Senior and varsity basketball player Lamar Haynes reads “The Poet X” by Elizabeth Acevedo in Room 234 at CCHS on April 28. Haynes was awarded the Dr. Miller Jordan Jr. Memorial Scholarship at Honors Night on April 28. “He’s just become a better young man as far as maturity. Of course, the natural maturity of becoming a freshman to a senior, but you can see the growth, his seriousness about his academics, him being a person that’s being accountable and responsible and his overall performance, and everything he improved over the four years,” boys varsity basketball coach Dr. Stefan Smith said. Photo by Lucas Donnelly
Senior Lamar Haynes is the 2022 recipient of the Dr. Miller Jordan Jr. Memorial Scholarship because of his personal and academic turnaround from freshman to senior year.
Varsity basketball player Lamar Haynes, a senior, is the 2022 recipient of the Dr. Miller Jordan Jr. Memorial Scholarship.
A four-year student at CCHS, Haynes was informed of this achievement prior to Honors Night, where the scholarship was officially announced by his adviser and career coach, credit recovery teacher Sharon Barnes, on April 28 in Mell Auditorium.
“I was happy because I know the work me and (Barnes) put (into my essay) paid off because I stayed after school (and) she helped me with it. (I) came back to school (and) she helped me with it. I came (to school) early and it feels good to know I got selected and they read what I wrote and liked it,” Haynes said.
Dr. Miller Jordan Jr. was an Associate Principal for CCHS starting in 2000 until his death in 2007. Named after him, the Dr. Miller Jordan Jr. Memorial Scholarship is awarded to a senior every year at CCHS who showed a transformation in how they approached school from their freshman to senior years.
“(The award is a very nice way to honor Dr. Jordan’s memory and the work he did here. (The scholarship was) supposed to go to a student who was the type of student that Dr. Jordan often took under his wing,” counselor Heidi Nibbelink said. “There would be a big visible shift in how (students) approach school and life, and by the time they graduated you were happy to launch them out into the world because you already saw evidence that they could make a positive change in their life and move forward.”
The scholarship has been a tradition at CCHS since 2008. Nibbelink was a colleague of Dr. Jordan Jr.’s and worked with him to help students succeed in school.
“I hope he is a star both on the court and off the court and is able to get the work done. (I hope he) is able to one day look back on his time at Clarke Central in college and see how much work he put into it and how that positively impacted him and where he is.”
— Brittany Carter,
Special education interrelated English department teacher
“What I remember about him is what a warm and kind person he was. He was very soft-spoken, so he made people feel very comfortable in his presence,” Nibbelink said. “I would work with him like counselors do with principals about managing certain cases with students. He would bring me students and I would bring him, students. We had a good collaboration.”.
Special education interrelated English department teacher Brittany Carter, who teaches Haynes in Multicultural Literature, has great expectations for Haynes’ future after high school.
“I hope he is a star both on the court and off the court and is able to get the work done. (I hope he) is able to one day look back on his time at Clarke Central in college and see how much work he put into it and how that positively impacted him and where he is,” Carter said.
Haynes believes his journey from freshman to senior year would not have been successful without the help of the people around him.
“(I would say) thank you, just thank you for just putting up with me, dealing with me. I know I’m a handful. (The people who have helped) keep me on the right path, keep me in school (and) just make me a better person,” Haynes said.
