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Mount Vernon Bank Announces First Recipient of Writing Fellowship Award

Taylor Hereford
BPC Director of Marketing

In an effort to further the educational excellence of students at Brewton-Parker College, Mount Vernon Bank has partnered with BPC for the next five years to sponsor a $1,000 annual award that recognizes high achievement in writing.

“We thank Mount Vernon Bank for its commitment to the young people of our area and fostering excellence,” said Dr. David Smith, president of Brewton-Parker College, of the newly formed partnership.

Don Thigpen, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Mount Vernon Bank, believes this award is an important way of contributing to the overall success of the community.

“As a community bank, we feel that contributing to education is one of the important things we can do to help our community be successful,” Thigpen said. “We’re pleased to partner with Brewton-Parker College in offering this scholarship.”

Regina Wood’s essay explaining how trust in individuals, in community, and in God all play a part in the overall value of trust in rural Georgia earned her the recognition of being the first recipient of the Mount Vernon Bank Writing Fellowship Award.

Wood, a psychology major at Brewton-Parker College, received her award from Rick Jordan, Vice-President of Economic Development and Marketing for Mount Vernon Bank, during the annual Honors Day ceremony in Saliba Chapel on Brewton-Parker’s main campus in Mount Vernon.

All rising full-time juniors on the Mount Vernon campus were eligible to compete for the award by writing an essay on the theme “Trust is a value that grows naturally in rural Georgia.”

By referring to rural Georgia’s “rich agricultural heritage” in her essay, Wood made the case that trusting in individuals is a key component to the building of trust throughout the region. She said economic and civic responsibilities were learned on the farm and that each family member had certain duties he or she was required to perform in order for the farm to operate successfully. The trust exhibited within the immediate family eventually spread to other farms.

“Farmers aided each other with harvests, and farmhands worked several fields at differing times of the year. The rural lifestyle cultivated trust and reliability,” Wood said.

As the Industrial Revolution and the Progressive Era began to have an impact in large, metropolitan areas, Wood explained that for smaller communities to survive, a continued reliance on each other was vital. Thus, trust continued to play an important role in the day to day life of rural Georgia.

“Communities worked together for the betterment of the society and learned to trust each other in the process,” Wood said.

Wood explained that trust in God is another important element to the overall value of trust in rural Georgia. This trust in God, according to Wood, not only applies to the health of a community as a whole, but to the health of the individual as well.

“Trust in God is a way of life in the rural South,” Wood said. “I view trust as an extension of God’s grace through our lives. God offers His divine grace to us in salvation. We are, in turn, called to exhibit God’s nature through a trustworthy character and faith in others. This is how people come to understand God’s grace.”

Wood is thankful to Mount Vernon Bank for partnering with Brewton-Parker College in offering this Writing Fellowship Award.

“I want to thank the people of Mount Vernon Bank for giving this opportunity to Brewton-Parker and its students,” said Wood. “I am glad to see them lead the way for community involvement in the college.”

Regina Wood received an Associate degree in Psychology with a minor in English from Brewton-Parker College in 1998. She and her husband Bill live in Vidalia and have two children, ages six and eight.

-BPC-