AC honors 2024 Distinguished Alumni Mary Bralley and Michael Merriman
Two uniquely accomplished individuals have been selected to receive 2024 Distinguished Alumni Awards from Amarillo College.
Mary Bralley, executive director for Window on a Wider World (WOWW), and award-winning music video director/producer and documentarian Michael Merriman will be the guests of honor at AC’s Distinguished Alumni Luncheon at noon on Wednesday, Oct. 16 at the Amarillo Area Foundation, 919 S. Polk St.
Persons interested in attending the luncheon are asked to RSVP by Oct. 5 by contacting 806-371-5924 or acfoundation@actx.edu. Cost of the luncheon is $40 per person.
“Amarillo College’s roll call of Distinguished Alumni is all the more illustrious now that these two highly accomplished individuals have taken their rightful places alongside our honorees of the past,” said Joe Bill Sherrod, AC’s vice president of institutional advancement.
“Mary Bralley and Michael Merriman are distinguished indeed,” he said. “Their stories are an inspiration to us all, and we are honored that AC played an important role in helping shape their incredible journeys.”
Bralley, a 2006 AC graduate, was a single and impoverished mom fresh out of Muleshoe High School when she moved to Amarillo in search of employment in the 1980s. Her College journey began years later and spanned nearly a decade before she graduated from AC at age 40; however, she ultimately ascended not only to serve on the Amarillo ISD school board and preside over Los Barrios de Amarillo, but in 2023 she was named Woman of the Year during the Hispanic Heritage Luncheon.
“It was when my daughter was in middle school and told me that she was not interested in going to college – because I never had – that I made the decision to be a role model for her and enroll at AC,” said Bralley, who subsequently earned a bachelor’s degree from Wayland Baptist University. “It took me almost 10 years at AC because I went when I could afford it, and college was hard, but I did it.
“My daughter was my motivation, but the teachers at AC had the greatest impact,” she said. “And I loved classes where the students studied together and formed a sort of a community. They kept me going, and they kept me young. When I finally received my associate’s degree I cried.”
Bralley was instrumental in the creation of a Los Barrios de Amarillo scholarship fund for students who dream of pursuing higher education, a fund now endowed at $60,000. “You want to make an impact so that it lasts,” she says.
That is among her reasons for becoming involved with such civic organizations as the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce Business Council, the AISD Districtwide Educational Advisory Council, the AmTech Leadership Academy, Pray the City, and more. Her civic-mindedness also sparked her leadership role with WOWW, a far-reaching non-profit dedicated to enriching the education of Texas Panhandle students through arts, science and cultural experiences.
“As a kid, I was not a good student,” said Bralley, “so I know that some students think college is too hard. But I tell students now, like our scholarship recipients, that, yes, it’s hard, but you’re a lot smarter than you think you are. If did it, you can too.”
Merriman, a lifelong artist and musician and product of Tascosa High School, laid the groundwork at AC for a multi-faceted career that began in advertising but swept him, as a music video director, all the way to the country music capital of the world, Nashville, Tenn. There, he directed a slew of videos for the likes of Trace Adkins, Toby Keith, and others, including what the Academy of Country Music declared in 2002 to be the Music Video of the Year – for Brooks & Dunn’s Only in America.
Additionally, Merriman has produced and directed several highly acclaimed documentaries including Johnny Cash: A Story of Faith and Redemption; and Elvis Lives: The 25th Anniversary Concert. Beyond (and before) that, his many clients over the past 30 years have included the likes of Toyota, Saturn, Procter & Gamble, NCAA Basketball, Amarillo National Bank, ASCO, and more.
It’s a career trajectory the 1974 AC graduate could never have envisioned when he first enrolled at the College to major in art. “AC was a really fun place with great professors,” Merriman said. “I have very fond memories of playing the drums in the AC stage band and traveling to play with the band at athletic events.
“Amarillo College opened my eyes to college and very well prepared me for my next educational stop, which was Texas Tech University.”
However, Merriman, who eventually became a graduate of West Texas A&M University, spent only a single semester at Texas Tech before accepting a job as a graphic artist in Amarillo, a job he held for a number of years. Then, in 1980, he and two others left that ad agency to form their own: Holland, Merriman & Christian.
When he agreed to direct and produce a promotional video, pro bono, for the Texas Food Bank, he found out he’d be working with a talented musician named Michael Martin Murphey.
“What happened is we hit it off, and he (Murphy) asked me if I’d be interested in directing his upcoming music video,” Merriman said. “It was an offer that I didn’t have to think about for very long, I basically jumped at the chance, and before I knew it I was one of only a handful of A-list music video directors in Nashville.”
Merriman retired from filmmaking in 2018 and now lives in Amarillo, where he has returned in earnest to one of his earliest loves, painting on canvas. He says that his abstracts, which are based largely on single frames extracted from his many music videos, sell pretty much as swiftly as he’s able to complete them.