Gwendolyn Azama-Edwards '71, MA '83
A lifetime resident of Florida, Gwendolyn J. Azama-Edwards earned two Stetson University degrees: a bachelor’s degree in psychology (1970) and a master’s degree in guidance and counseling (1983). A member of Stetson’s College of Arts and Sciences Board of Advisors, she also serves on Stetson’s Alumni Association Board of Directors.
City clerk and assistant to the city manager of Daytona Beach from 1987 until September 2002, Azama-Edwards earned certification as a master municipal clerk and is a past president of the Florida Association of City Clerks. She has also worked as a regional manager for the Department of Labor and Employment Security, has managed Job Service offices in Volusia and Flagler Counties and serves on the Workforce Development Board of Volusia and Flagler Counties.
Deeply committed to her community, Azama-Edwards is chairman of the board of the United Way of Volusia/Flagler Counties, and a member of the board of directors of the Rotary Club of Daytona Beach and the Daytona Beach Leadership Council. A past chair of Bethune-Cookman College Board of Counselors, on which she still serves, she is a lifetime member of the NAACP and has been president of the Sister Cities Association of Volusia County, the Association for Retarded Citizens, and the Council on Aging. Numerous honors include outstanding service awards from the Florida Association of City Clerks, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Committee, the Association for Retarded Citizens, Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services District 12, Volusia Unit of the National Association of Social Workers and ACT Corporation.
Married to the Rev. Larry Edwards, Azama-Edwards has two grown sons. She is a deaconess and member of the Greater Friendship Baptist Church in Daytona Beach.
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Jill K. Jinks '79
Jill K. Jinks received her bachelor’s degree in business administration from Stetson in 1979, and went on to earn a master’s degree in business administration from New York University, specializing in finance; and a master of science degree in computer information systems in 1992 from Georgia State University in Atlanta. She did post-graduate work in client-server systems at Georgia State.
President and CEO of Southern General Financial Group of Marietta, Georgia, since 1997, she came up to that position from its subsidiary, The Insurance House, where she had progressed since 1985 from casualty underwriter and commercial lines manager to president and CEO. Deeply committed to education, she chairs Stetson’s School of Business Administration Board of Advisors, and sits on the Stetson University Board of Trustees. In addition, she serves on the Board of Advisors to Stetson’s Family Business Center, the Georgia State Education Foundation Board and the National Association of Professional Surplus Lines Offices Education Foundation Board.
Jinks is an active manager of the Cherokee Country Club Community Involvement Team and serves on the Atlanta Track Club Committee. She also participates in Atlanta Tennis Association activities and enjoys offshore sailing.
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Elizabeth Walker Mechling '67
A double major at Stetson University, Dr. Elizabeth Walker Mechling received her bachelor’s degree with honors in speech and English in 1967, and then earned a master’s degree in speech from Temple University in Philadelphia, which also awarded her a doctorate in speech communication.
Mechling is a professor of Speech Communication at California State University in Fullerton, and has also taught at the University of California, Davis, and California State University at Hayward, where she chaired the marketing department for eight years. Her administrative experience includes four years as dean of the School of Communications at California State University, Fullerton, and three years as executive assistant to two presidents of California State University, Hayward. She has served as second vice president of the Western States Communication Association, and on the editorial boards of the Quarterly Journal of Speech and Western States Communication Journal. She publishes regularly in the fields of rhetorical criticism, mass media criticism and American Studies.
Mechling has also provided consulting services in the area of organizational communication to a number of governmental agencies and businesses, including Grabber Industries, the National Park Service, Credit Women International, Coit Industries and the National Association of Women in Construction.
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Jay E. Mechling '67
An American Studies major at Stetson, Dr. Jay Mechling received his bachelor’s degree with honorsin 1967, then continued his studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he earned a master’s degree and a doctorate, both in American civilization.
A professor of American Studies at the University of California, Davis, Mechling served on the National Council of the American Studies Association and was a fellow of the National Humanities Institute at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. A prolific author, his books include American Wildlife in Symbol and Story and On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth. He is one of three senior editors for the four-volume Encyclopedia of American Studies, edited the annual bibliography issue of the American Quarterly from 1974-79 and was the editor of Western Folklore, the quarterly journal of the California Folklore Society, from 1984-88. A leader in his field, he has received the University of California at Davis Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award; and the American Studies Association’s Mary Turpie Award for his achievements in teaching and curricular development at the local, regional and national levels.
Elected president of the California Folklore Society in 1991, and a fellow of the American Folklore Society in 1998, he was appointed to the California Council for Humanities in 1992 and was named chairman in 1994. He served as the project director for a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a Pacific Regional Humanities Center at UC Davis.
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James Nemec '32
*July 1, 1908 – June 1, 2002
Born in Chicago, the late James Nemec received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Stetson University (1932) and a law degree in accounting from Stetson’s College of Law (1936). He played football for Stetson, and later worked as a Stetson coach.
During World War II he served as an officer in the U.S. Navy, and he remained in the Reserves after the war. He met his wife, the late Ruth Bartlett, at Stetson, and their marriage was blessed with seven children. Together, they served their Alma Mater in many ways, including a term for each as president of the National Alumni Association. The James and Ruth Nemec Auditorium at the College of Law and the Nemec Residence Hall in DeLand are both named in recognition of their generosity. Both were inducted into Stetson’s Hall of Fame, and they established the James and Ruth B. Nemec Scholarship Fund at Stetson and co-founded the Palm Beach Friends of Stetson University.
Longtime residents of Palm Beach County, they were active in the community. He was a co-founder of both the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society of Palm Beach County, the Palm Beach Opera, and the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. He served as a trustee for First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach, Palm Beach Atlantic College and the Palm Beach County School Board; and was a member of many civic organizations, including the Palm Beach Roundtable, Kiwanis International, Gulfstream Council of Boy Scouts and the Salvation Army. An attorney for 56 years, and a member of the Florida, American and International bar associations, he was a U.S. delegate to the International Bar Convention in London.
His honors include service awards from The Legal Aid Society, the Stetson Lawyers Association, the Boy Scouts of America and Kiwanis International. In 2000, the National Republican Congressional Committee honored him as the Republican of the Year from Florida.
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