Hot Springs High School boasts presidential alum
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the eighth in a series of articles spotlighting alumni of local high schools, colleges and universities as they prepare for this month’s commencement ceremonies.
Hot Springs World Class High School is possibly most notably known as the alma mater of former President Bill Clinton, but a number of former graduates have earned renown in various fields.
The school will hold its 130th annual commencement program today at Bank of the Ozarks Arena. The ceremony is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m.
Clinton became the second Hot Springs alum elected as governor of Arkansas in 1979 when he was just 32 years old, the youngest governor in the country. Sid McMath served two twoyear terms as governor from 1949-1953.
The former president earned his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford, in England, grad-
uated from Yale Law School in Connecticut and returned to Arkansas as a law professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. His political career began with successful campaigns for the state House of Representatives and attorney general before he was elected governor.
The streak was snapped in 1980 when Clinton lost a re-election campaign, but he was elected as governor again in 1982 and served five successive terms. Clinton won two terms in 1992 and 1996 as the 42nd president of the United States.
Another local Clinton found success in science instead of politics. Raymond “Corky” Clinton was named deputy manager of the realigned Science and Technology Office for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., earlier this year.
Corky Clinton earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He joined Marshall in 1984 as an aerospace ceramic materials engineer and has gone on to publish more than 60 papers and technical reports and earn a host of awards from NASA, including the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Executive.
Numerous former Trojans are known for their sports accomplishments. Cliff Harris attended Hot Springs until his senior year, when he moved to Des Arc.
Harris played football at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia before he spent a decade with the Dallas Cowboys in NFL, where he won two Super Bowl championships. The Cliff Harris Award is now presented each year to the top defensive player in Division II, III and NAIA colleges and universities. OBU named their new field Cliff Harris Stadium in 2014.
Shameka Christon did graduate from Hot Springs after backto-back state championships, back-to-back MVP awards, a Gatorade Player of the Year award and the Arkansas Player of the Year award. She followed her stellar high school career to become the first player for the Arkansas Razorbacks women’s basketball team to earn Associated Press All-America honors and was the program’s first firstround professional draft selection following a senior season in which she averaged 21.8 points and seven rebounds per game.
Christon made the 2004 WNBA Rookie Team with the New York Liberty and was an all-star in the 2009 season. Her career included stints with three other WNBA clubs, two teams in Israel and another in Spain.
A former Hot Springs track star made a mark on the national stage last year by qualifying for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Antwon Hicks represented Nigeria in the men’s 110 meter hurdles.
Hicks ran for the Ole Miss Rebels in college and competed in numerous USA Track & Field events. He narrowly missed qualifying for the Olympics for the USA twice and never represented the USA on the international stage, which allowed him to run for Nigeria later in his career. Hicks placed seventh in his semifinal race in his event at the Olympics.
Hot Springs alum Melinda Gassaway retired in 2013 after 33 years as executive editor of The Sentinel-Record. Gassaway graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism and spent 39 years with the newspaper.