1950s
Very few Coastal Carolina alumni have been as devoted to
their alma mater as Jimmy Johnson has. In terms of both years
of service and degree of engagement, Johnson's relationship
to Coastal is unique. A native of Conway,
he studied at Coastal for three years after serving in
the U.S. Navy, graduating in 1959. Both
as a student and as an alumnus, Johnson
has racked up an impressive list of Coastal "firsts." As a member
of the basketball team, he was the first student-athlete at Coastal to receive
an athletic scholarship. He was the first president of Coastal's first alumni
association. Later on, in 1985, Johnson was the first Coastal alumnus to be
awarded an honorary degree by the University of South Carolina (Coastal's parent
institution at the time). And when Coastal was granted independent status by
the South Carolina legislature in 1993, Johnson was elected first chairman
of its new board of trustees.
"My long association with Coastal and my involvement in its evolution have
been among the most fulfilling experiences of my life," says Johnson.
For most of his professional career,
Johnson was president of Dargan Construction Company of Myrtle
Beach, where
he retired in 2000 after 44 years with the
firm. For many of those years, he was also immersed in the governance of
Coastal, serving alternately on the Horry County Higher
Education Commission and on
the Coastal Educational Foundation, including terms as chair of both organizations.
Johnson was a key participant in each of the important
struggles marking major advancements in Coastal's development:
the movement to become a four-year
college;
the battle to build residence halls on campus; and the fight for independence.
Through the years, he has provided sensible guidance that has contributed
significantly to the steady growth of the institution.
Johnson's life has been a model of public engagement and
community service. He was one of the founders of the Horry
County United Way and chaired
many boards of area charitable organizations including the Horry County
Shelter
Home, the Salvation Army and the Waccamaw Community Foundation. He
was named an honorary founder of Coastal in 1996. He still
serves on the
Coastal Educational
Foundation and is a trustee emeritus on Coastal's board of trustees.
Back
to top. 1960s
When Rod
Gragg attended Coastal in the late 1960s, the campus
consisted of two buildings-the Singleton building, which
housed administrative
offices, most of the school's classrooms and a library-and a student center
with a gazebo inspired by one at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. (It was Craig Wall Sr.'s idea, Gragg recalls.)
"The availability
of a college education close to home was an important advantage for many
of us in the 1960s," says Gragg, who moved
on
after two years to obtain his degrees (a bachelor's in journalism and
master's in American history) at the University of South Carolina, which
Coastal was affiliated with at the time.
Gragg, father of seven, is now a published
author with 13 books to
his credit, most of them dealing with his favorite topic,
the Civil War.
His interest in the past was sparked at an early age, thanks
to his
grandfather, a retired minister who had a beach home on the
battlefield at
Fort Fisher near Wilmington, N.C.
"I would get up early, pack a cheese sandwich in
a bag, and head up to the fort-which was undeveloped as
a historical site back then," Gragg
says. "I'd climb on the fort's dirt walls, look for bullets and cannonball
fragments, and try to imagine what had happened there."
In addition to research and writing,
Gragg operates his own
marketing and public relations firm, Southern Communications,
specializing
in developing and marketing history-related products. He
also teaches an
upper level course on the American Civil War at Coastal.
He's on the board of trustees of the South
Carolina Hall of Fame and
has been a member of the board of directors of Conway Christian
School for
the past 20 years. He also teaches a couple of classes
there, as well as
Bible classes at his church, "which is probably my
most meaningful and important activity."
Gragg,
who lives in Conway with wife Cindy and the two remaining
children still in school, sees Coastal's potential for
growth as unlimited. " I hope the university will continue
to develop specialty programs that
reflect the distinctive nature of our region-such as the
marine science
program and the Waccamaw Regional History Program.. I
doubt there's a
state-supported university anywhere in America that holds
as much potential
as Coastal."
Back
to top. 1970s
When
asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Carolyn
Floyd always said "a
teacher." The only other line of work she ever considered back then was
acting, and in a sense she feels she's achieved both of her childhood dreams. "Sometimes you have to be an actress if you want to keep the attention of
a class of seven-year-olds," says Floyd, a 1978 Coastal education graduate
who is now principal of Aynor Elementary School.
A native of Georgia, Floyd moved to the area with her Horryite
husband Merrell and enrolled in Coastal's elementary education
program.
"It was a great learning atmosphere in those days," she remembers." We
got a lot of specialized attention. Gil Hunt would sit down
and eat lunch and talk to his students. With professors like
Betsy Puskar, Dennis Wiseman,
Horace Wood and Tim Touzel, Patsy Candal and Stu Strothers, I looked
forward to coming to class every day."
Floyd earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education
in December 1978. In January 1979 she started teaching
at Green Sea-Floyds Elementary
and
soon afterward began working on her master's degree, which she completed
in 1982.
For a period during the 1990s, Floyd was a teacher-in-residence at Coastal,
and she was thrilled to collaborate with her old professors.
When she was
studying to be a teacher Floyd never thought about going
into administration, "but here I am," she says.
In 1997 she was named principal of Socastee Elementary
School, and in 2001 she became
principal of
Aynor Elementary, which is one of four elementary schools in the district
participating in Cornerstone, a national literacy initiative committed
to helping children
become successful independent readers by the end of third-grade. In the
meantime, Floyd received the alumni award for the 1999 Outstanding Education
Graduate
from the College of Education.
Floyd is proud
of the achievement gains of the students in Horry County. "This
county has always been a progressive district. Our personnel and our
communities are committed to providing the best possible education for
our students. Coastal
has provided a number of great teachers in our district. The program
offered at Coastal is outstanding, and I am grateful to have such a fine
institution
training young teachers."
Back
to top. 1980s
Harish
Mantani embodies the American success dream.
