Vashti Muse, the wife of Hinds Community College President Vernon Clyde Muse and a faculty member who won praise for the values she instilled in students, was killed in a one-car wreck on U.S. 49 Friday afternoon, the school announced.

Muse, 76, was in a southbound Ford Crown Victoria driven by her husband on the way to the annual meeting of the Mississippi Association of Community and Junior Colleges trustees meeting in Biloxi, the college said.

“Ms. Vashti was a wonderful, much-loved lady,” Dr. Eric Clark, executive director of the State Board for Community and Junior Colleges, said in a statement Friday afternoon. “She will be missed more than we can say.”

The wreck occurred about 12:30 near Carnes, south of Hattiesburg.

“It appeared (Clyde Muse) fell asleep,” said Todd Miller, public information officer for Troop J of the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol. “He ran into a median and struck a tree.”

Vashti Muse was pronounced dead at the scene of the wreck, said Forrest County coroner Butch Benedict. She likely died of multiple internal injuries, he said, but an autopsy was being performed at the Mississippi Crime Lab in Jackson, with preliminary results expected Sunday.

Clyde Muse, 81, was taken to Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg with minor injuries, Miller said. A hospital spokesman Friday said his condition was undetermined.

“It’s been said by many people that she could teach a rock to read, and she was very, very successful,” said Hilton Dyar, dean of Hinds’ Vicksburg Warren County Branch. “The developmental program that was initiated at Hinds was her baby, and it was one of the largest in the state.”

Dyar, a Hinds employee for 30 years, said Muse was known for the values she instilled in her students.

“She was from the old school,” he said. “You didn’t walk in her classroom with a hat on and you didn’t walk in her house with a hat on.

“She taught so much more than reading,” he said, “things that students need besides what they learn in the classroom.”

Donald Oakes, interim superintendent of the Vicksburg Warren School District and a member of the Hinds board of trustees, had known Vashti Muse for 30 years.

“The kids she worked with, the ones that came through that school and needed extra help, she would give them a totally different perspective on education,” he said.

Joe Loviza, retired dean of Hinds’ Vicksburg branch and a member of the VWSD board of trustees, said she “was an excellent teacher.”

Vashti Muse was a former elementary school teacher and an adjunct reading instructor at Hinds’ main campus in Raymond. She was of the Methodist faith.

The Muses’ have been married for 58 years. They have two daughters, Julia Vashti Cole of Philadelphia and Susan Elizabeth Rucker of Oxford; a son, Vernon Clyde Muse Jr. of Raymond; eight grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Wright & Ferguson Funeral Home of Jackson is handling arrangements.