Education is vital for Vicksburg and this week due to the efforts of the Vicksburg Warren School District, two students were recognized as being trailblazers for the state.

On Thursday, a ceremony was held at Hinds Community College to recognize Vicksburg High School seniors Angel Rhodes and Zachary Moore who earned their white coats as the first two students in the state of Mississippi to enroll in Project Lead the Way’s Biomedical III course. The course is part of a national curriculum designed to introduce high school students to the medical field and give them hands on experience, and while taking the course student’s follow a fictional family as they research and treat diseases impacting the family.

“I’ve always been interested in the human body,” Moore said. “I’ve always found it fascinating how humans work the way they do and when this opportunity was offered to me I thought it would be amazing to get work with all the different medical professions. I’ve gotten a lot out of this course. I’ve gotten the ability to see hospitals. I’ve gotten the ability to learn all this in depth research about the human body. Things most high schools students wouldn’t even dream of.”

“My best friend begged me to be in it with her and then I ended up liking it and then I fell in love,” Rhodes said. “This year we are learning about babies more and I want to be a gynecologist so hopefully I will do more this year so next year when I go to pre-med school I will know a lot already.”

Rhodes said before taking the biomedical course her plan was to be a hairdresser. Now she plans to attend Prairie View A&M to study pre-med in hopes of becoming a gynecologist.

More positives happening in Vicksburg this week:

• The Vicksburg Fire Department donated about 800 feet of damaged hose to Thomas Henderson, whose grandfather Ken Hicks lives in Vicksburg, to use during his Eagle Scout project at the zoo. “We asked the Vicksburg fire department because my grandfather lives up there if they could share some old fire hose,” Henderson said. “They did, which we are thankful for that. We got fire hose and we kind of weaved it into a hammock and it is going to go in the chimpanzee exhibit.” VFD chief Craig Danczyk said the hose was no longer usable and they were happy to help as they were looking for something to do with it. “We gave him damaged fire hose that was either burned or had burst,” Danczyk said. “We were trying to repurpose it so we thought that was a wonderful way to repurpose it and make the animal habitat because it would involve life safety.”