December 12, 2005

Part of an umbrella organization known as the Batesville Area Arts Council, the BCT produces a large-scale theatrical production involving school-age children every other fall. The group also sponsors traveling production troupes to bring programs to local school children. Recently, the Tell-A-Tale Troupe from Little Rock performed Elves and the Shoemaker for 700 second- and third-grade students from Batesville, Southside and Sulphur Rock.

In January, the troupe will return to perform Abe Lincoln for fourth, fifth and sixth graders. And in April, Tell-A-Tale will perform Jack and the Beanstalk for K-2 students.

“One of the great things about being linked to BAAC is that it provides a coordinated base for fund-raising,” McNamee said.

BCT began in 1970-1971 with its first production of an original play about Civil War activity in Batesville. As of October 2005, the group had produced 100 plays totaling 396 performances that featured approximately 2,087 cast members and another 2,700 people working backstage.

BCT has performed such plays as 1776, Bus Stop, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Christmas Carol, The Wizard of Oz, The King and I, Into the Woods, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Godspell, Annie, and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, to name only a few.

BCT usually puts on one major production in the spring or early summer and a fall production. Last spring, the BCT began a Theatre Slam night at Morningside Coffeehouse.

A Theatre Slam features people coming onstage and performing a monologue, a scene from a play or a musical number. In addition, the actors occasionally perform improvisational skits and readings. BCT usually hosts the performances on the third Friday of every month, and all productions are free to attend.

Amanda Pickett and Jeanette Hobson have recently started a Children’s Theatre, producing shows during the summer. Last summer, the BCT performed Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

A year ago, BCT initiated a cooperative effort with the Lyon College Music Department to produce An Evening with Steven Sondheim. This effort will continue this year on Feb. 10 in the Bevens Music Room with An Evening with Rodgers & Hammerstein.

Since Lyon College allows free access to Brown Chapel, BCT allows Lyon faculty and students to attend productions for free.

McNamee has been with BCT for eight years and is president of the Board of Directors.

“I started out as a parent helping my kids,” he said. “That’s how most get involved.”
BCT Board President McNamee also sits on the BAAC Executive Board.

He gives credit for the groups’ success to others who have been involved over the years.

“It’s amazing when people come together and the camaraderie that develops between people from all walks of life when we mount a production,” he said.

McNamee is quick to thank many people, including Amanda Pickett and Donald Taylor. Ms. Pickett is a Lyon College student and adjunct music instructor. She has served as president of the BCT and performed in several of its productions.

Taylor, Lyon College’s director of alumni and parent services, has been on the BCT Board of Directors for two years. He helps to maintain the BCT web site and produces a newsletter to BCT members.

Taylor said performing arts groups are valuable assets to their communities.

“Supporting organizations such as the BCT is important because they touch the lives of so many people, from children to the elderly,” he said. “And it helps bring something to Batesville and the culture of the city that might otherwise not be here.”

Taylor stressed the importance of community involvement.

“So much of what the organizations do depends on volunteer labor and services that there is no way they could function without them,” he said. “We are all better because these groups exist, and better because we help them continue their work and missions.”

McNamee said his involvement in the BCT and BAAC is “fun.”

“I really enjoy it,” he said. “It gets me off campus and helps to develop bonds between the college and the community,” he said. “It even adds a certain cultural aspect to both Lyon College and the Batesville community.”

For more information about the BCT’s upcoming productions, log onto www.bctbackstage.org, or by e-mail the BCT at info@bctbackstage.com.

The Batesville Area Arts Council may be reached by calling 870-793-3382, or by e-mailing the group at baac@cei.net.

NEA pharmacology student to speak WEINER -- Josh Brooks, a Lyon College graduate and second-year student in the Department of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., has been invited to present his data at the 12th annual International Symposium of the Society for Free Radical Biology and Medicine in Austin, Texas. His talk will feature research involving the identification of a novel class of compounds formed in animal models of oxidative stress, a condition associated with a number of human diseases such as atherosclerosis, stroke and cancer. Brooks' abstract was one of only a few selected for oral presentation. His mentor is Dr. Jason Morrow. Brooks serves as the treasurer for the Graduate Student Government Association and the president of the Vanderbilt University Graduate Honor Council. He graduated with great distinction from Lyon College in May 2004 with degrees in mathematics and history. At Lyon, he was a student body president and a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity. He is the son of Larry and Rebecca Brooks of Weiner. Vanderbilt University is considered one of the premiere institutes for biomedical research and training in the world. Vanderbilt's Department of Pharmacology is one of the most distinguished in the country, placing it among the top two National Institutes of Health ranking positions for 16 of the past 20 years.		Lyon celebrates the Holidays in Little Rock A holiday reception was held Thursday, Dec. 8, at the home of Frank and Jane Lyon in Little Rock. Guests included trustees, President's Council members and friends from around the state. Among those at the party were (from left) Lyon students Jonathan Bunch, Josh Manning and Ben Thielemier; and alumni Jerra Quinton '00 and Bethany Pitts '01, director of career development at Lyon. More pictures from the evening can be found on the What's Hot page on the Lyon Web site. Photo by Jason Marzewski

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day activities planned for January
BSA event slated for Feb. 18

By WIL SHANE
Lyon College News Bureau

Martin Luther King Jr., had a dream, and today much of that dream has become reality, though more work must be done, and more progress made, toward the full realization of that noble goal.

To help educate students about that dream, Lyon College will host a series of events honoring Dr. King in conjunction with the day formally established for that purpose.

Dr. Bruce Johnston, vice president for Student Life and Dean of Students, said this year’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebrations will include guest speakers with some uniquely interesting perspectives to share.

