February 9, 2022
Order tickets online at: www.eccc.edu/ovid-and-carol-vickers-legacy-event.
East Central Community College in Decatur, along with the family of the late Ovid and Carol Vickers, is hosting “Gladly Would They Teach, Gladly Would They Learn,” a legacy fundraiser honoring the lives of the Vickers who were two of the college’s most beloved and influential educators.
The event begins at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, April 1, in the Brackeen-Wood Physical Education Building. Lunch will be served with a special program to follow.
Tickets are $75 per person. Sponsorship tables are available for $1,000 and include six seats. To purchase an individual ticket or to purchase a sponsorship table, please visit www.eccc.edu/ovid-and-carol-vickers-legacy-event. No tickets will be sold at the event. Proceeds will be designated to renovations of Founders Gymnasium on campus.
Daughter Nona Vickers of Trussville, Ala., said, “Our parents’ goal as educators was to make sure that every student they encountered had opportunity for success. That passion for education is summed up in this quote—'Gladly would they learn and gladly teach’—which they chose from The Canterbury Tales for their headstone. We’re proud their legacy lives on through lessons we and others learned from their teaching, and that it will be passed down from generation to generation.”
Daughter Harriet Vickers Laird of Starkville agreed. “They always showed an excitement for helping improve the lives of others and had an enthusiasm for doing that at East Central. We know that choosing to build on their legacy by supporting the renovation of Founders Gym would have thrilled them because of the many memories they created there, whether it was celebrating the annual May Day festival, attending a homecoming dance, or watching a Warrior basketball game.”
Ovid Vickers, who died March 31, 2020, joined the then East Central Junior College faculty in 1955 when he was just 24 years old and would later serve as chair of the English Department for many years. Throughout his career, he was not only a teacher, but was also a published poet, newspaper columnist, public speaker, playwright, practicing folklorist, and a collector of antiques.
He published two books with profits benefiting the East Central Community College Foundation. His first book, The East Central I Knew: A History of East Central Community College, covers the college from its beginning in 1928 through 2013. His second book, Notes in the Margin: A Collection of Columns About East Central Community College, is a collection of essays Vickers pulled from his weekly newspaper columns, which highlight various people, places, and events associated with East Central Community College.
Although recognized as a writer and speaker, Vickers was first and foremost a classroom teacher and was the first recipient of East Central’s Outstanding Instructor of the Year Award in 1982. He received the ECCC Alumni Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. Upon his retirement, the college honored him with the naming of the Ovid S. Vickers Fine Arts Center.
Carol Vickers, who died August 19, 2020, was a well-known quilter and author, whose professional talent and greatest career achievement were as a classroom English teacher in the Decatur public schools from 1966-1982 and as an instructor at East Central Community College from 1983 until her 1992 retirement.
A three-time Star Teacher at the former Decatur High School, she later was an ECCC yearbook advisor and tutor for the men's basketball team. In 1974, she was named a national Outstanding Young Educator and, in 1983, became a U.S. Department of Education Presidential Scholar Teacher. Delta Kappa Gamma and Daughters of the American Revolution were among the professional and civic organizations in which she held officer positions.
Taught to quilt by her mother at a young age, she developed and maintained a passionate interest in the history of quilts and was a member of the Mississippi Quilt Association. In 1994, she was appointed chair of MQA's Mississippi Heritage Quilt Project which documented more than 1,600 quilts made prior to 1945 with the research culminating in the book Mississippi Quilts that includes an introduction by Vickers. The project also became the backdrop for the book Threading The Generations which she co-authored. She attended MQA's organizational meeting in 1991 and traveled the state for this group and the Mississippi Humanities Council sharing her knowledge of quilting and its history. She even penned a children's book in 1998 called The Llama's Pajamas about a fictional pack animal and its attachment to a quilt.
Dr. Stacey Hollingsworth, executive director of the ECCC Foundation, said, “Many of us at the college had been thinking of ways to honor the Vickers and to celebrate all that they have meant to us. I was so thankful when the family contacted the college about planning a memorial event on campus giving us all an opportunity to remember them together.”
For more information, please contact Hollingsworth at 601-635-6327 or e-mail sholling@eccc.edu.
