Meet Me at the Court celebrates Father’s Day of the year

Meet Me at the Court will celebrate Father’s Day with the annual Father of the Year Awards.

The 2024 FOY Award recipients are Richard V. Delphin, 80, and Jaheem Heard, 19, who will both be honored today as the oldest and youngest fathers of the year.

Veronica Bailey, founder and CEO of Meet Me at the Court, a nonprofit community service organization, said the group will be coming out today at 2 p.m. to present FOY awards, including a plaque and cash gift , to Delphin and Heard.

Delphin, a native of Melrose, Louisiana, and his wife Adelle have two sons – Richard V. Delphin Jr. and Cecil N. Delphin – and four grandchildren – Richard V. Delphin, III; Cecil N. Delphin, Jr.; Isaiah Delphin and Dr. Oran Delphin.

Richard graduated from Washington High School in 1960, now Washington Middle School, where he served as student council president and played safety on the WHS football teams that won back-to-back state championships in 1956 and 1957.

After graduating from WHS in 1960, Delphin spent two years at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

As a college major during the turbulent 1960s, Delphin participated in civil rights protests and marches, one of which resulted in the use of tear gas by law enforcement.

He returned to El Dorado in 1962 and took a job at his alma mater as an audiovisual engineer.

Delphin said her former English teacher at WHS (the late Marzell Smith, after whom the Nile (husband) and Marzell Smith Museum of African American History is named) inspired her educational pursuits.

Smith helped him land the audio-visual job at WHS and encouraged him to return to college and finish his degree, Delphin said, adding that he appreciates “the time (Smith) invested in him” .

In 1963 he went to Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College (Arkansas AM&N), now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, but he enlisted in the U.S. Army shortly after. time after arriving on campus.

Delphin served three years in the Army and returned to UAPB in 1966. He majored in business administration, with a minor in accounting, and graduated in 1968.

He then worked for a life insurance company for 10 years and in 1978 he joined The Monsanto Company, now El Dorado Chemical, where he worked for 28 years before retiring as an operator boiler.

Delphin is a member of Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, WHS Class of 1960 and the Knights of Columbus, a worldwide Catholic fraternal organization.

He said he loved hunting and fishing.

Jaheem heard

Bailey remembers the first time she met Heard, who has been a member of Meet Me at the Court for 10 years.

Bailey was growing an organization she had recently founded to serve youth in the community.

The organization, which later became MMC, initially focused on children in the St. Louis neighborhood where Bailey grew up, and she and other adult members of the group sought to expand the organization to include more children of El Dorado and Union County.

“I wanted to expand and open it up to all the young people in the community and I was going around the city. I went to the (Rock Island) neighborhood and I went and introduced myself to the young people and the parents and I I saw this little boy sitting under a tree,” Bailey said.

“It was Jaheem and I asked him if his parents were home,” she continued.

Bailey said that after speaking with Heard’s parents about MMC, its goals and its mission to serve young people, they enthusiastically agreed to allow Heard to join the upstart organization.

“When I was getting ready to leave, he asked if he could come home with me. We laugh about it now,” Bailey shared.

Since then, Heard has remained a loyal member of MMC and a faithful participant in its community service programs, saying he hopes to pass on the lessons he learned about the importance of giving back to his 5-month-old daughter, Thea.

Heard is a 2024 graduate of El Dorado High School, where he played as a secondary receiver on the Wildcats football team.

Before that, he played quarterback for the Barton Junior High School Wildkittens.

Heard is a team leader at Whataburger and is a member of Bouldware Temple Church of God in Christ.