Guests and members of the Krewe of Ceres were treated to a “Night in Wonderland” Saturday evening at the 47th Annual Charity Ball.

The highlight of the evening was the presentation of the 47th Krewe of Ceres Charity Ball Court and the announcement of King Tillmon Bishop and Queen Maggie Cupit as this year’s royalty.

As Charity Ball attendees pulled into the Lincoln Civic Center, they were drawn into the mystery of the theme at the entrance to the Rabbit Hole. Once they entered the foyer, the Rabbit Hole had an old mansion feel, filled with clocks, framed quotes, skeleton keys and many mysterious doorways, with one very inviting doorway surrounded by beautiful white floral arrangements.

As guests made their way through this doorway into the Grand Ballroom, they entered the Enchanted Forest. The brightly colored forest included mushrooms, butterflies and flowers, all softly lit for a nighttime forest effect. The ballroom was all under the cover of an enchanting starlit sky.

The court entered the ballroom through the Queen of Hearts’ Red Castle, with warm red lights surrounding them. As the court members were presented, they walked through the Enchanted Forest into the White Castle, the Presentation Stage.

The stage was lit with white lights and pink accents. Two grand silver vases were the base for two elaborate floral arrangements, flowing with fuchsia flowers accented by a variety other colors. The king and queen’s throne was a bold silver with bright blue cushions and accents.

The tables were arranged banquet style and were dressed with white cloths and blue runners. They were set for a wonderfully fun Mad Tea Party. An assortment of tea cups, teapots and cream and sugar bowls brimming with flowers were scattered among the tables.

Guest enjoyed a sumptuous feast served on two L-shaped buffet tables covered with white cloths with blue runners. The tea party dishes were accented by two large colorful floral arrangements holding whimsical directional signs to guide you through the Enchanted Forest. Some of the dishes were presented on floating glass cylinders that were softly lit by candlelight.

For one night, the attendees lived in the fantasyland of a childhood favorite fairytale, “Alice in Wonderland.”

 Queen Margaret Carlisle Cupit

The queen is the daughter of Paul and Ellie Phillips and Malcolm and Marlene Cupit of Brookhaven. She is the granddaughter of Dr. Anne Henderson, also of Brookhaven, as well as the granddaughter of Dr. and Mrs. Edward Henderson of Baton Rouge, La., and Eva Cupit of Brookhaven. She is the great-granddaughter of the late Dr. and Mrs. Jack Atkinson of Brookhaven.

Queen Maggie attended Brookhaven High School, where she spent four years on Student Council, First Edition Forensics and Debate Team, Mock Trial and the Academic and Science Bowl Teams and performed in various theatrical productions.

While in high school she spent a semester in Washington, D.C., where she was employed as a page for the U.S. House of Representatives. While in D.C., Maggie attended the U.S. House Page School, where she served as vice president of her class and was honored as the recipient of the award given to one page for outstanding academics and intellectual curiosity.

Her senior year, Maggie was elected both “Most Intelligent” and “Most Likely to Succeed,” and she graduated as Valedictorian of her class at BHS in 2009.

Maggie began her education at Rhodes College in the Fall 2009. During her freshman year, she became a member of Chi Omega Fraternity and competed on a national level as a witness for the Rhodes College Mock Trial Team, and was on the Dean’s List both semesters. She was also chosen to present her research paper for her British Literature class at an English symposium in the spring and received the Rhodes College First Year Chemistry Award.

Maggie was one of only five students selected to participate in the St. Jude Summer Plus research fellowship that summer.

Rather than beginning her research fellowship at St. Jude, in May 2010, Maggie was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a type of aggressive pediatric bone cancer, and she checked into St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as a patient the same week she was scheduled to begin as a researcher.

Maggie’s year of cancer treatment caused her to spend what would have been her sophomore year of college as a patient at St. Jude. She spent the year living at Target House with her mother, Ellie, and her little sister, Flynn. After a year of chemotherapy, surgeries to replace the tibia and knee bones in her right leg with metal, and hard work in physical therapy, Maggie was declared cancer free. She returned to Rhodes College in Fall 2011 as a sophomore.

