Melanie Bynum Jackson

With selfless role models like her activist mother and her husband, Melanie Jackson puts her heart into her work with at-risk students at the nonprofit P.A.R.K.

“I never expected an honor or award. I just came to do what I enjoy doing. I don’t do it for recognition. I do it because these children need somebody to tell them they can be anything they want to be and do anything they want to do.”
“I never expected an honor or award. I just came to do what I enjoy doing. I don’t do it for recognition. I do it because these children need somebody to tell them they can be anything they want to be and do anything they want to do.”

When Keith and Melanie Jackson were invited to lunch by friends and philanthropists Chip and Cindy Murphy, the Jacksons readily accepted. Sitting around a restaurant table in Little Rock last summer, Cindy broke the news that Melanie was selected Woman of the Year for the annual fundraising gala for Women and Children First, an organization that provides crisis intervention and shelter for domestic violence survivors and their children.

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“She plays the background real well. She’s good at bossing me around and putting me in the spotlight. When it’s her time to go, she’s going kicking and screaming.” — Keith Jackson

"I went completely silent," Melanie Jackson, 50, says. "My insides were literally fluttering. I'm sure my blood pressure was sky high."

She's being honored for her work with Positive Atmosphere Reaches Kids -- more commonly known as P.A.R.K. -- a nonprofit established in 1993 by her husband, a Little Rock native and former University of Oklahoma tight end who played in the NFL. After supporting Keith through three NFL franchises, Melanie is getting her first flash of the spotlight.

She has never been honored like this before, and she's not quite comfortable with it.

"She plays the background real well," Keith Jackson says. "She's good at bossing me around and putting me in the spotlight. When it's her time to go, she's going kicking and screaming."

"I never expected an honor or award," Melanie Jackson says. "I just came to do what I enjoy doing. I don't do it for recognition. I do it because these children need somebody to tell them they can be anything they want to be and do anything they want to do."

From its inception, P.A.R.K.'s mission has been "to provide high-risk students the opportunity to further their education by completing high school so they can attend college." High-risk students are those who have a GPA of 2.5 or less and are often ineligible for school sports and clubs due to their low academic performance. Students join P.A.R.K. in the eighth grade and must commit to attending after-school and summer programs through high school. They get tutoring, participate in recreational activities and do community service.

As community outreach coordinator for P.A.R.K., Melanie Jackson writes grants and oversees the center's social media venues and website -- oh, and she makes sure everybody gets paid. P.A.R.K. operates on an annual budget of about $1.1 million.

The group's mission dovetails with that of Women and Children First, which helps survivors of domestic abuse live independently. Children who suffer the long-term effects of abuse are potential candidates for the P.A.R.K. program, says Cathy Browne, board chairman of Women and Children First.

"What P.A.R.K. and Melanie and Keith are teaching our kids is to be responsible human beings, help them know right from wrong and help them reach their potential," Browne says. "It's a wonderful collaboration."

During her acceptance speech at the gala Saturday night at the Little Rock Marriott, Melanie Jackson says she'll recall the sense of shock she experienced when the Murphys told her she was being honored. Between 450 and 500 people are expected to attend the gala.

Jackson shrugs off any idea of celebrity in regard to herself, particularly when comparing herself to her larger-than-life husband and a mother who has spent her life helping others.

Jackson's favorite saying is one she picked up from her mom, Mable Bynum.

"Life ain't easy. Life ain't fair. Take what it gives you, and go from there."

Jackson describes Bynum as a "pistol" and "fireball." Just ask anyone in the North Little Rock School District, where Bynum spent her career as an educator, Jackson says.

"She will fight for a child to the end," she says. "She likes to fight for what's right."

Jackson and her sister, Deedra Lee, a schoolteacher in North Little Rock, grew up tagging along with Bynum on her crusades.

"She had to go out with me as I carried petitions to do something or go spread the word about something," says Bynum, who is now 72. Jackson and her sister "have always been in community service, knowing it's a life that brings lots of comfort and reward."

From mother Mable, Jackson says she learned "to always be kind to people, to be real. Her thing was 'You don't know who it is who is hurting or needing something.'"

Growing up, Jackson wanted to be a teacher as well. She played one at home, staging her dolls in an imaginary classroom. "I don't know how much teaching I did, but my mom said I was really good at fussing at them," she says.

Her career goals changed after she graduated from Jacksonville High School and whiled away a year "having a little bit too much fun" as a freshman at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. She transferred to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock "where I could really get my education."

Mary Porter of Little Rock, Jackson's best friend since college, calls Jackson "the most loyal person I know." They've seen each other through life's milestones, good and bad.

"We knew that if one needed the other, we'd be there," Porter says. "She's my go-to person for me and likewise with her."

Jackson left UALR in 1990 armed with a bachelor's degree in radio, television and film and a minor in journalism. Through school she worked part time as an assistant in the KATV newsroom, typing scripts and taping the pages together for feeding through a teleprompter. She was working as a producer for the morning show when she took a job as producer for the 6 and 10 p.m. broadcasts at KFSM, Channel 5, in Fort Smith.

"This turned out not to be my dream job," she says. "They were so far behind [KATV] in technology it was frightening. Needless to say, I left there after three long months."

Her late father, Leonard Bynum, made a career as a mental health advocate at the Arkansas State Hospital, and Jackson followed with a job as a professional development specialist there from 1991 to 1993. She quit shortly before she and Keith married in 1994.

SHE HAD THE LOOK

The couple met in 1988 after being set up by friends. Before picking her up for their first date, Keith told her, "If I see you, and you're ugly, I'm leaving."

He blames those words on being 21 at the time, but his actual response upon first seeing Melanie was, "Oh, my goodness."

