Newport High School 1956

Rodney was elected as president of the Student Council for his senior year at NHS and Phil McDonald was vice president. Tommy Fife was on the Council and was elected president of the Senior Class.

Besides our agriculture classes, the agriculture building had a woodworking shop which introduced Rodney and Philippe to building items out of wood. Rodney built a coffee table, a walnut end table which in 2022 is still in Bobby and Suzanne Lassiter's house. Also he built a cedar chest which is still usable in 2022. Other smaller items like toolboxes were built and this was an introduction to woodworking that was continued throughout his life.

The spring of 1957 was a time for a lot of decisions. Since Rodney had done so well academically, it made sense for him to proceed to college, and having shown an aptitude for science and engineering he corresponded with Cornell and Georgia Tech about engineering curricula. Attending college depended upon his having a good scholarship since the family was not financially capable of paying for a college education. He was in a competitive position for scholarships because of his academic performance in high school, finishing as Valedictorian of his class. Also he had ranked Number 2 in the state of Arkansas on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. He had applied for both the National Merit Scholarship and the General Motors Scholarship. In both of those scholarship competitions you had to specify the College or University to which you intended to use the scholarship. Rodney specified Cornell for the National Merit Scholarship competion and the Georgia Institute of Technology for the General Motors Scholarship. Then came a stressful two week period when he received almost simultaneous notices that he had won both scholarships and had to decide within two weeks which he would accept. He spent a lot of time with the school counselors for advice on the decision. He was leaning toward Georgia Tech partly because of their co-op program which would allow him to work a quarter if he ran short of funds. The General Motors Scholarship was a bit more flexible, and with the Tech preference he made the decision to accept it. The General Motors Scholarship program gave only one scholarship per state, so he became the General Motors scholar for Arkansas. The scholarship was excellent and met his financial needs for his undergraduate years. Starting with a major in Mechanical Engineering, he switched to Electrical Engineering after a year and received his bachelor's degree in 1961. From there he entered graduate studies in Physics and received his Ph. D. in Physics in 1966.