FAYETTEVILLE -- Mary "Faye" Jones reminded Fayetteville High School seniors during an assembly Thursday they are in charge of their lives and can decide what they do with it.
James Hunt talked about how education opens doors and improves a person's quality of life. And Peggy Taylor Lewis urged students to figure out the direction they're going in life.
Class of 2018
Here are this year’s inductees into the Fayetteville Schools Hall of Honor:
• Mary “Faye” Jones, an educator in Fayetteville for nearly 40 years and one of the School District’s first kindergarten teachers
• James Hunt, a 1952 Fayetteville High School graduate and retired pediatric dentist who initiated the Fayetteville Youth Dental Program at Fayetteville High
• Peggy Taylor Lewis, a 1956 Fayetteville High School graduate, one of the first black students to integrate and graduate from the school
• George Spencer (posthumous), a longtime chemistry teacher at Fayetteville High School.
Source: Staff report
"I never heard anybody with any education say they were sorry they got an education," Lewis said. "So whatever you do, keep it up, work hard, hold your head up and one of these days you can smile and stand right here where I'm standing."
Jones, Hunt and Lewis are three of the four 2018 inductees into the Fayetteville Schools Hall of Honor. The fourth is George Spencer, a longtime Fayetteville High chemistry teacher who retired in 2016. Spencer died in December of complications from a fall while hiking, according to his obituary. He was 64.
The lives of the four were highlighted during the annual school event for Hall of Honor inductees. A video about each person was shown before that person was invited on stage to talk to the students.
Rita Caver, a longtime companion of Spencer's, described him as "very smart, funny, and often the nutty-professor type who loved to blow things up in his chemistry class."
Caver read from a National Honor Society application from 2017 graduate Megan Olsen, who wrote Spencer taught her important lessons that apply not only to science, but life as a whole.
"Mr. Spencer showed me advanced concepts are not out of reach," Caver said, reading Olsen's words. "Armed with his extensive array of analogies and mnemonic devices, he demonstrated that high-level ideas are only as complicated as you make them."
Lewis was born in Cane Hill. Her family moved to Fayetteville, and Lewis attended Lincoln School for black students.
The School Board voted to integrate Fayetteville High School in May 1954, right after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
In 1956, Lewis and the late Preston Lackey became the first black students to graduate from Fayetteville High School. Lewis went on to earn a college degree and started a career at Head Start in Van Buren in 1966 and retired as director.
Hunt, 84, graduated from Fayetteville High School in 1952 and opened the first pediatric dental practice in Northwest Arkansas in 1959. He was a key contributor to the development of the Fayetteville Youth Dental Program, which opened in 1967 at Fayetteville High and later moved to the West Campus Technical Center.
Hunt donated many hours providing screenings and dental care for thousands of low-income students.
Hunt said being inducted into the Hall of Honor is "really humbling." He added it's caused him to reflect a lot on his high school days and what a great education he received. He urged students to pursue higher education.
"I would like you to think about quality of life. The more education you get, when you reach this age, you will be very, very glad to have had it," Hunt said.
Jones began her career in education as a kindergarten teacher at Root Elementary School in 1974. She became principal of Bates Elementary School in 1997, stayed until it closed in 2000 and returned to Root as principal until her retirement in 2009.
She told students they have a great school to support them and their pursuits, but added, "It's up to you what you do. It's not up to somebody else. It's not up for somebody else to tell you when it's time to go to bed or somebody else to make a living for you where you don't have to work. It's up to you."
Kamilla Sarvestani, a Fayetteville High senior, said she was a kindergartner at Root during Jones' last year. Sarvestani and Jones hugged after Thursday's assembly.
"I was real sad that she left," Sarvestani said. "She was so kind to me. I was a troublesome kid, I got in trouble all the time. She was so reasonable. She always understood why you did things, and was like, it's OK, we'll work on it."
Sarvestani said she enjoyed watching the videos about the inductees, noting the diversity of the group. She was especially excited about Spencer's induction, because she was the one who wrote the nomination of him for the Student Choice Award. She didn't have him as a teacher, but her two older sisters did, she said.
The names of this year's four inductees will be added to the Hall of Honor wall in the high school where the 75 other inductees since 1992 are listed.
NW News on 10/12/2018