hotels throughout the nation; Susan Newsome Lundy, 1977, a nurse at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem who has worked on a variety of nursing education programs and represents Virginia on the federal Emergency Response Team, which helps people during natural disasters; and Cynthia Jane Farmer, 1981, whose television career has included news anchor, weather and sports broadcasting, producing and directing. She was guest speaker at last year's assembly.
Covington said his parents had not been able to go to college but had instilled in him an appreciation of both work and education.
He remembered walking five miles each day to a one-room school - at age 4. "I didn't know as a 4-year-old that I would still be in school at the age I am now," he said.
By age 9, he was working at a shoeshine stand in a barber shop in Winston-Salem, N.C., and soon added a newspaper route. Later he went to work at 5 a.m. as a janitor in a movie theater for $12 a week, choosing that early morning job so he could still be involved in extracurricular activities after school.
Other jobs included chopping wood on county roads, painting dormitories from high scaffolds and operating a switchboard in college.
"I disconnected a lot of the president's important calls," he said, strictly by accident.
LENGTH: Medium: 54 linesby CNB