By T. Scott Boatright
After a five-year intermission, The Greater Grambling Chamber of Commerce Community Awards Banquet returned Thursday to the Ruston Civic Center.
That banquet, which began in 2008, was not held from 2019-2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A crowd of around 200 people watched the Greater Grambling Chamber present five awards with Grambling’s two schools — Grambling State University and Lincoln Preparatory School — joining in the honors.
“It went very well and we had a good crowd for the first one we’ve held since having to take the break,” said Greater Grambling Chamber of Commerce President Reginald Owens. “We found out that even after that break for the pandemic, if we build it, the people will come, so we’re already considering and working on things to make it even bigger and better next year.
GSU’s Call Me MiSTER Program was honored as the R.W.E. Jones Education Award, named after the college’s longest serving president.
The Grambling State College of Education’s Call Me MiSTER (an acronym for Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models) program’s mission is to increase the pool of available male teachers from a broader more diverse background, particularly among the state’s lowest-performing elementary schools.
Student participants are largely selected from among under-served, socio-economically disadvantaged, and educationally at-risk communities.
The GSU Call Me MiSTER program has held a pair of banquets over the past two years bringing in educators and college students from across the nation to Lincoln Parish and the Grambling State campus.
Also receiving a R.W.E. Jones Education Award from the Greater Grambling Chamber of Commerce was Lincoln Preparatory School, which moved to its new campus late last spring after nearly three years of vagabond-like teaching and learning, began attending class in the new $30 million, 100,000-square foot school building, located on a 400-acre site located off of La. Hwy, 150 (Old Grambling Road).
Lincoln Preparatory School Executive Director Gordan Ford also received attention this summer as a finalist for the Louisiana Principal of the Year award.
Earning the Greater Grambling Chamber’s L.D. Land Award was Police Chief Tommy Clark, who has overseen the city’s police department for more than 20 years.
That award is named in honor of Loester “L.D.” Land, who spent 40 years as an educator, civic and church leader in Grambling.
Land, with others in Grambling and black leaders in Ruston, successfully led a court challenge against at-large member districts for Lincoln Parish governmental entities, school boards and police juries. This legal victory led to the reappointment and the creation of single-member districts.
Clark was honored in the summer of 2022 by the Louisiana Association of Chiefs of Police, for which he served as president from 2021-22.
Since becoming Grambling’s Chief of Police in February of 2013, Clark has not only served the city in that capaTrue e’s Trafficking Prevention Commission and Advisory Board.
The Greater Grambling Chamber of Commerce’s A.D. Smith Business Award went to Martha Gail Foster-Dawson, who owned Martha’s Boutique in Grambling before moving it to downtown Ruston before it closed in 2022.
Foster-Dawson also worked in GSU’s Data Processing Center before opening the boutique in 1986.
That award’s namesake, Arthur Daniel “A.D.” Smith, Jr., was the principal of Grambling High School, a Grambling businessman, city councilman and a mayor pro tem who was active in many community and church activities.
The Greater Grambling Chamber of Commerce’s Thelma Smith Williams Community Service Award went to Anthony Gray, owner of Statewide Health Advisors, a company that shops for insurance to help customers select the most beneficial insurance options meeting their needs.
Williams, that awards’ namesake, was recognized by the Louisiana Senate and House of Representatives last year for her decades of work teaching young children through college-aged students as well as serving as one of Grambling’s unofficial historians.
And the Grambling Chamber’s Dr. Rhonda R. Pruitt Special Recognition Award went to the Rev. Early Griffin Sr., pastor at Lewis Temple CME Church in Grambling and a leader in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
Pruitt, who that award is named in honor of, is owner/operator of True Care Dental in Grambling.
