Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 2 December 1999 — Page 22

The Muncie Times, December 2, 1999, page 22

O U T S T

By Tabatha A. Tower-Harris Gonda Bridges A wife and a mother had been Gonda Bridges’ calling since she was a young girl, and she pursued her goals with all of her heart after graduating from Muncie Central High School. “I wanted to be a mother and a wife,” said Bridges. Bridges, a wife of 42 years to Samuel, and a mother of five, has worked several jobs and loves video recording as a hobby. She has four boys, Kevin, Clarence, Troy and Samuel and one daughter, Sandra. “I’ve accomplished what I wanted, a family, my husband, that’s what I wanted and that’s what I got and I got all my beautiful cousins,” said Bridges. Bridges describes herself as one who likes to take care of her family, feed her people and do what she can for her church. She is a member of Union Missionary Baptist Church where she really admires her pastor, the Rev. Willie James Jackson, Sr. “I love my family and my church and I’m happy and I feel blessed,” said Bridges. “I love to use my camera, I have all these tapes so I can look at them over and over again. She has been taping the church services since 1989 and intends to start a tape library in the church as a history of Union Baptist. Along with the tape ministry, Bridges started the ministry of feeding the college Students after church in her home. Although the ministry has continued at her church, she still cooks for members of her church every Sunday at her home. “I like to feed people,” Bridges said. She also cooks for poll workers during election season. “Even as a child growing up, I can remember that she was always willing to help others and there were always other children in our home that she would help,” said Judy Mays, Bridges’ cousin. “I remember her devotion to her church, her faithfulness to her husband and through the years, her home has been open for other people who needed to live with her, including friends and grandchildren,” Mays said. Josephine Cushenberry A graduate of Central High School, Josephine Cushenberry has always wanted to become a nurse.

A N 13 I N G C I T

“I wasn’t a nurse but I was in the medical field for 29 ' years,” she said. She started off as a nurse’s aid, working at Ball Memorial Hospital and retiring from the hospital as a unit secretary. “My favorite part of the hospital was working with the mentally ill and the handicapped children,” said Cushenberry. Since her retirement, she’s been working part-time with her daughter in their beauty shop J-Charade. Cushenberry went to Madam C. J. Walker in 1956 where she learned the art of the pressing comb and the Marcel (curling) iron. She later went to the House of James in 1985 and learned to work with chemicals, and in 1987, she opened up a shop on the alley with her daughter Charade Rollins. “I encouraged Charade to go on to beauty school through a program at Northside during her senior year where she could pursue a career and graduate at the same time,” Cushenberry said. “Charade graduated from Northside in June of 1987 and then from Amber’s Beauty School. “I encouraged some of the younger girls in the community that are beauticians now to go on and do this (start their own business). “When I opened my shop, I didn’t know anything about the business aspect of it and Lillie Williams and Punchie Anderson helped me get started,” Cushenberry said. She is a member of Union Missionary Baptist Church and her favorite things to do are family groupings, cooking, and styling hair. She and her husband George has been married for 45 years and they have five children; Tamera Johnson of Tulsa Okla., Stanley Cushenberry of Houston, TX., Irma Duerson of Gurney, 111., Cytria Twilley of Muncie and Charade Rollins of Indianapolis. She also has a stepdaughter Magalene Thompkins of Hopkinsville, Ky., 17 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. “I just like people,” she said. “Anything I can do to help them, I’m always willing and I don’t think I’ve ever turned anybody down really for anything that they call and ask me to do for them.” Cushenberry’s community involvement includes working with youth at the Whitely Methodist Church. “I just want to thank whoever nominated me for giving me a rose that I could smell while I’m living because I really didn’t expect this,”

she said. Dee Harris Born in Chicago, 111., and raised in Gary, Ind., Dee Harris is a graduate of Roosevelt High School of Gary. Harris attended Wilberforce University in Ohio during his freshman and sophomore years but was drafted into the army for six months in 1969 where he served his country in the Vietnam War. He received an honorable medical discharge and dropped out of college and went to work to raise his daughter after he was faced the challenge of caring for his late wife Brenda Joyce who had become ill. Harris later attended Ball State University with a major in offset printing and graphic arts but later changed his major to journalism with a minor in graphic arts. He’s the former deputy director of the Muncie OIC (Opportunity Industrialization Center) and has worked at the juvenile detention center as a juvenile supervisor. He worked at Marsh Supermarket for 13 years and currently served as executive director of the South Madison Community Center. “I’m thankful for the honor, but I look at this honor as not being just for me but for South the Madison Community Center family, my board of directors, my staff and all of the kids and their parents,” Harris said. “If it were not for them I don’t think that I would be getting this type of recognition and I accept it in their names and in the name of the center and the entire multi family. “I know that there are more heroes in this community who deserves it more than me, but I’m thankful for it and thank the Lord for it. “I look forward to many more years of serving serving youth, serving families and serving this community,” said Harris. “I am proud of my service during the Vietnam conflict I’m a veteran, and I’m pretty proud of what’s happening here at the center, the different programs we have created in the last three years that we’ve been under the management of the area churches.” Along with Clarence Motley and Kevin Woodgett, Harris is a business partner in CDK productions, “We write, produce and directed plays such as “Inside a Black Man’s Mind,” “Hush Black Women Are Talking,” and “Trouble in the Choir,” he said. He also founded Dee Arts Designs and is one of the founding members

I Z E N S

of C.M. Poetry Club. “I’ve always been active as a volunteer with youth,” Harris said. “While at Ball State, I did a lot of volunteer work here at this center as well as coaching basketball, track and tutoring. While I was a student my part-time job was working for Marsh Supermarket in their warehouse and that turned from a part-time job to full-time when I had to leave school. I continued to volunteer and I enjoyed it, but my job at the warehouse was not what I wanted to continue to make a career of. I was asked to join the staff of South Madison as a fulltime employee in 1992.” Harris had volunteered his time at the center, then became a part-time employee as a recreational leader and then later moved into the full-time position of assistant director of the center working for the city of Muncie. “In 1996, I tvas asked by the Youth Opportunity Center’s management to act in the capacity of interim director,” Harris said. This position led to his acceptance of executive director of the center. Harris has served the Muncie community in many ways. He served on the three initial committees that coordinated and sponsored the “Back to Muncie Reunion” in 1988,1992 and 1995. At Ball State, he served as president of the Black Student Association, and editor and chief of Black Voice newspaper. He served as a campus-wide senator in the student association and was one of the founders of unity week and chairman of the steering committee of the Ms. Black Ball State pageant. He’s on the 4-H board of Delaware County and served as the meet director for the local meet for the Hershey’s track and field program for youth. He’s the director of the NFL Gatorade Punt, Pass and Kick competition and is a proud member of Union Missionary Baptist Church with pastor W.J. Jackson, Sr., whom he admires. Harris is a member of the NAACP and has received the “Man of the Year” award from the Debonairs Club in 1998, and he has also received the liberty Bell award, the highest honor given by the Delaware County Bar Association for outstanding citizen. He and his wife Dorothy WilliamsHarris has three sons, Abram Bookner, Willy and Billy Williams and one daughter, Tasha Monique. He also admires his mother Willa Davis.

CITIZENS SEE PAGE 26