Morrilton senior elected national Beta Club president
Morrilton senior elected national Beta Club president
Grace Williams used the slogan “Amazing Grace” when she competed in June and won the title national Senior Beta Club president.
Her supporters said it describes her.
The 17-year-old Morrilton High School senior is only the third female — and the first African-American female — to be elected to the position. Williams didn’t realize until last week that she’d made history.
“It’s an honor,” she said, “and I hope there are plenty more qualified and diverse female presidents to come after me.”
Williams was first elected state Senior Beta Club president in January at the state convention in Hot Springs. Then she bested 14 other candidates to win the national office June 22 at the national convention in Oklahoma City.
Williams honed the 1-minute skit she used to win at the state level, which was a stressful campaign, she said, because no one had time to work on the performance.
She said “Amazing Grace” was the idea of Lamar Williams, who is not related to her, a past Morrilton High School Beta Club president and her campaign manager for the state competition. He graduated this year from Morrilton High School.
Grace Williams loved the idea of the skit, but it seemed to fall apart, she said.
“It was so bad, all we could do is laugh,” she said. “All I could do was pray, ‘God, is this really your will?’”
When the Morrilton delegation arrived at the state convention, Morrilton High School English teacher Brad Parks helped fine-tune the skit, as well as Williams’ speech, and it came together.
“He was an essential part of the campaign; he was the glue,” she said.
Williams said the skit had a “heavenly theme.” Her team wore tie-dyed T-shirts that she helped design with the words “Amazing Grace” on the front. The candidate can’t be in the skit, so at the state convention, a black Morrilton High School student portrayed her.
In the national convention, there were no other black female students who attended, so Jeremiah Canady portrayed Williams.
In the skit, her character had the right keys that opened the gates of Beta Club.
“A choir comes out that’s singing ‘Amazing Grace.’ The song changes, and it was kind of like a hip-hop beat, and they do a dance. At the end, the person playing Grace holds up the key, and the choir strikes a pose … ‘Vote for Amazing Grace.’
“It’s a big thing in Beta — the keys of Beta — leadership, character, service and achievement,” she said.
Because it is cost-prohibitive, Williams said, fewer Beta Club members attend the national convention. She said the Morrilton High School group recruited some Beta Club members at the convention from Sacred Heart Catholic School in Morrilton to help with the skit.
“I ran on the platform that there should be financial assistance for the convention and more promotion of Beta to schools without it,” she said.
Williams said she decided to run for the state Beta Club office based on her experience as Morrilton High School Student Council president, a position she will hold this fall for the third time.
Williams has attended and participated in state Beta Club competitions, starting in the seventh grade. Members can choose a category in which to compete, and she picked visual arts every year. She created artwork using watercolors, charcoal and other mediums, and often won top honors.
Through her experience at the conventions, she also saw improvements in Beta Club that she wanted to make.
“I said, ‘I’m going to run for office, and they have to listen to me then,’” she said.
Williams returned June 30 from a Beta Club leadership convention in Washington, D.C., that began just three days after she was elected president.
She and other Arkansas members met with U.S. Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and John Boozman, R-Ark. They talked with the legislators about “getting assistance with finding grants, getting grants for the club, whether state or federal,” to help members attend the national convention. “You should be able to sign up, sort of like a scholarship, and tell them, ‘Hey, I need $500 to go,’ and this could help individuals and clubs,” she said.
Also, Williams said she wants to contact schools that don’t have Beta Clubs to give them information.
“They can contact me, and they can SKYPE, or if they’re close, I can go to their school,” she said.
As a recent delegate to Girls State, Williams said, she talked to other students who don’t have Beta Clubs at their schools.
“I hadn’t heard about it, either, but honestly, Beta has opened so many doors for me,” she said.
After she became the state Beta Club president, it helped her get her artwork into galleries, she said.
“I never would have done this if I hadn’t been in Beta,” she said.
Williams’ artwork is on display in Hot Springs at Cutwell 4 Kids art studio. Williams said its executive director, Anthony Tidwell, contacted her after she got involved with Beta Club. The barber and Morrilton High School graduate has a nonprofit organization, Cutwell 4 Kids.
She sold some of her artwork through his gallery to help fund her trip to D.C.
Williams is the opposite of the withdrawn seventh-grader she was when she moved to Morrilton. In addition to being president of the Student Council, she plays soccer.
“Soccer — woo-hoo, middle fielder!” she said, standing in the parking lot at Morrilton High School.
Williams is also ranked No. 1 in her class.
“Valedictorian, that’s the goal,” she said.
A self-described “military child,” she is a daughter of Sheila and Timothy Williams, an Air Force veteran. She also has two older siblings: a brother, Isaiah, who just finished his freshman year of college, and a sister, Ayana, who just graduated from college.
Grace Williams was born in Florida and lived in Georgia and Louisiana before her family moved to Arkansas about five years ago. Her father grew up in Little Rock, her mother grew up in Conway County, and they came for a summer to take care of Grace’s maternal grandmother, Louise Harris, whom they’d visit during family reunions.
Williams said she enjoyed getting to know her grandmother better in the short time they had. Her grandmother died in August 2014 at age 92.
In Williams’ national Beta Club question that she was asked before she made her speech, she said she responded to the question: “What’s the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to you?” She said it was getting the chance to spend time with her grandmother.
After her grandmother died, Williams said, her parents told her they were going to stay in Morrilton. It was a culture shock, and she missed her friends in Louisiana.
“It was a sad little summer for me,” she said. “When I started out in Junior High Beta [Club], I didn’t want to socialize.”
However, she was invited to join Beta Club. She’d never heard of it.
“I didn’t have anybody to ask about it because I was just not talking to people,” she said, laughing.
She showed the invitation letter to her mother.
“What even is this?” she said she asked her mom.
“Luckily, my mom, because she had lived in this area before we moved around, knew what it was. She said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to sign you up; it’s a big deal. It’s going to look good on your college applications,’” the teenager recalled.
Williams threw herself into the organization and its community service. She said her favorite local project was collecting peanut butter for the Conway County Care Center in Morrilton — 350 jars.
Food insecurity “is a big thing” in Morrilton, she said. One of her goals for her senior year is to try to implement a garden at the high school — not just an “isn’t-that-cute” garden, she said, but one born of necessity. It’s a project that originated in the Student Council, but the Beta Club is partnering on it, she said.
Williams said her top priorities her senior year will be Beta Club, Student Council and her art.
Then she plans to apply for scholarships for college — touting her national Beta Club presidency, other honors and academics.
“I’m hoping for a full ride,” she said.
Her plan is to have a double major in political science and visual arts, then possibly attend law school or run for a position in local government and “do art on the side.” She has her sights set on a bigger office, too — president of the United States.
“I want to be able to say, ‘Hey, I ran for office.’ If I’m in a position to win, all the better. Even as a little kid, I would say, ‘I’m going to run for president.’”
Morrilton High School Beta Club sponsor Regina Erwin, media specialist and parent involvement facilitator, said Williams is special.
“I am so proud of Grace,” Erwin said. “She has a great personality and talks to people very easily. She is a genuine Christian young lady with great support from her family. Her speech was so well-received by the audience at both the Arkansas State Convention and the National Convention.
“She is a great Beta member, volunteering in as many service projects as possible. She is a very determined student, taking [Advanced Placement] classes and striving to earn the best grades possible. Requirements for the MHS Beta Club are as follows: good character, academic achievement, leadership and service. We have adopted the National Beta Club motto as our local motto — ‘Let us lead by serving others.’
“She really is Amazing Grace.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.