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Tanner Gray of Richland is following in his mother’s footsteps, with the help of the Carla McCulloch Scholarship from ����԰.

Gray, 19, a second semester Associate Degree Nursing student at ����԰’ Rankin Campus, is the recipient of the annual Carla McCulloch Scholarship. The scholarship is awarded each year to a ����԰ second semester nursing student to help pay for the second year of school.

“My mom (Angie Gray) has been a nurse for over 20 years. It has encouraged me to want to help people too. We still get Christmas cards from people she has helped. I’d like to do that for my ministry,” said Gray, who wants to be a nurse anesthetist.

The scholarship was created by Larry and Carol McCulloch, formerly of Magee but now residents of Roanoke, Va., in memory of their daughter Carla, a Simpson Academy graduate who was a ����԰ nursing student at the time of her death in an April 1991 accident.

The award is made annually to a second semester nursing student who demonstrates the caring and enthusiasm for nursing that Carla embodied. She was a dedicated nursing student who took care of loved ones but also had a fun-loving streak.

“She was all of those things. She was very funny and didn’t mean to be. I called her the resident blonde in our family. She didn’t get why she was funny sometimes,” Carol McCulloch told ����԰ Rankin Campus nursing students in making the presentation to Gray. “You don’t just get up one morning, as Carla said, and decide to be a nurse and, oh boom, it comes. You’ve already been there and seen that and done that.”

Larry McCulloch said Gray embodies many of the qualities of his daughter. “He excels academically and believes that a dedicated work ethic is a must. He doesn’t think he has all the answers and works very closely with others. And really importantly, he believes that the field of nursing is a calling,” he said.

Gray said his parents “have raised me to be an encourager. I do like to encourage people. It gives me a sense of fullness when I can make someone’s day or make someone smile.”

To the McCulloch family, he said, “it seems your Carla had a lot of those qualities.”

[tweetable alt=””]Tanner Gray awarded Carla McCulloch Scholarship.[/tweetable]

����԰ is celebrating its 100^th year of Community Inspired Service in 2017. ����԰ opened in September 1917 first as an agricultural high school and admitted college students for the first time in 1922, with the first class graduating in 1927. In 1982 ����԰ Junior College and Utica Junior College merged, creating the ����԰ District. Today, as Mississippi’s largest community college, ����԰ is a comprehensive institution with six locations. ����԰ offers quality, affordable educational opportunities with academic programs of study leading to seamless university transfer and career and technical programs teaching job-ready skills. To learn more, visit or call 1.800.����԰CC.