Gov. Barbour and Judge Muirhead to speak at MUW Magnolia Chain ceremony
 

COLUMBUS, Miss. -- Mississippi University for Women’s 2004 graduates will be treated to two guest speakers at this year’s Magnolia Chain ceremony Saturday, May 15, at 9 a.m. on Shattuck Lawn.

Gov. Haley Barbour and Judge Jean Denman Muirhead will speak at the time-honored tradition, which will precede the 119th commencement.
   
Barbour, the recently inaugurated Republican governor of Mississippi was elected on Nov. 4, 2003, in the largest turnout in a gubernatorial election in state history.
   
He earned a law degree from the University of Mississippi in 1973.

Barbour served as an advisor to President Ronald Reagan for two years as director of the White House Office of Political Affairs during the 1980s.
   
>From 1993 to January 1997, Barbour served two terms as chairman of the Republican National Committee, including the 1994 elections when Republicans won GOP control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.
   
In 2000, Barbour served as one of 10 members of then Gov. George W. Bush’s National Presidential Exploratory Committee and chaired Bush’s Washington Campaign Advisory Committee.
   
Barbour also founded and formerly served as chair and CEO of Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, which Fortune magazine ranked the nation’s top lobbying firm.
   
He is a native of Yazoo City where he lives with his wife, Marsha. They have two sons.
   
Muirhead retired in 2002, almost 55 years in the workplace, after having transferred to Nashville from the Social Security Administrations’ Office of Hearings & Appeals headquarters near Washington, D.C.
   
For four years she was in charge of OHA’s Division of Medicare, responsible for providing hearings in Medicare cases throughout the United States and its territories. She also served for 11 months as the acting deputy to OHA’s chief judge and chief administrative law judge in the Memphis Hearings Office for five years.
   
>From 1980 to 1987, she served as administrative judge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Birmingham, Ala., and Charlotte, N.C.

She practiced law in Mississippi for 13 years and served in the Mississippi Senate from 1968 to 1972. During this time, she authored legislation that allowed Mississippi women to serve on state court juries and appointed the first female pages in the Mississippi Senate.
   
Muirhead attended the Jackson School of Law now Mississippi College School of Law, having earlier enrolled at Delta State when she was 15 and going back to graduate with her Charleston high school class a year later.

Currently, she volunteers at the Nashville Public Library and with the city’s adult literacy program.
   
Muirhead is the mother of three and has three grandchildren. She is the niece of the late Annie Mae Denman, who graduated in 1919 from what is now MUW.
   
The Magnolia Chain is symbolic of the link between all MUW graduates and the future success of the class of 2004.
   
The chain, made from magnolia leaves and blossoms, is woven by the members of the sophomore class, the sister class to the seniors. Seniors who leave the ceremony with a magnolia blossom are guaranteed a bright future.
   
Conferring of degrees for Education and Human Sciences, Fine and Performing Arts, Health and Kinesiology and Humanities will be at 11 a.m. at Rent Auditorium in Whitfield Hall. Conferring of degrees for Business and Communication, Culinary Arts, Nursing and Science and Mathematics will be at 2:30 p.m. in the same location.

   
 

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