Upon her return to Rhodes, Maggie was awarded the Organic Chemistry Award and has continued to be on the Dean’s List each semester. She was chosen to serve as vice president of the Kappa Beta chapter of the Chi Omega Fraternity for the year 2012 and re-elected for the year 2013 and was named Rhodes College Greek Woman of the Year for her work in the chapter’s academic programming.

In the summer of 2013, Maggie was awarded the Jerry Nicholson Young Volunteer Award for her work as an inspirational and keynote speaker on behalf of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Since her diagnosis, she has spoken at more than 18 national events and fundraisers to raise money and awareness for St. Jude and has had the opportunity to speak to crowds ranging between 50 and 5,000 people in places such as Las Vegas, Chicago and New York City.

Maggie holds memberships in various academic honor societies, including Gamma Sigma Epsilon Chemistry Honors Society, holding the position of vice president; Omicron Delta Kappa Leadership Honors Society; Theta Alpha Kappa Religious Studies Honors Society; and Mortar Board National Honor Society for Scholarship, Leadership and Service, currently serving as president of her chapter.

Maggie was featured on the Rhodes College website as one of the “Faces of Rhodes” and has been featured multiple times in the Rhodes magazine. She also has spoken to the Rhodes College Trustees on many occasions and to prospective students at Rhodes College during preview weekends as a representative of her school.

During her sophomore and junior years, Maggie was selected as one of four Rhodes nominees to represent the college in applying for the national Barry Goldwater Scholarship. This Award recognizes upcoming scientists in the national community for individual research proposals and scientific achievements. Maggie’s research proposal in 2013 was one of 150 in the nation to receive the title of honorable mention.

While at Rhodes, Maggie’s extracurricular activities have included the Rhodes College Mock Trial team, Rhodes College Diplomats or tour guide and Rhodes College peer assistant or orientation leader, and former executive director of Up Till Dawn, which raised money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

She is currently completing a religious studies internship at Methodist North Hospital in Memphis, where she is learning to serve as a hospital chaplain. Throughout all of her time at Rhodes, Maggie has been employed as a Rhodes College Student Associate in the Office of the President.

She is a member of the American Chemical Society, SACNAS Society of Scientists, Rhodes College Health Professions Society and Rhodes College Against Cancer. For the past two years, she has held the position of Survivor Recruitment Chair for Rhodes College’s Relay for Life, and last year she organized the first Bone Marrow Registry Drive at Rhodes to increase matches for bone marrow donations in the country.

Maggie also attends St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Memphis.

Maggie’s Volunteer Work has included founding and participating in the St. Jude Chess Club, which teaches patients and siblings to play chess in the hospital, and volunteering at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital as an infant and toddler caregiver. She has also spent time at the Memphis Family Shelter, the MED, and as a tutor for her Chi Omega Chapter and the Rhodes Chemistry Department.

Maggie spent a year of her St. Jude Fellowship researching in a stem cell and cord blood oncology lab, where she mastered techniques such as quick-time PCR, cell culture and umbilical cord blood stem cell harvest. She independently designed a set of primers for use in detecting gamma-delta T cells. Maggie spent her second year of research in a Chemical Biology and Therapeutics lab, working on natural product synthesis, analogue derivation and chromatography.

Maggie has been published as first author on a review of molecular scaffolds for potential use against resistant strains of malaria in a 2013 in a medicinal chemistry textbook. She presented her St. Jude research at several conferences and received a SACNAS National Conference Travel Scholarship to present on the national level.

Last fall, Maggie continued her research at St. Jude in a clinical setting and joined several doctors on the St. Jude Palliative Care Team in writing a chapter on end of life care. This chapter will be released in the upcoming journal of the Pediatric Clinics of North America. Maggie was specifically responsible for the sections of the chapter on grief, bereavement and spirituality.

