Evie and Deland Myers Help Keep Students on Track to Succeed

Evie and Deland Myers’ high school guidance counselors would have been shocked by their former students’ success. In fact, the counselors had told Evie to “not waste time applying to college,” and Deland to “go get a job.”

It was the 1970s, and African American students faced both subtle and blatant discrimination as they considered educational opportunities. For one thing, not all schools were open to them. Many public universities had not completely desegregated. Some private schools were refusing federal funding in order to retain their segregated status. And counselors sometimes steered honor-roll students like Evie and Deland off track. Iowa State helped steer them back on.

“I met a visiting Iowa State recruiter who told me I had the grades to go anywhere I wanted,” Evie says. “He invited me to campus with other first-generation Black students from all over the Midwest. I came by Greyhound, we all stayed in the dorms, and ate in the dining hall. They showed us exactly what we needed to do to go to college. It makes my throat crack to think of it. Who knows what would have happened to me otherwise.”

Deland had attended the University of Missouri – Kansas City despite being told he “couldn’t compete.” He quickly proved the naysayers wrong, and when it came time for graduate school, Deland found universities competing for him. Iowa State called him directly with an invitation to study there. He accepted, met and married Evie, and worked on his doctoral degree while she attended law school.

He almost didn’t complete it. With only his dissertation left to go, Deland hit what he thought was a final wall when he realized the entire 203-page document would have to be retyped at $1 per page. “We didn’t have the money. I decided to take a job with Pillsbury because they would take someone with a master’s degree, and didn’t require a doctorate.” Evie knew who to turn to for help, taking the case to Director of Minority Student Affairs Dr. George A. Jackson.

“Dr. Jackson helped minority students navigate the university. He made sure we knew we could succeed and we believed him. We became lawyers, professors, medical doctors. He did everything he could do for us.” This time, Dr. Jackson found funding for the dissertation retyping and paved the way to Deland’s eventual career as a tenured university professor at Iowa State in the food science and human nutrition department, at North Dakota State University, and at Prairie View A&M University in Texas.

Now retired, Evie and Deland tend to family, church and philanthropic initiatives designed to help students who may face challenges similar to what they once did. They established the Dr. George A. Jackson Legacy Challenge Emergency Fund Endowment with a gift of their retirement assets and helped jumpstart an Iowa State University Foundation crowdfunding effort, the Dr. George A. Jackson Legacy Challenge.

“The margin of error is so slim for low-income minority first-generation students,” Deland says. “The funding we’re putting in place is emergency funding – an extra boost to help when needed. We want to make sure these students can finish – that someone believes in them.”

Evie nodded. “Iowa State chose us. And Dr. Jackson believed in us. He always told us to give back when we make it. Well, we made it. We invite people to give back with us.”

For more information about the Dr. George A. Jackson Legacy Challenge, visit https://fundisu.foundation.iastate.edu/GeorgeJackson.

And to learn more about how you can create your own legacy that helps future Cyclones succeed, please contact the office of gift planning at giftplanning@foundation.iastate.edu or 800.621.8515.