He
left his family in New Delhi, India to travel, alone, to
this country with
little more than a small suitcase
and very large hopes. It was 1980, and he
was only 14, pursuing, for his entire family, "that American dream we
had heard so much about." Once
here, Mantani lived with an uncle in Myrtle Beach for a
while, but things
didn't work out, so the young teen
was soon living on his own and working multiple
jobs in the summer to get through the winter, all while attending high school. "It
was a difficult time for me," he says. "My car was in the shop. I
had no money. Everything that could go wrong had gone there."
The summer before his senior year, he befriended Greg Ray of Conway.
When Ray introduced
him to his parents, Allen and Joanne, the couple understood
his situation and decided to help.
"They said to me one day, 'There's your room, move in,'" recalls Mantani,
who describes the invitation as a godsend. "Talk about
Southern hospitality! They didn't know me that well, yet they took a
chance with me. They even let me drive one of their cars and gave me spending
money."
Mantani graduated high school in 1984 but his grades
had suffered from all the hours he had been working,
often 12-hour days, seven days a week. But
still, he wanted to further his education.
He applied to Coastal Carolina University, where he was
accepted on probation, and he landed a good job at
Cagney's Restaurant. Suddenly, "everything
fell into place," says Mantani, speaking from the Bank of America
building in Atlanta where he is employed in the private bank sector. He is
also president of the Atlanta CEO High Tech Council.
"Coastal was very good to me in so many ways. The institution gave me a
chance when others might not have," says Mantani. Not only did he
earn a business degree at Coastal, but he also met his future wife, Rupal,
a woman
of
Indian descent who has born in London. And, with friends she met at Coastal,
Rupal now owns and manages a successful furniture business in Atlanta.
"The friendships and contacts that you make at Coastal can affect your whole
life," says Mantani. "The small campus helped me to get
to know people better, whereas you get lost at a bigger school. You
get
what you want out
of it. I use skills that I learned there every day of my life." Back
to top. 1990s
Treda
Smith is one of the founders of the Coastal African American Alumni Professionals
(CAP). The organization, which Smith and friends formed in 1997, is a network
of 22 alumni (and about 15 nonalumni) who keep in touch and gather periodically
even through they're spread up and down the East Coast. "CAP supports Coastal in many ways via contributions to the African American
Association and minority student scholarships, and supporting Coastal athletic
teams," says Smith. "We have established a Homecoming tailgating
tradition that we are sure will grow even larger with time."
At Coastal,
Smith was a marine science major in the honors program. Her list
of extracurricular activities is lengthy: Leadership
Challenge; Phi Eta Sigma, the freshman honor society; African
American Association, secretary
1996-1997, president 1997-1998; Gospel Choir; Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority,
Inc., founding chapter member, secretary
1997-1998 and vice president 1998-1999; Student Government Association; Omicron
Delta Kappa, leadership honor society; and others.
She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in marine
science with minors in biology and German. In May 2004, she
earned a master's degree
in
environmental sciences and policy from Johns Hopkins University.
Smith,
who lives in Bowie, Md., is an environmental protection specialist
for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in
Washington, D.C.
She works in the Health and Ecological Criteria Division of the Office
of Science and Technology (in the Office of Water), where guidance
and criteria
are developed
for the management of water quality standards programs. She plans to
relocate to the Williamsburg/Yorktown area of Virginia in fall 2005
to pursue a
Ph.D. in marine sciences at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science
of the College
of William and Mary.
Her time at Coastal
was very special, she says, and continues to be so from the distance
of an alum's perspective. "Coastal
felt like home, and I quickly became involved in campus activities
and made friends, many of whom
are still my friends today. I am proud to call Coastal my alma mater!"
Back
to top. 2000s
When Jelena
Mirkovic started graduate school at MIT in the fall of 2001, she
didn't have time for volleyball, and she suffered something akin to withdrawal. Volleyball is what brought Mirkovic to America and Coastal
Carolina University. A native of Belgrade, Serbia,
she came to Coastal on a volleyball scholarship
in 1997. She excelled in her studies, majoring in chemistry and biology with
a minor in math. She was a star volleyball player, helping lead a winning
(and award- winning) team for four years under coaches
Tammy Lee and Kristen Bauer.
But she also watched helplessly from her dorm room as her home city was bombed
by NATO forces during the Kosovo crisis in 1999.
"That was tough," she remembers. "If
not for my Coastal friends, professors and coaches, I don't
know how I could have gotten through it. Pat
Bennett and Geoff Parsons [of Coastal's International Office] were also a
constant support."
After graduating from Coastal in May 2001 Mirkovic entered
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the
fall to begin her Ph.D. in physical chemistry.
During her first semester she began work as a research assistant to Prof.
Michael Feld, a distinguished scientist who heads MIT's George Harrison
Spectroscopy Laboratory.
Mirkovic
says her thesis dissertation focuses on developing a cancer
detection method that uses light to analyze
tissue-a significant improvement
over
the biopsy, the current method of cancer diagnosis.
This work also encourages her growing interest in medicine and the
healing arts.
Last
year Mirkovic was accepted into a special graduate program
in health sciences and technology at Harvard
Medical School designed to
complement
her MIT degree.
The Harvard degree involves rigorous course work combined with working
in a hospital. Mirkovic is very excited about the prospect of hospital
work. "If
I get good grades, there is a possibility I will go on and get my
M.D. Right now I don't think I want to be a professor. I'm
driven by the desire to know that what I'm doing will help people.
I think when the time comes I'll
know."
Although she's busier than ever, Mirkovic is taking time
out to play a little volleyball with a group of graduate
students. She's
also
on a New
England
ladies team that calls itself WHOMP. Back
to top. |
