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efforts, spending countless hours speaking to civic clubs and tourist groups promoting the Delta. He was an entrepreneur, establishing businesses to attract tourists. Most notably is Ground Zero Blues Club, which he owned with his dear friend, Morgan Freeman. Luckett’s passion for the state of Mississippi and the Mississippi Delta ran so deep, he briefly got into politics in an effort to use his skills and knowledge to make positive changes. In 2011, he made a run for governor. Two years later, he was elected mayor of Clarksdale by a landslide. He was also an excellent pilot with more than 3,000 hours logged in a Cessna 414 and a Cessna Citation S II. In 2009, he was inducted into the Living Legends of Aviation. In 2007, Delta State University honored Luckett as their Delta Regional Heritage Champion. The Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi, in 2008, named him their Man of the Year. Luckett was a Lifetime Member of the NAACP. In 2005, he was named the May Fest Trailblazer of the Year for his countless contributions to diversity and racial reconciliation. He proudly served his country as a member of the Army Reserve and was a member of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Clarksdale. Bill’s greatest legacy, however, is his wife of 36 years, Francine, his children, Oliver Luckett, Whitney Luckett, Park Dodge and Douglas Dunavant, and his grandchildren. Geraldine H. Page Geraldine Page (JD 70) and her twin sister were born in Louisville, Mississippi, as the youngest children of a mother who was a school teacher and a hard- working father who, among other occupations, worked as a church janitor. She attended Jackson State University where she worked in the library to help pay tuition. Upon early graduation in 1967, she taught 11th grade English for three months at Higgins High School in McComb. Page, however, was not destined to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a teacher. She applied to and was accepted into the Peace Corps to serve as a volunteer in Tunisia. Her college professor discouraged her from accepting the assignment and arranged an interview with professor Michael Horowitz, who recruited her to attend law school at the University of Mississippi. She returned the plane ticket to the Peace Corps, ended her teaching job at Higgins High School, and made her way to the University of Mississippi School of Law as a student. Page became the first African-American to be awarded membership on the Moot Court Board. In 1970, she graduated from law school and landed her first job as a staff attorney with the Lawyers’ Constitutional Defense Committee in their New Orleans and Jackson offices. She later worked as a staff attorney in the Lexington office of North Mississippi Rural Legal Services. Weary of the commute and separation from her family, she accepted a job as a staff attorney with the Department of Public Welfare’s Child Support Division in Jackson. In 1984, Page began her federal career as a trial attorney with the U. S. EEOC where she advanced to the position of senior trial attorney. She then became an administrative judge with the EEOC, and then an administrative law judge with the Social Security Administration. In 2007, she was appointed to a management position as the Roanoke Hearing Office Chief Administrative Law Judge. Page retired from federal service in 2020. Lucius F. “Sandy” Sams, Jr. Sandy Sams (BA 61, LLB 63) was born in Meridian and later moved to West Point. Following high school graduation, he made his way to Oxford to attend the University of Mississippi. In 1961, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history. Sams then enrolled in the Ole Miss law school, where he was editor-in-chief of the Mississippi Law Journal, was a member of Phi Delta Phi legal honor society and Phi Alpha Delta, the nation’s largest law fraternity. In 1963, he graduated from law school with honors, earning the distinction of the 1963 Outstanding Law Graduate and was honored with the faculty award. Sams proudly served his country as an Assistant Staff Judge Advocate in the U.S. Army XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Upon completion of his military service in 1965, he returned to his hometown of West Point to practice law. In 1971, he moved to Tupelo to begin his career with the firm that was once called Mitchell McNutt law firm. Within this firm that would later become Mitchell McNutt & Sams, he practiced primarily as a litigator. He remains loyal to his alma mater as a life member of the Ole Miss Alumni Association and as a member of the Lamar Order. Sams was married to the late Mary Helen for 62 years. Their pride and joy is their sons, Lee and Carr, their daughters, Christie and Margaret, and a host of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.    30 


































































































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