In addition to this publication, she is currently editing a manuscript with her grandfather, Dr. Ed Henderson, entitled Suffering Into Faith. This work includes her descriptions of her experience with life during cancer treatment and theological commentary by her grandfather, and is pending publication in June of this year. Finally, an essay Maggie wrote on the definition of beauty was recently published on the Teen Vogue website.

Maggie hopes to pursue a career in pediatric oncology and continue her clinical research and writing. She is unsure which medical school she will attend.

Maggie holds close family ties to the annual Charity Ball, having served as an aide to the king and queen in 2002 and as a maid in 2012. Her sister, Flynn Phillips, served as an aide in 2008, and her sister, Anne Houston Cupit, served as an aide in 2000 and a maid in 2009. Her mother, Ellie Henderson Phillips, served as a maid in 1984 and was queen of the ball in 1986.

King Byron Tillmon Bishop III

King Tillmon Bishop is a son of the late Elder B.T. Bishop Jr. and wife Betty Jean of Franklin County. He has been married to long-time Lincoln County resident Rosemary Owens Bishop since 1975, a physical therapist at King’s Daughters Medical Center, who is also a devoted mother and grandmother (“BeBe”).

They have three children; Matthew, associate pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Macon, Ga., who is married to Kristen Williamson Bishop of Lincoln County; Michael, agency manager for Farm Bureau in Covington County, married to Tonya Odom Bishop of Clinton; and Anna Bishop, pediatric intensive care nurse at Blair Batson Hospital in Jackson.

Tillmon and Rosemary have two grandchildren, Abby, 7, and Parker, 4.

King Tillmon was born in Jackson and, being a pastor’s son, moved around until about age 10, when his family moved to the Franklin County School District for the remainder of his childhood. He graduated from Franklin County High in 1972, Copiah-Lincoln Community College in 1975 and then Mississippi State University in 1977. He also graduated from the LSU School of Banking and the University of Oklahoma School of Economic Development.

Tillmon has served as sales and marketing director for Phelps Dodge Cable and Wire Co. in Starkville, as lending officer for Production Credit Association in Booneville, as director of human resources for the Federal Intermediate Credit Bank for Farm Credit Banks in Ridgeland, as adversely classified loan vice president for Farm Credit in Brookhaven, as vice president/loan officer for Trustmark National Bank in Brookhaven and as executive vice president of the Brookhaven-Lincoln County Chamber of Commerce for six years.

Bishop is the current chancery clerk for Lincoln County. Serving in his fourth term, he often publicly compliments his office staff as the best in Mississippi.

Bishop has been active in recent years in Mississippi, serving as Copiah-Lincoln Community College Alumni Association president; Phi Beta Lambda Businessperson of the Year; president of the Brookhaven Kiwanis Club, now the Brookhaven Servitium Club; chairman and founding member of the Southwest Mississippi Economic Development Partnership, United Way president and campaign chairman; and vice chairman of the Lincoln County Alliance. He also has been a board member of Brookhaven Outreach Ministries and the Commission of Lincoln County’s Region 8.

In addition, he has served as president, vice president and treasurer of the Mississippi Chancery Clerks Association.

An active member of Heucks Retreat Baptist Church, Tillmon currently serves as chairman of the deacons. In the past 20 years, he has “filled in” for more than 25 pastors/churches in Southwest Mississippi as the need arises.

Among his few hobbies, Tillmon enjoys spending much-needed time with his family, working with the church men’s ministries, developing an ongoing Guatemala ministry, doing ceramic painting and collecting antique hand tools and artifacts.

Bishop said he considers it an honor to serve in this year’s fundraising event, particularly in this capacity and said he is especially honored to stand beside a most deserving queen of the ball. He offered a sincere thank you to the Krewe of Ceres for this opportunity. He also said he is grateful for the opportunity to participate in an event that’s main objective is to provide much needed assistance to the community.