Winston County Friends of the Library President, Theresa Bridges, resigned her position as of March 1, 2022. “It is with much regret and sadness that I am resigning my office,” said Bridges, “but I know the Friends will continue to thrive and grow and aid our library in every possible way.”
Under her six-year tenure, despite the pandemic, a lot was accomplished. Through annual membership drives and book sales, the Friends were able to purchase rocker chairs for the Teen Room, surveillance cameras for inside and outside the library, books for the library, hosted several City and County officials thank-you lunches, hosted brown-bag lunches for author events, hosted a Holiday Drawing event of over $1500 worth of merchandise from local businesses, new plants for the lobby, signage boards and even a cleaning unit for the HVAC unit. Friends was also awarded the Margaret Murry Grant in 2021 by the Mississippi Friends of the Library, which enabled them to purchase Wonderbooks for the library’s children’s collection.Effective April 1, 2022 Cindy Ward and Marion Jones took over as the new co-presidents of the Friends group.
Ward, a Louisville native with over 30 years of experience in education, recently retired from Mississippi State University as Director of PREP (Program of Research and Evaluation for Public Schools). She has also worked with three national assessment companies, ETS of Princeton, NJ, Harcourt Assessment and CTB-McGraw-Hill Testing and was Director of Student Assessment for the Mississippi Department of Education. She was also and Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Research at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Jones, a Delta native (NittaYuma) who now resides in Louisville, is currently the Mathematics Specialist and District Test Coordinator for the Corinth, MS School District. She has also served as Director of Student Assessment at the Mississippi Department of Education, and Director of Mathematics at Harcourt Assessment and Director of the Statewide Migrant Service Center for PREP.
“We were so sad to lose Theresa as head of our Friends group,” said librarian Beth Edwards. “She has been wonderful to work with and so supportive of the library. We will certainly miss her.” Of the new co-presidents, Edwards said “Cindy and Marion are so excited and are already working on fun ideas for fundraising. I look forward to seeing what they come up with!”
