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In her lifetime, Helen Ward Kellum had a generational impact on the Theatre Arts program at the University of Mississippi and for thousands of children in Oxford who participated in her summer theater workshops. Thanks to the Helen Ward Kellum Legacy Award for Excellence in Theatre Arts, her incredible impact continues even now, nearly 15 years after she passed away.
In 2020, Glenn Kellum, Gloria Kellum and other members of the Kellum family and friends established an endowment intended to honor the memory of Helen Ward Kellum, a beloved figure in Oxford and at Ole Miss known for her work as an associate professor of speech and theatre and as the director of Oxford's Summer Showcase plays – often musicals – that involved UM students, local children and the entire community.
The Helen Ward Kellum Legacy Award provides funding for students to travel around the country to further their education and careers. This year, two students benefited from the award: Zion Sims of Saltillo, Mississippi, and Ward Sikma of Water Valley, Mississippi. Both Sims and Sikma are pursuing Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in Theatre Arts with emphases in Acting for Stage and Screen.
"The Helen Kellum endowment has been such an extraordinary aid to me in my academic endeavors," Sims said. "Thanks to this scholarship, I’m going to be able to go on our senior trip this year to New York."
Students also can use the award to pursue additional classes and career opportunities.
"Being able to receive this scholarship has opened so many doors for me as a performer," Sikma said. "It has given me the opportunity to take more theater classes, more design classes, more acting classes, which allow me to grow as an artist and enable me to perfect and hone my craft."
The nature of the work that Theatre Arts students do requires them to travel to conferences, showcases and large audition calls around the country. For many, the financial burdens that this creates can be overwhelming. The Kellum Legacy Award is such an amazing resource for students that the Kellum family and the leadership of the Department of Theatre and Film want to expand its impact – and that's where you come in!
By making a gift today to this campaign, we can grow the endowment and make these crucial funds available to even more students.
For the thousands of former students and Oxford children who learned from Helen Ward Kellum, there can be no more fitting legacy for her than empowering and nurturing the next generation of theater professionals.
Glenn and Helen Ward KellumJohn Maxwell, the world-renowned performer and writer famous for his one-man play, "Oh, Mr. Faulkner, Do You Write?" based on the life of Noble Laureate William Faulkner, said he considers meeting and learning from Helen Ward Kellum the "starting point" of his theater career. Maxwell earned a master's degree in theatre from Ole Miss in 1968.
"She really took me into her fold," Maxwell said of Kellum. "She was my first director, really. I wasn't going to major in theater at all until I met her and had a class under her and began to see what the theater department was like here at Ole Miss. She was the first person to open her hands to me. She was so creative .... She had such a vision."
Helen Ward Kellum's son, David Kellum, who is famous to all Ole Miss sports fans as the voice of the Rebels, said his mother was "passionate about maximizing students' abilities and helping them reach their potential."
"So to continue that passion," Kellum said, "if you could give to this endowment, it will help students not only be able to make that trip and expose themselves to a level that could continue to fuel that dream, or help them even locally here at Ole Miss, we encourage you to do so."
Make a gift today!