University of Mississippi law students participate in a mock trial. Photo by Srijita Chattopadhyay/Ole Miss Digital Imaging Services
First-generation students to benefit from new scholarship
By Bill Dabney
A deep passion for the legal profession led Celie and Eddy Edwards to establish a scholarship for students working toward a Juris Doctor at the University of Mississippi School of Law.
With a $50,000 gift, the Madison couple established the Edwards Family Scholarship in Law Endowment. The $2,000 scholarship will be awarded to a full-time law student with first preference going to those who are the first in their family to enroll in law school.
“My father was a first-generation law student,” said Eddy Edwards, senior partner in the law firm of Phelps Dunbar. “He worked his way through law school with jobs and the GI Bill.”
“Many first-generation law students do not have the financial advantages and must borrow money to go to school, particularly professional schools. Helping those students is something he would have wanted to do.”
Eddy Edwards earned a bachelor’s in banking and finance from Ole Miss in 1976 and graduated from the School of Law in 1978. He earned a Master of Laws in Taxation from New York University in 1980.
An active member of the UM Foundation board of directors, he has practiced business law for more than 45 years, with concentrations in taxation, finance, and real estate. His practice in the field of taxation includes wills, trusts, and estate planning as well as tax controversies and tax-exempt organizations, while his business practice includes commercial financing and real estate transactions.
The profession is pervasive in the Edwards’ lives: Besides his father, who became a small-town lawyer with a general practice after his graduation from law school in 1953, Eddy and Celie met in the business school at Ole Miss. They married in 1976 and went through law school together.
Celie Edwards also earned her business degree from Ole Miss in 1976 and her J.D. from its law school in 1978. She received a Master of Laws in Corporate Law from NYU in 1980 and then taught at Mississippi College for 37 years. Her grandfather and great-grandfather both were lawyers and judges in Alabama.
Now, the couple’s son, Martin, is newly on faculty at the Ole Miss law school, and his wife, Annie, is a lawyer, as is Annie’s mother.
“Establishing the scholarship is something we have discussed for several years,” Eddy Edwards said. “We have made gifts to various individual scholarships over the years, but we decided that a larger gift, creating a scholarship endowment, would provide a greater benefit to a particular student.
“Celie’s teaching experience provided her with a unique perspective on the significant impact a scholarship could have on numerous students under her guidance.”
Frederick G. Slabach, the school’s dean, expressed gratitude for the Edwards’ gift.
“We are extremely grateful for the visionary support of alumni like Celie and Eddy,” he said. “Their provision of a scholarship will financially support students who might not otherwise be able to obtain a law degree.”
The Edwards Family Scholarship in Law Endowment is open to support from businesses and individuals. Gifts can be made by sending a check, with the fund’s name noted on the memo line, to the University of Mississippi Foundation, 406 University Ave., Oxford, MS 38655, or by giving online at https://give.olemiss.edu.
