They call him “Stan the Man.”
Stan Glover, surrounded by friends and family, retired Friday from his work at the Columbus ACT Center after more than 50 years. Glover, 60, has been involved with the center since he was 5 years old.
Center Director Veronica Knowles said Glover is a face for the center.
“Everybody knows Stan,” Knowles said. “He’s a local celebrity. I started in June of 2015, and every day Stan meets me here. He’s one of the first people here before the staff and everyone, and he’s in a rush to get in every morning to help get things set up. That’s just Stan.”
The ACT Center is one of the offerings of Columbus Community Programs. CCP serves mentally and physically disabled individuals in a number of ways, including job search and placement assistance, pre-vocational training at the ACT Center, a community respite center, and assisted living home in east Columbus.
Glover’s mental disability makes it difficult for him to verbally communicate. However, Knowles said that hasn’t stopped Glover from being involved with both the ACT Center and in the community at large.
“Stan is a success story. Stan has had the most supportive family, and they’re unwavering support for Stan,” she said. “If half of the people with intellectual disabilities were afforded some of the family support that Stan has, it would be awesome.”
The center
CCP is a division of the Ellisville State School, which is part of the Mississippi Department of Mental Health. Its services are free, as a state-funded entity, and admissions are made through the Ellisville State School. Knowles said CCP serves about 42 people.
The ACT Center, which draws 25-30 people per day, focuses on job skills training.
“They teach them to become the best that they can be, to grasp and develop all the skills that they can, in any and all areas that they can,” said Connie Tilley, who worked as a social worker and director for the ACT Center from 1990-2015. “They concentrate on work skills, teaching them to be as independent as possible throughout all aspects of their life and teaching them to work in the community, if at all possible, to make that part of their life as well.”
The center secures contracts with local companies, such as making keys for Baldor Electric, refurbishing floral cemetery stands and packaging flatware for local restaurants. ACT workers used for those contracts are paid.
“Through all of that, they learn a lot of things that we take for granted,” Tilley said.
Background
Though the services are state-funded now, they weren’t always. CCP’s roots go back to the early 1960s, when Glover’s parents and a few other families and friends of disabled children started a volunteer group due to a lack of support in the school system.
In the early 1970s, Tilley said, James W. Hunt, of the Mississippi University for Women, successfully obtained a grant that got the Lowndes County Association for the Retarded, as it was then called, 75 percent funded through the Department of Mental Health. The remaining 25 came from city and county contributions, in addition to whatever the center could generate for itself through fundraising.
In 2001, the center officially moved under the Ellisville State School umbrella.
“We had an association that we started by organizing,” said Peggy Glover, Stan’s mother. “We raised money and sold a little bit of everything to get it going. Finally, we got it under the state, which was really a blessing because raising money is pretty hard.”
The ACT center has come a long way since those early days in the 1960s, when volunteers used First Methodist Church, then First Baptist Church as meeting places.
“It’s just amazing,” Peggy said. “It really is.”
What’s next for Stan
Stan became “The Man” through a positive attitude and an exceptional work ethic.
He’s worked over the years filling many of the ACT Center’s contracts and has also volunteered there for decades.
Beyond that, he once worked part-time at the former Jitney Jungle grocery store on 18th Avenue North and he remains an active member of First Baptist Church.
His mother said she was happy to see all the support Stan has gotten through the ACT Center.
“I’ll be glad to have him home,” Peggy said. “He’s a lot of help — he really is. It’ll take a while (to get used to it) because he has to have a schedule. I think he’s going to go to the YMCA and maybe hang out and push a broom across the gym floor, pick up towel and balls, and stuff like that. He just has to have something to do.”
Tilley said Stan is always willing to find a way to step forward and make a difference.
“Stan is dedication,” she said. “Stan is involvement. Stan takes pride in this place. He takes pride in his work. He takes pride in coming down here every day. He’s very active in the community and always has been.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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