Two Raider graduates honored with HBCU scholarships

ROCKINGHAM — Two distinguished soon-to-be Raider graduates were recognized with scholarships to North Carolina HBCUs Tuesday morning.

Bruce Stanback, President of the National Alumni Association for Livingstone College, presented Cnedra Hinson with the Livingstone Presidential Scholarship.

“We are proud to present this young lady with the Livingstone Presidential Scholarship, which means she won’t have any expenses during her time that she’s at Livingstone,” Stanback said to a chorus of amens. “Welcome to the Blue Bear family.”

The inaugural Latronda Shanta Bright Scholarship Foundation award, created by Ron Davis and his company Outdoor Living Roomzz LLC, was given to Joydan Styles, who will be attending North Carolina A&T in Greensboro.

Davis first met Latronda, a ‘98 RSHS graduate, in 2001 while they were students at UNCG.

“We just clicked and started studying together,” Davis said, adding that they would often meet at 5:oo in the morning. “I was trying to help her with her studies. She was the hardest working young lady I ever met. She was a star.”

Unfortunately, Latronda passed away in an accident in Candor while returning home in 2002.

Davis said he spoke at her funeral and pledged that he wanted to do something for his close friend and the community that raised her. It was a pledge that went unfulfilled — until today.

“21 years later, in the middle of the night, I woke up and started crying, thinking about Latronda at about 3:oo in the morning,” Davis said. “I could not stop thinking about Latronda, and had to do something, and I decided that the best way to do it would be to continue what she could not finish, which was finishing school.”

Davis contacted various churches and other sources, before reaching RSHS assistant principal Alan Parker, who helped him track down the family. Ironically, Parker was on the scene for this very accident.

“I remember that day vividly,” Parker said. “It was a Sunday.”

After various interviews with potential candidates, along with a GoFundMe campaign, Joydan Styles was selected as the ideal candidate for the inaugural, $3,600 award, due to her cumulative GPA and strong extracurriculars. Davis said it worked out that the candidate will be attending a school that is close to where he lives in Greensboro.

“It all kind of worked out together in God’s plan,” Davis said. “What woke me up in the middle of night and put Latronda in my head could only be God.”

Davis thanked Parker and RSHS counselor Nikki Wells for their assistance throughout the entire process.

“She was the sweetest niece you ever known,” said Latronda’s aunt, Margaret Wilson. “She was always soft-spoken, beautiful. She made us proud when she said she was going to college. When you’re from a family that has not gone to college, and she was, it made us proud.”

“I tell people, ‘She wasn’t supposed to be mine,’ because that’s the type of person she was,” said Latronda’s mother, Mary. “If she walked up on you and you wasn’t smiling, she wasn’t leaving until you smiled.”

Mary said she cried when she heard that Ron was starting this scholarship.

“Really, you think people forget,” Mary said. “I love him. He’s a part of the family now, he just doesn’t know it.”

“In loving memory of Latronda Shanta Bright, a candle that burned out way to early. May this award help build your future and continue her legacy by further developing young women of Hamlet, North Carolina,” reads the plaque presented to Joydan.

The Latronda Shanta Bright Scholarship Foundation award will be an annual award that will be included in future RSHS academic awards banquets.

Mary, awestruck, silently gazed at the plaque following the banquet — “Wow, wow. This is beautiful.”