"I said, 'I think I'm going to be around for a while.' I didn't know it was going to be this long."

At that time, Keith was a senior on the Sooners football team, and they had just come back from the Orange Bowl in Miami. He went on to play professionally for the Philadelphia Eagles, Miami Dolphins and Green Bay Packers before retiring in 1997. He and Melanie dated mostly long distance and married while he was with the Dolphins.

They had planned a March 5, 1993, wedding but when the guest list grew from 300 to roughly 3,000, they moved it up a month to downsize. He had to miss playing in the Pro Bowl to make it happen. (They'll celebrate their 24th anniversary Feb. 5.)

During Keith's two years with the Packers, Melanie joined him in Green Bay when the team was at home -- at a Residence Inn the first year and in an "itty-bitty" rent house the second. She returned to Little Rock when the team played away games. "I never put down roots there. He didn't either," she says of Wisconsin.

Keith has a son, Keith Jr., from a previous relationship, and Melanie gladly shared parenting duties with Keith Jr.'s biological mother. After Keith left the pros, Melanie had Kenyon, now 18, and Koilan, 17. Keith Jr. lives in Little Rock with his wife and four children; Kenyon is a freshman at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on a football scholarship; and Koilan is a senior at Joe T. Robinson High School and will be on the Razorbacks' roster this fall.

But long before Melanie and Keith married and before Keith played his last professional football game in the 1997 Super Bowl, Keith developed his vision for P.A.R.K., and Melanie was working on making it a reality.

STARTING P.A.R.K.

Keith began plotting the course for P.A.R.K. in 1991. Gangs were more prevalent in Little Rock at that time. "We were losing so many kids to the streets," Melanie Jackson says. "[They were] dropping out of school due to drugs and addiction. He was like, 'Something has to give.'"

The P.A.R.K. building at 6915 Geyer Springs Road is a fortress of sorts. Visitors announce their arrival over an intercom at the front stoop and are buzzed in. With a $5.2 million grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation in 2002, the Jacksons gutted the place, then renovated and furnished it. P.A.R.K. can take up to 250 students at a time. All get a P.A.R.K. class ring when they graduate.

A L'Oréal cosmetics-sponsored beauty parlor provides a place for girls to do each other's hair and makeup (no chemicals allowed), and an expansive cafeteria seats about 220 and features a wall-size mosaic with children and animals worked into a landscape of trees and foliage. A snake prominently placed toward the bottom right corner provides Melanie Jackson a talking point with the kids.

"You've got to watch out for those other kids who slither into your life and aren't any good," she says.

She says she gets "fussy" when she sees students show any disrespect for each other or their teachers. Three student life managers from P.A.R.K. are in the schools every day, interacting with the students' teachers, principals, counselors and even the cafeteria workers. Melanie is not as involved with the students as she once was, but now, she says, "I've gotten old and my patience is not as good."

"The kids have changed over the years," she says. "Back when we started, I could deal with the kids, and I could deal with their attitudes. Their attitudes now are so different. We're more in a 'self' society. 'It's all about me.'"

AT HOME ON THE SECTIONAL

Keith, who is the president of P.A.R.K., recently finished his 17th and last season as football color analyst for the Razorback Sports Network. His wife says he's in his P.A.R.K. office every day, calling on benefactors, unless he's at one of his many speaking engagements. The organization receives no government money, leaving the Jacksons to piece together funding from grants and donations.

At home, life centers on a huge sectional couch that the Jackson five have romped on for the last 23 years. The Jacksons bought it with money they saved when they scaled down their wedding. It's been re-covered four times. Melanie says her boys "get very upset" when anyone talks about getting rid of it.

"The corner is prime property," she says of the sectional sofa. "If you don't get there in time, you're out. We race to that corner."

Jackson, however, is not racing to finish a book she's working on -- a sequel to her first, titled The Wonder. She describes the first tome, published in 2011, as "Christian fiction comedy with a lot of food involved." The book's main character, 24-year-old Meesha Porch, church-hops on her quest to find one that fits. Porch eventually concludes that "everywhere you go, there's always something going on. There's always drama," Jackson says.

"People always think it's about me, but it's not," she says. "It has nothing to do with me."

Jackson didn't intend for it to be a book. She had about 20 pages under her belt and shared it with a friend, Nancy Jeffery, who insisted she finish it.

Keith says he never asked his wife to give up her career to help him at P.A.R.K. She has just been there since the beginning.

"It's not just Keith Jackson's P.A.R.K., it's truly a team," Porter says. "I think she takes ownership in that. They work so well together."

SELF PORTRAIT

Melanie Jackson

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Nov. 19, 1966, Elaine

OCCUPATION: community outreach coordinator for Positive Atmosphere Reaches Kids, more commonly known as P.A.R.K.

FAMILY: husband Keith and sons Keith Jr., 31; Kenyon, 18; and Koilan, 17

MY EARLIEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY IS my father flushing our dead goldfish down the toilet when I was about 2. I was quite upset.

MY BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENT TO DATE: my children.

MY WORST FEAR IS that I failed my kids. THE P.A.R.K.

KIDS CALL ME Miss Jackson or Momma Jackson.

THE CHARACTER TRAITS I SEE IN P.A.R.K. KIDS: They’re inquisitive, loving and a lot of them are needy in that they need someone to talk to, to listen to them and to smile and laugh with them. P.A.R.K.

KIDS WOULD DESCRIBE ME AS fussy.

THE BEST ADVICE I NEVER TOOK WAS to go back to school [to get my master’s degree].

I DRIVE an Audi Q7.

ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: blessed

High Profile on 01/29/2017

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