Golden Days: Reminiscences of Alumnae, Mississippi State College for Women

Katherine Lipscomb Worrell, Class of 1936

JULY 19, 2006 INTERVIEWED BY AMBER KING, WITH ASSISTANCE FROM BROOKE WORRELL TRANSCRIBED BY RACHEL FORESTER & /^CATHERINE LIPSCOMB, BORN JULY 17, 1913, in Mashulaville, Mississippi, was the fourth of eleven children born to Jasper Holmes Lipscomb and Mary Elizabeth Jernigan Lipscomb. Katherine Lipscomb came to MSCW from rural Noxubee County, Mississippi, in the fall of 1930, but family financial strain and a serious injury delayed her graduation until 1936. After graduation, she began teaching at Lynville High School in Preston, Mississippi, and a fewyears later she moved to Lebanon School in Hinds County as principal and teacher. In 1942, she married George Brooke Worrell (1909—84), a local farmer who left to serve in the U.S. Navy one week after the couples marriage . She subsequently raised a family while continuing to teach. In the 19705, she began a second career as a journalist, writing a regular column for the Hinds County Gazette on news from Learned-Lebanon. She lives in Utica and remains active in the Learned Presbyterian Church, her garden club, and a number of 81 Class of 1936 Katherine Lipscomb Worrell K other organizations, including the Sixty-Plus group in Utica and the Hinds County MUWAlumnaeChapter. The 1936 yearbook, the Meh Lady, says of her, "Delightfully abrupt, outspoken and frank—she has a keen sense of the ridiculous and a kindly sense of humor that is entirely her own." KW: We lived five miles from Fern Springs and five miles from Mashulaville, halfway between Columbus and Philadelphia, seventeen miles from the railroad—real rural. I finished high school at Noxubee County Agricultural High School in Mashulaville in 1930. Then I went to MSCW. I had eighty dollars pinned with a safety pin inside my girdle when we got on the train in Macon. We had to change trains in Artesia and then go to Columbus. The Columbus folks didn't want the trains to change there because they said the Mississippi State College boyswould steal all their fruit, so they made the trains change in Artesia. When I got to MSCW, weweremet at the train. I had two hatboxes I had gotten for high school graduation. I didn't have many navy blue clothes, and we had to wear a uniform, navy blue. But I took all my clothes and the laundry dyed them navy blue. A lot of the clothes had figures on them and they didn't dye well, but we wore them anyhow. I roomed in number 51Main Dormitory (now Callaway Hall). One of the girls at orientation week, Hudean Windham,1 sat out on the sidewalk and cried because she couldn't find her way back to the room. But she was real smart. She made a good teacher. AK: What was the dorm like? KW: I thought the room would have pennants and everything in it. There wasn't a thing in that old room but naked mattresses—two beds with naked mattresses on them—and two chairs, and one end was for a closet. The bathroom was way down the hall. I don't believe I'd ever had a bath in a bathtub. At home, we used a tin pan, a tin tub, every Saturday night. i. Hudean Windham Burkhalter, Class of 1934. 82 Classof1936 The first week of school we had chapel, and one head of a department said, "Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man/'2 Everyone of the department heads took a different verse.We had that program, I remember, in Whitfield Auditorium. We ate in Shattuck Hall. Everybody didn't go to breakfast, but I never missed a meal. AK: What classes did you take during your first year? KW: I took English and French and history and physical education. I made an A on Miss Pohl's3 dancing. Folks was terrified of Miss Pohl. She was a little bitty woman with long hair, but she was a strict teacher. If a girl was chewing gum, man, she would eat them up alive! I never thought of chewing gum or doing anything wrong. We'd have dances in the Student Activities Building. Youhad to go in your sock feet. The floor was highly polished, just as pretty as could be. We had dances at Mississippi A & M, too. I love to dance, and we'd dance the night away. We had to have a formal dress. Often we had...