Museum honors teacher who led Rocket Club at Josey High School
By Kelly Jasper
Staff Writer
It was 1964 in segregated Augusta when a group of young men from the new black high school in town gathered outside to launch rockets they had built high into the air.
They called it Rocket Club, and it was a place of innovation and creativity, a refuge for self-described nerds and curious T.W. Josey High School students in the heat of the space race.
They were led by Rosa T. Beard, an educator known for a half-century of work with the Rosa T. Beard Debutante Club for girls, but she was also mentor for boys, especially those in the Rocket Club.
“She saw the potential of those young men. She squeezed every bit of good out of them to try and propel them to their greatest potential,” said Mallory K. Millender, who taught alongside Beard at Josey and is now a historian and professor at Paine College, which he and Beard attended.
Beard accepted an award Tuesday at The Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History recognizing a lifetime of service to the Augusta community.
The standing-room only crowd included a handful of former students and Rocket Club members, many of whom went on to pursue careers in science and government, becoming community pillars like Beard. The club’s alumni include an ambassador, ministers and a Superior Court judge. They became scientists, doctors and military officers. One worked at Cape Canaveral and another for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
They tinkered with rockets well before Josey, as early as 1958, as students of A.R. Johnson Junior High. But it wasn’t until Beard became their adviser in 1962 and Josey opened in 1964 that the program took off.
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Questions? kelly.jasper@augustachronicle.com