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MGCCC Homecoming 2005 Mary Owen Williams and Marguerite Owen Kalif When you talk to Mary Owen Williams and Marguerite Owen Kalif, history unfolds and you visualize their lives as they were yesterday and today. This year adds yet another chapter to their entwined lives as the sisters of the late Sam Owen, an alumnus of Harrison-Stone-Jackson Agricultural High School who established the Sam Owen Award for distinguished service to the college. He and his wife, Genevieve, died in August 1969 during Hurricane Camille. This year’s homecoming will find the sisters accepting the award for their service to the college. They say it’s an honor that reflects not only on them, but also on their brother, who presented the first trophy (which Owen donated to the college) at homecoming, Oct. 13, 1956, to Calvin Eugene Dees. The same trophy presented that year will now feature the names of the Owen sisters, two selfless individuals who focus on giving so that others can have more. Williams, 91, and Kalif, 90, both work in real estate and grew up in Gulfport. They have continued the Owen dedication to making Gulf Coast the best choice in higher education for residents of the Coast and beyond. Come Homecoming Day, they will be justly (and jointly) honored for their role in giving Gulf Coast the support it needs to give students the best education possible.
Williams’ established the Sam Owen Memorial Fund on Dec. 28, 1981. She and her late husband, Lt. Col. George Williams, established the Charles Mitchell Williams Scholarship on Dec. 18, 1986, in memory of their younger son who died that same year. She and daughter Mary Wood, a member of the Alumni Association, have also begun the establishment of a scholarship in memory of George, who died in September 1998. Williams serves on the Foundation board and attends the annual Harrison County Alumni Chapter Fish Fry. “I do everything I can with the school.”
Kalif, who lives in Pass Christian, learned a lot from Sam’s good deeds. She used what he taught her as she helped organize the Foundation, which began in 1974, and when she served as the Foundation Board’s third president. She and her family also perpetuate the Sam Owen Trophy. Kalif’s business history on the Coast includes her insurance company, which operated in the Owen Realty Company building from 1953 to 1986. She also received the 2003 recipient of the Pass Christian Yacht Club’s Goodsie Rafferty Award for Outstanding Auxiliary Member.
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 © 2005 Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College Last Modified: October 6, 2005 4:32 PM Email Webmaster: keith.lee@mgccc.edu |
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Mary Williams plays recruiter for the college whenever the opportunity presents itself. “A lot of young people don’t realize how good we are. Some want to go away from home, but there’s no better school than what we have here,” says Williams, who has taken courses at JD. Her love for the college makes the Sam Owen Award even more special. “I’m thrilled and honored to have been chosen.” 
Marguerite Owen Kalif doesn’t spend much time talking about herself, but she could talk for hours, maybe days, about her brother Sam, a World War II Army veteran who, she says, promised God that if He would let him return home safely, he would devote his life to making every man a homeowner, no matter how scarce his wages. And that’s just what Sam did.