A ‘Friend’ of education

Lessons learned at an early age helped propel Holly Parran Cousins into a career in education.

Her grandmother, Maimee Tyler, was an educator at Lane College during the 1930s. Cousins’ mother, Barbara, instilled the importance of education in her, and backed her words with action.

She obtained a college degree after raising five children, while working full time as a cartographer for the Defense Mapping Agency.

After graduation from Webster High School, Cousins earned a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts at Webster University and then her Masters degree in teaching.

She devoted more than 30 years to children’s education, serving 17 years as an elementary school teacher in the Jennings School District.

For her lifelong devotion to the classroom and excellence preparing young people for the future, Holly Cousins has been selected as the 2022 St. Louis American Foundation Lifetime Achiever.

She will be honored during the milestone 35th Annual Salute to Excellence in Education Scholarship and Awards Gala on October 1 at America’s Center in downtown St. Louis.

While working in the Jennings School District at Fairview Elementary School, Cousins created the Special Friends program, which paired teachers and students as mentors and mentees.

After two years of success, the program was rechristened as “Special Friends Extended,” which paired each classroom from kindergarten to 8th grade [over 400 students] with professionals from the St. Louis community.

“They would visit twice a year, and as high impact professional mentors had one-on-one, get-acquainted meetings with their mentee,” she explained.

“They then adjourned to class with that mentee, led a discussion and spoke to that class, guided by lesson plans that were prepared for each grade level on life skills.”

The importance of maintaining academic excellence, good character, citizenship, as well as advice on how to pursue career goals were part of the sessions.

If students had a career path in mind, they gained guidance from mentor’s on how to reach that goal.

The wide range of mentors included lawyers, doctors, engineers from various fields, dentists, architects, journalists, judges, psychiatrists, authors, teachers, elected public officials, first responders, clergy members, business and civic leaders and STEM professionals.

The program was expanded to five Jennings schools, three schools in the Riverview Gardens School District and a high school in Central California for four years.

She accomplished this feat while still teaching at Fairview, receiving no pay for nurturing her innovative project.

Since its modest creation in 2006, the program currently reaches 2,500 students yearly.

Always seeking new ways to help her school district, Cousins raised funds for a playground at Fairview, and library furniture for two other schools.

After retiring from teaching in 2013, Cousins continued the program maintaining a constant presence in schools and children’s lives.

When COVID-19 struck in 2020 and schools were closed or operating on a limited schedule, Cousins “re-engineered and reimagined” her program.

The mentoring portion was reinstated, but only at Jennings High School. She added another dimension to the program: providing scholarships to JHS graduates.

Special Friends Extended has continued as the Holly Cousins Special Friends Extended Scholarship. Established in 2021, it awards two scholarships of $3,000 each to two graduating senior students “who demonstrate high academic achievement, leadership, promise and contribute to a positive social environment.”

Four scholarships have been awarded, one going to Joye Graham. She was a member of the National Honor Society and a former Fairview student.

She won the award along with Marena Keys, a National Honor Society member who was first in her class at JHS in 2022. 

The motto of Special Friends Extended has always been “If they can see it, they can be it,” Cousins said. These words were spoken to her by her mother when Cousins first shared the ideas and elements of the program with her in 2006.

In addition to teaching, Cousins is a painter and has two of her works juried at Coastal Art Gallery in Half Moon Bay, California.

She was a co-recipient of the Frankie Muse Freeman/Norman R Seay Commitment to St. Louis Award in 2017, was awarded the Peabody Locos Leadership in Education Award in 2011.

She served as a Board of Trustee member of the Saint Louis Art Museum from 2004 to 2012 and was a Forest Park Leffingwell Society Hat luncheon co-chair in 2011. She helped raise approximately $500,000 for Forest Park Forever.

She is a member of The Girl Friends, Inc., and The Paupers Club of St. Louis.

Cousins also serves on the Women’s Society Washington University Board.

She was born to Holland and Barbara Tyler Parran, and has four siblings, Cheryl, Holland Jr., Diana, and Faye.

She is married to Steve Cousins, a former partner at Armstrong Teasdale and current CEO of Cousins Allied Strategic Advisors. She has two daughters, Stephanie, an OBGYN physician, and Heather, a film editor. They both reside in California.