Persistence pays off in school and at home for UMMC grad

VICKSBURG, Miss. (VDN) — Warm, tender hearts are sometimes forged from grizzled, hardscrabble upbringings.

Melinda Warner remembers those years fondly.

“My grandparents were sharecroppers in the Eagle Lake community north of Vicksburg when it was mostly farmland,” Warner said. “People in my family were hard workers from sun up to sundown – gardening, feeding the pigs, taking care of the other animals, doing whatever it took.”

Today, her hands are a bit cleaner than her daily schedule – working in the industry for which she’s building skills, commuting to school to finish a degree, being a mother to a 10-year-old daughter with developmental challenges and remembering to catch her truck driver husband home long enough to say goodnight.

“It’s been tough juggling all of it, but I’m used to it because of how I was raised,” she said.

Warner, 39, will slow down just enough in May to walk across the stage with a Bachelor of Science in radiologic sciences from the UMMC School of Health Related Professions. She’s done so while working recently as a student technologist at River Region Medical Center in Vicksburg – a place she once worked as a switchboard operator in what was essentially a previous life.

“In the late 2000s, I was going to Alcorn State University for early childhood education and working my phone job at the hospital,” she said. “I took an interest in the ultrasound workers because I found it to be interesting and wanted to learn about it.”

Radiology was a call she had to put on hold for a while to keep the bills paid.

She worked several years at a Head Start location in Georgia until 2020, when she moved back to Vicksburg to take a clerical job at Hinds Community College Vicksburg Campus and, later, to tend to her mother’s health after a cancer diagnosis.

“I finally took the jump to health care in 2024 when I applied at UMMC,” she said, adding the move wasn’t unexpected to her family. “I’d like to think I’m determined as well as compassionate. I think I get both of those from my mom, who was a certified nursing assistant. When I get determined about a goal, I don’t stop. And so that’s how I look at radiology.”

Her mentors in the program at SHRP marvel at her resiliency.

“Melinda truly embodies the qualities of an exceptional radiologic sciences professional,” said Dr. Kristi Moore, chair and professor of the Department of Radiologic Sciences. “I remember telling her early in the program that she was meant for this profession — and she has proven that to be true in every sense. Melinda will make a meaningful impact on every patient she encounters.”

Curiously enough, Warner’s daily affirmations come from her patients.

“Patients inspire me a lot of the time,” she said. “I had a patient in the ER once who was having various body pains and was disoriented. While I prepped him for a chest X-ray, he suddenly came out of it and told me God had sent me here for him. Everyone in the room just halted. Situations like that bring out my spiritual side, telling the patient everything will be alright.”

After graduation, Warner wants to put her people skills to work in specialized areas such as mammography, where patient comfort is paramount.

“It’s good to spread the warmth even to family members and others in the room to calm the patient,” she said. “It’s so important to do that in the health care field. You have to have the personality for this kind of work, and I feel like I have it.”