Tanner Gray of Richland is following in his mother’s footsteps, with the help of the Carla McCulloch Scholarship from Hinds Community College.
Tanner Gray of Richland is the recipient of the annual Carla McCulloch nursing scholarship at Hinds Community College. With him are family members, from left, Michael Gray, Angie Gray, Tanner Gray and sister Brooklyn Gray.
Gray, 19, a second semester Associate Degree Nursing student at Hinds’ Rankin Campus, is the recipient of the annual Carla McCulloch Scholarship. The scholarship is awarded each year to a Hinds second semester nursing student to help pay for the second year of school.
“My mom (Angie Gray) has been a nurse for over 20 years. It has encouraged me to want to help people too. We still get Christmas cards from people she has helped. I’d like to do that for my ministry,” said Gray, who wants to be a nurse anesthetist.
The scholarship was created by Larry and Carol McCulloch, formerly of Magee but now residents of Roanoke, Va., in memory of their daughter Carla, a Simpson Academy graduate who was a Hinds nursing student at the time of her death in an April 1991 accident.
The award is made annually to a second semester nursing student who demonstrates the caring and enthusiasm for nursing that Carla embodied. She was a dedicated nursing student who took care of loved ones but also had a fun-loving streak.
“She was all of those things. She was very funny and didn’t mean to be. I called her the resident blonde in our family. She didn’t get why she was funny sometimes,” Carol McCulloch told Hinds Community College Rankin Campus nursing students in making the presentation to Gray. “You don’t just get up one morning, as Carla said, and decide to be a nurse and, oh boom, it comes. You’ve already been there and seen that and done that.”
The McCulloch family presented the annual Carla McCulloch nursing scholarship to Tanner Gray of Richland. Pictured are family friend Carla Smith of Madison, left, Carol McCulloch, Gray and Larry McCulloch.
Larry McCulloch said Gray embodies many of the qualities of his daughter. “He excels academically and believes that a dedicated work ethic is a must. He doesn’t think he has all the answers and works very closely with others. And really importantly, he believes that the field of nursing is a calling,” he said.
Gray said his parents “have raised me to be an encourager. I do like to encourage people. It gives me a sense of fullness when I can make someone’s day or make someone smile.”
To the McCulloch family, he said, “it seems your Carla had a lot of those qualities.”
[tweetable alt=””]Tanner Gray awarded Carla McCulloch Scholarship.[/tweetable]
Hinds Community College is celebrating its 100th year of Community Inspired Service in 2017. Hinds opened in September 1917 first as an agricultural high school and admitted college students for the first time in 1922, with the first class graduating in 1927. In 1982 Hinds Junior College and Utica Junior College merged, creating the Hinds Community College District. Today, as Mississippi’s largest community college, Hinds Community College is a comprehensive institution with six locations. Hinds offers quality, affordable educational opportunities with academic programs of study leading to seamless university transfer and career and technical programs teaching job-ready skills. To learn more, visit www.hindscc.edu or call 1.800.HindsCC.