Thursday, January 12, 2017 – Good Golly, Miss Molly! Still Magnolias. Help Make the World a Better Place.

Thursday, January 12, 2017 – Good Golly, Miss Molly! Still Magnolias. Help Make the World a Better Place.

Happy Birthday to Molly Elane Harper Fowler! Remember how excited you and I used to be when it was our birthdays?

Look at those cute hair do’s on me and Molly. Thank you Barber Clark at the sawmill.

We should have had a huge January birthday party to celebrate all of the January birthdays. There are/were so many of us in high school with birthdays just on these two days in January. Expand to the first two weeks of January and it adds to more birthdays than attendees. There must have been something in the water nine months earlier.

The last memory of my birthday school party celebrations was with the Magnolia High School Class of 1967. It was Friday, January 13, 1967. Family had already moved to Conroe. All I recall is opening the front door at 6:30 in the evening to find almost my entire class on the front steps with Sonny Calvert grinning and saying “Surprise!” My next thought was “I have on my pajamas in front of my entire class.”

Such good times. Such good memories. We graduated from Magnolia High School (MHS) in Magnolia, Texas in a time that will never come again. To quote one of the many MHS military Veterans and Heroes, TH, “We were the last of the small classes at Magnolia High School.”

The graduating classes of Magnolia High School in the decades of the 1950’s and 1960’s are unique, not only in their class sizes, but the closeness. There are reasons we remember each other’s birthdays, middle names, each other’s siblings names, spouses’ names (all of them in some cases) – it was like a family reunion every day of school.

The world changed around us quite drastically during those years. But we also changed the world. We are The Still Magnolias and we are setting out again on Molly’s birthday to once again change the world and help make it a better place! So step off on your left foot and join the band. Thank you Mr. Jeter and Mr. Ayers and the band directors before you.

Every MHS class had a “Molly.” He or she was the classmate we forgot about. This is the one you kept saying, “I need to call …” but you do not until, well, you know.

If you graduated from Magnolia High School (in any year) you are officially a Still Magnolia. This is an opportunity to remember and honor those who made a difference as we grew up. These are the people who influenced us and ensured we stayed on course to achieve our dreams. These are the people we need to remember and honor now. We can do this by paying it forward to influence a young person’s life today and keep them on course and their dreams alive.

The Still Magnolias created a project named The Molly Memorial and Scholarship Fund. The long-term goal is to create a foundation within the Magnolia Education Foundation to meet the needs of current high school students and award scholarships to graduating seniors. However, it was your generosity that allowed short-term goals to be achieved immediately.

Last spring the Still Magnolias awarded two academic scholarships to graduating seniors of Magnolia High School – both first generation to attend college. This year we would like to do more – increase the amount and/or number of academic scholarships and award funds for the graduate with plans to attend a technical/vocational school.

So who are the Still Magnolias and how many are there? Of course The Queen of the Still Magnolias is Ms. Celeste Graves and then everybody that Celeste knows. You do the math.

There are so many ways you can help grow this project for Magnolia High School (Notice: Not Magnolia ISD). Of course financial contributions allow more plans to go into place sooner, but there are other ways you can help and make the world a better place. We need your thoughts, ideas, suggestions, comments and of course prayers.

The two academic scholarships for 2017 are to honor Celeste Graves and in Memory of Howard Davenport. How many MHS graduates did these two influence during those changing decades? Who else influenced you?

If you read this far, you might think of those teachers who taught you to do so. Or how about joining some Still Magnolias on Thursday, January 26, 2017 at The Farmhouse Café in Huntsville, Texas? Her Royal Highness, Queen Celeste of the Still Magnolias will there. There will be cake.

Happy Birthday, Molly. RIP.