NEWS

Jones College has often been the launching pad that propels students forward with preparedness into a future they didn’t originally plan for. Pam Skaggs (former Musgrove), a lifelong resident of Ellisville and a 1986 Jones graduate, didn’t plan on a future in nursing. Her fresh start at Jones as a nontraditional student, however, has led to over thirty-five years of fostering health in her community and a legacy of inspired greatness that still impacts the college today.

“I had talked to some people at Jones about nursing before, but I never saw an opportunity to actually go do it,” Mrs. Skaggs admits. “Opportunity turned into necessity at a point in my life, and I had to do something to support my kids.” At the time that she attended Jones, Mrs. Skaggs was the single mother of two children, aged ten and three. She attended Jones through a program that was then called the Displaced Homemakers Program. She recounts, “I thought going back would be hard as an older person, but Jones made it easy to make friends no matter what age gaps existed there. Actually, the young people in my program were really helpful to me!”

Mrs. Skaggs remembers Jones fondly, and stresses that her program fostered connections just as well as they fostered education. She says, “The instructors in the nursing program had been working together for years, and you could tell. They were close, and they made us feel close. By clinicals in our second year, we were like family.” One of her most memorable connections was to her mentor in the Displaced Homemakers Program, the late Mrs. Anne Strickland. She recounts, “Anne was the one that directed me at every step. She was a single mother, so she understood a lot of what I was going through. Time has taken a lot of memories away from me, but I’ll always remember that Mrs. Anne was incredibly kind and very smart.”

“While I was at Jones, I worked. I worked for a lawyer, briefly for a bank, and other ‘odds and ends.’ I couldn’t work full time and go to school, but I worked multiple part time jobs. There were long days!” Mrs. Skaggs graduated in 1986, and later was informed by one of her professors that she had one of the highest scores in her program on her board exam. “I don’t know why they told me that then.” she said, “I had already graduated. Maybe that was their way of saying they were still there to support me.”

After graduating from the nursing program here at Jones, Mrs. Skaggs worked in various emergency rooms before going back to school and graduating with honors from The University of Southern Mississippi with an undergraduate degree in nursing. Later in 2006, she graduated from The University of Southern Mississippi with an Executive Master’s in Public Health. In 2008, she also obtained a Master of Science degree in Nursing and FNP from The University of South Alabama in Mobile. When asked what kept her going, she attributed much of her motivation to her late parents and the way they modeled working hard to support loved ones. She says, “You know – my dad is a big part of this. He really worked hard and stressed education because he dropped out of high school and didn’t have many options. He was an army veteran from WWII, and he worked extremely hard for his entire life.” Her mother, Mrs. Faye Musgrove, was a kind and equally hard-working cafeteria assistant in Jones County Schools for many years. “I was the oldest of seven children,” she says, “they had to work hard.” Her learned persistence has brought her to the place she is now: 69-years-old and still working as a nurse.

Mrs. Skaggs’ children now confidently say that she has modeled what a supportive and hard-working parent looks like to them. Her eldest daughter, Amie McQueen (former Duckworth), graduated from Jones in 1993. She has worked at Jones for 26 years and serves the college well as the Assistant Vice President of Advancement. Mrs. Skaggs’ son, Jeremy Duckworth, is also a Jones graduate. After attending Jones, he married a fellow Jones graduate, attended the University of Southern Mississippi, and has since worked as a computer scientist/engineer for a plethora of companies. Her youngest daughter, Courtney Ross (former Skaggs), also came to Jones in 2009. She served on yearbook staff, was in band, and says that she “very fondly remembers Mr. Smith’s Biology class.”

Mrs. Skaggs’ Jones legacy is great, and her story can be an inspiration to all. With three children who graduated from our college, one child working here in advancement, and one grandchild who graduated from the technical program, her story has continually given back to the place where she found her new beginning many years ago.