Dot Childress Now Recognized as Part of Endowment at Northwest

Dot Childress

When longtime Northcentral Electric Power Association employee Dot Childress retired, the association contributed a generous gift so that her name might be added to an endowed scholarship at Northwest Mississippi Community College. The Melvin E. (Dooney) Childress Endowment, which was established in memory of her husband, is now named The Melvin E. (Dooney) and Dot Childress Endowment.

A native of Pleasant Hill, Mississippi, Dot graduated from Olive Branch High School and then received a degree in Secretarial Science from Northwest. Her first job was in Memphis, but after six months, she began working at Northcentral Electric Power Association in Byhalia. Her career spanned 54 years.

An article that appeared in Today in Mississippi includes this information about her service: “Throughout her career, Dot has done any job at Northcentral that needed doing, aside from climbing poles. At one time or another, her duties have included customer service, accounting, dispatching, and administration, and many times, all at the same time. For many years, her home phone was the number given to call if an outage occurred during the night. The Director of Customer Service for many years, she was hands-on in all she did. For the past several years, she has been the collection supervisor.”

Ten months after Dot began working at Northcentral, Dooney began working there. They were married on December 2, 1961, and enjoyed over 46 years of marriage before his death in 2008. They were the parents of two children, Renea Childress Reed and Mike Childress, who, unfortunately, died in a car accident more than 20 years ago.

Dot is very proud of her Northwest connections. She and her daughter, Renea, attended, and her granddaughter, Ali Dee Crawford, completed nursing school at Northwest and continued her education at the University of Mississippi to become a nurse practitioner. Ali and her husband, Hunter, blessed Dot with a great-grandchild, Myles, who is four years old. Dot has another granddaughter, Kasey Childress of Decatur, Alabama.

In addition to being a wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother with a full-time career, Dot has served as alderwoman and vice-mayor of Byhalia. She has also lent her experience and expertise to the Marshall County Industrial Development Authority and the Chickasaw Trail Industrial Park Committee.

The Melvin E. (Dooney) and Dot Childress Endowed Scholarship is awarded to students whose families use Northcentral Electric Power Association as their electricity provider.

For more information about the Northwest Foundation, contact Sybil Canon, associate vice president of Development and Special Projects, at 662-560-1103 or e-mail srcanon@northwestms.edu.

Courtesy of Northwest Mississippi Community College

Follow HottyToddy.com on Instagram and Twitter @hottytoddynews. Like its Facebook page: If You Love Oxford and Ole Miss…