By Staff
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE Amy Frazier looks to the future as she holds the Lynette Mayatt Odom Scholarship awarded to her Thursday during a special luncheon for the West Lauderdale seniors. Frazier, along with 127 of her classmates in the class of 2003, graduated Thursday night on the Knight's football field. Photo by Paula Merritt/The Meridian Star
By Georgia E. Frye / staff writer
May 23, 2003
After she received the first Lynette Mayatt Odom Scholarship, West Lauderdale senior Amy Frazier said she is happy to be honored by the woman she considered to be her role model.
Frazier was awarded the Lynette Odom Scholarship Thursday during a luncheon sponsored by the Odom family, the Mayatt family and several friends at West Lauderdale High School. The families cooked lunch for the seniors after graduation rehearsal.
The $500 scholarship is named for Odom, of Collinsville, who lost her battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma a cancer of lymphoid tissue, which includes the lymph nodes, spleen and other organs of the immune system in 1999. She was 29.
Odom taught kindergarten at West Lauderdale Elementary for two years and sixth grade at Northeast Middle School for three years. She also taught Sunday school, where Frazier was one of her students.
She was also a wife and the mother of three girls, Abbie, Maddie and Katie.
Last year, Odom's cousin, Connie Joyner, decided to raise money and name a scholarship in Odom's honor.
Frazier said she plans to attend Meridian Community College in the fall and play tennis. She said she is undecided on a major but is leaning toward education.
Frazier received the award in the Dragon Fly Grove, an area adjacent to the school that was dedicated to Odom because of her love of nature and dragon flies. Frazier joined her fellow seniors in graduation ceremonies that were held Thursday night.
Several of Odom's friends also participated in the luncheon by reading poems about Odom. Many of them choked back tears as they remembered Odom.