Kosciusko native and former drum major Temple Gowan recently donated an honorary chair in memory of her late best friend and Big Red Band bandmate Jeffry Hansford.
Gowan was raised in the McAdams community by her parents, Louis and Janice Gowan. She attended Kosciusko schools from grades K to 12 because her mother was a teacher at Kosciusko Lower Elementary.
As a child, Gowan had a passion for the performing arts. She starred in her first play at Kosciusko Lower Elementary when she was in kindergarten.
“It was a Valentine’s play, and I played ‘The Lost Little Valentine,’” Gowan said.
Her love of the performing arts inspired her to pursue music and theater in middle school and high school.
Under the direction of Mickey Mangum and Kevin Bishop, Gowan was sure she wanted to be in the Big Red Band when she started sixth grade. However, she wasn't sure which instrument she would be chosen to play.
“I didn’t want to play the flute; I wanted to play the drums or clarinet,” she said.
Nevertheless, she was selected for the Big Red Band as a flute player.
By her junior year of high school, Gowan said she excelled at playing the flute despite it not being her instrument of choice.
That same year, Gowan also became best friends with Jeffry Hansford. They were both members of the band.
“He was such a special person and a friend to many,” said Gowan. “Jeffry lived and breathed band and music. Band was a refuge for him, and the band hall itself was a safe haven.”
Gowan, who also served as drum major of the Big Red Band from 1999 to 2000, recalls eating lunch every day with Hansford at the top of the stairs in the band hall.
The two friends were inseparable throughout high school, and according to Gowan, they always had a great time at band clinics, band camp and band trips.
After graduating from Kosciusko High School, she attended Millsaps College and later transferred to the University of Mississippi, where she majored in English.
She became a teacher and taught at Kosciusko High School, where she directed the junior and senior plays. She remembers stage curtains falling apart in the junior high auditorium that were held together with safety pins.
It was in 2008, however, that she lost her dearest friend, Jeffry Hansford, who died at 26 years old. According to Gowan, she kept an old photo of Hansford and herself when she first started teaching. This reminded her that any of her students could be dealing with all kinds of difficulties outside of the walls of her classroom.
After teaching at KHS for three years, she returned to the University of Mississippi for graduate school. There she received her M.Ed. in curriculum and instruction and an M.A. in English.
“After that, I moved to New Orleans and started working at a small alternative school called The Net Charter High School, which serves students who, for various reasons, haven’t been successful in traditional school settings,” she said.
While working in New Orleans, Gowan said she learned so much about teaching, and she got to work with some “great school leaders and awesome kids.”
In 2020, she married Warren Bishop of Kosciusko, who is the son of her old band mentor, Kevin Bishop, and his wife, Juli Bishop.
“Mr. Bishop was my mentor when I was a student and a young teacher, and now he’s my father-in-law, too,” she said.
In 2021, Gowan and her husband, Warren, moved to Singapore where she is a high school English teacher at Singapore American School.
“We love living in Singapore,” she said. “Our favorite things about Singapore are the food, the diversity of people, and the opportunities to travel.”
Last year, the couple also traveled to France, Switzerland, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia. They are currently in India.
Earlier this summer, she and Warren traveled back to Mississippi to spend time with their parents. During their visit, Gowan attended the Mississippi All State Lions Band performance and got to see some of the current renovations.
“It was so nice to see all the work that’s already been done, and I look forward to seeing the whole auditorium decked out with new chairs. The arts in schools are so, so important for the kids, and they all deserve a nice functional space to perform in,” Gowan said.
As part of her trip to Kosciusko, she donated a chair to the Skipworth Performing Arts Center in honor of her friend Hansford, who was a member of the Mississippi All State Lions Band. When he was a member, the band won first place in the International Lions Parade in Honolulu.
“I wanted to honor him and to honor the role that band played in his life,” Gowan said.
After their short trip to Kosciusko, the Gowan’s got on a plane to spend the rest of the summer in India. They recently spent the last couple of days in a small, rural village and got to see how the local people live. Their trip will end in Udaipur, India, “the City of Lakes,” in Rajasthan.