At 7 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 16, the Black Students Association will sponsor a reception in Bevens, and the featured speaker is the mother of Lyon student Neva Joseph, as well as a victim of a well-known recent natural disaster.

“Her name is Wanda Joseph, and she’s a survivor of Hurricane Katrina,” Johnston said. “She’ll talk about what she went through, and how it affected her.”
A convocation Tuesday morning, Jan. 17, at 11 a.m., is sponsored by the Convocations Committee and put on by BSA in Brown Chapel. The featured speaker there will be Hazel Carpenter, wife of Dr. Tom Carpenter, professor of education at Lyon.

On Tuesday at 7 p.m., another convocation will feature Byron Motley talking about the Negro Baseball Leagues, and will be held in Nucor Auditorium.
In the wake of the Civil War, baseball enjoyed a great surge in growth, and Americans of all classes and races joined in the game. However, the National Association of Baseball Players, an amateur organization, excluded black ball players from participation on Dec. 11, 1868, when the group voted to bar “any club which may be composed of one or more colored persons.” This was the first appearance of an official color line in baseball.

When baseball attained professional status the following season, professional teams were not bound by the amateur association’s ruling, and during the 1800s, black players appeared on integrated teams, and some black teams played in integrated leagues.

Two black brothers, Moses Fleetwood Walker and Welday Walker, played professionally in the major leagues in 1884, but, more and more, black players were excluded from the white leagues and by the beginning of the 20th century, no blacks played in organized baseball.

But that didn’t stop black Americans from playing baseball. They formed all-black teams and, eventually, all-black leagues. The first black professional team was the Cuban Giants in 1885, but the teams played as independent ball clubs until the first black league was organized in 1920.
Motley will elaborate on these, and other pertinent topics during his presentation.

At 7 p.m. on Feb. 18, the BSA Black History Month Celebration Banquet will be held in Edwards Commons.
“Our featured speaker is ’00 Lyon graduate Terrell King, who was the president of the senior class in 2000,” Johnston said. “He earned a master’s degree from the University of Texas and is now an assistant principal of a school near Bastrop, Texas.”

A Bradley Manor reception before the banquet is being planned as a fundraiser for the scholarship fund in memory Mitcheal O’Neal Brown, the first African American graduate of the College who died in 2003. Dr. and Mrs. Carpenter established the scholarship earlier this year.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday found its roots in 1968 when U.S. Congressman John Conyers, Democrat from Michigan, first introduced legislation for a commemorative holiday four days after Dr. King was assassinated. The bill soon stalled, but supporters submitted petitions endorsing the holiday to Congress. Those petitions contained over six million names.
 
Conyers and Rep. Shirley Chisholm, Democrat of New York, continued to resubmit King holiday legislation during each subsequent legislative session. Public pressure for the holiday mounted during the 1982 and 1983 civil rights marches in Washington.

In 1983, Congress passed the holiday legislation, which was then signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. A compromise moving the holiday from Jan. 15, King’s birthday, which was considered too close to Christmas and New Year’s, to the third Monday in January helped overcome opposition to the law.
Despite the holiday’s passage into law, some states resisted celebrating it, citing as their reason that King didn’t deserve his own holiday. They contended that the entire civil rights movement, rather than a lone individual, should be honored. Arizona voters approved the holiday in 1992 after a threatened tourist boycott, and in 1999, New Hampshire changed the name of Civil Rights Day to Martin Luther King Jr., Day.

Sports

Scots Basketball

The University of Central Arkansas Bears made 15 of 18 free throws, including 12 of 15 in the second half, to hold off Lyon College 69-62 at the Farris Center in Conway on Saturday. It was the best performance of the season (83.3 percent) from the freethrow line by Central Arkansas (6-1 ). Norris Weintz led the Scots (6-5) with 24 points.

Pipers Basketball

Harding University defeated the Lyon Pipers 89-60 Saturday at Becknell Gym. The Pipers will play Arkansas Baptist at 5:30 p.m. today in Little Rock.

Volleyball

Jonesboro’s Beineke signs with Lyon
From the Jonesboro Sun

Jonesboro High School’s Katie Beineke might have been unsure about her volleyball future before the 2005 season, but after leading the Lady Hurricane to a AAAAA-East conference tournament championship, her inclination was to play in college.

“I know there were some doubts earlier in the year about whether she was going to go on or not, but now we’re extremely proud that she chose Lyon,” Jonesboro coach Jennifer Shipman said.

Beineke signed on the dotted line at the JHS library Tuesday afternoon, agreeing to play volleyball for Lyon College, whose program enters 2006 coming off a record 20-win season that included six players making the TranSouth Scholar-Athlete Team.

“I want to come out strong in my first year and do great after that,” Beineke said.

The versatile senior will take the court for the Pipers after an outstanding season at JHS, where she was first-team Best Under The Sun. Beineke finished second among area players in kills with 368 from the middle blocker position on the roster. She finished among the area top ten in blocks with 72, and in digs with 277.
“We are losing a huge person for our program,” Shipman said.

“I remember the first day I saw Katie. I came up here to interview (for the job as coach), and she was in ninth grade. Back then she was only 6-foot (in height); now she’s grown to 6-2. When I saw her I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, my dreams have come true — finally a strong girl in the middle,’” Shipman said.
Beineke said Lyon suits her academically as well as athletically.

“I fell in love with it (Lyon College) the first time I did a campus tour,” Beineke said. “I’m going to major in elementary education. I want to be a teacher.”
—Daniel Doyle
 

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