NEWPORT-Tickets are now available for next week's annual Celebrate Our Successes banquet on Thursday, March 11, at Carson-Springs Baptist Conference Center.

The banquet, sponsored by the Cocke County Education Foundation, honors an alumnus of the Cocke County school system who has achieved exceptional success in his/her given field.

Net proceeds from the banquet go into the Foundation's Scholarship Endowment Fund. Tickets are $30 apiece and are available at the Cocke County EDC office, First Baptist Church, and Cocke County Materials Center.

This year's honoree is Dr. Nathan Ford, retired Newport optometrist, who began his educational journey in a one-room log school, Timber Ridge, in Del Rio.

He transferred to the larger Harmony Grove Elementary School the next year, where his teachers included his older brother, the late Jack Ford, as well as the late Robert Seay and the late Nathan Jones, men Ford credits with instilling in him a strong desire to learn and succeed.

A Cocke County High School senior in 1945, Ford missed his Class Night ceremony in order to be sworn into the US Navy. Following his discharge, Ford took advantage of the GI Bill to further his education, eventually graduating from the Southern College of Optometry.

Following his return to Cocke County, Ford continued in his family's political tradition by running for and being elected to the Cocke County Board of Education when he was only 27.

His term of service included the years when the number of Cocke County's schools dropped from 56 to 28 through consolidation with the construction of Del Rio, Smoky Mountain, and Centerview Elementary Schools.

Many years later, Ford again returned to the political arena when he was elected to Tennessee's General Assembly as a state representative. During his tenure in Nashville, Ford saw great strides in Tennessee's vocational education system and also successfully testified before the Education Committee in a plea to leave Newport Grammar School as a one-school system.