Profile 2017

LIFE IS A BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY From the months of preparation for your arrival to the moment you enter this world, Greenwood Leflore Hospital is here to provide you and your family with a lifetime of quality care.

A Lifetime of Care

1401 River Road • Greenwood, MS • 662-459-7000 • www.glh.org

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Contents

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6 Column: Tim Kalich, 4 Creativity is not the sole province of big cities Richard Beattie, 6 2017 Community Service Award winner Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce, 11 Century-old organization is among the state’s oldest Bank of Commerce, 57 It’s been built on loyalty to and from customers Mission Mississippi, 61 Interracial interfaith group strives to build relationships Margaret Dean 65 Her life has been built on words Life Help, 69 Agency building new programs for children and adults

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65

`çîÉê=ëíçêóW=qÜÉ=`êÉ~íáîÉ=bÅçåçãó Taylor Ricketts, 13 She’s an artist in and out of the kitchen

T.J. Beall Co., 37 Cotton company aims to replace synthetic fibers

Tim and Cindy Tyler, 17 They have built thriving business here and online

Lacy Lary III and Lacy Lary IV, 41 Company is thinking big in cypress wood business

Rice, 21 Area rice growers produce product with local flavor

Beard + Riser, 45 Success has been built on hard work and passion

Bill Bynum, 27 His nonprofit expands into underserved communities Suresh and Dinesh Chawla, 31 Their new project is the most ambitious yet North Sunflower Medical Center, 73 Carmen Oguz is a homegrown leader at hospital

Alan and Lynda Galbraith, 51 He never intended to make a career in home furnishings Delta Design-Build Workshop, 55 Working at the intersection of market forces and public good Sky Lake, 77 Wildlife management area is a hidden natural treasure

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Miss. Valley State University, 81 Social work is the school’s fastest-growing department Greenwood Leflore Hospital, 85 Christine Hemphill took an unlikely road to her current job Ray Nash, 89 His full-service station is the last of its kind in Greenwood Downtown Greenwood, 93 Major projects are changing the face of the area Richard Dillon, 99 His dream car has driven home with prizes Economic development, 101 After a good 2016, there are positive signs for 2017

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Publisher’s note

T

he expression “creative economy” is usually associated with cities such as San Francisco, Seattle or Austin, Texas — places where technology-based companies have attracted lots of bright people whose creative energy grows not only those companies but also the area’s arts and culture.

Creativity, though, is not the sole province of big cities.

Greenwood is a great example of a small city that fosters people with innovative ideas.

The best-known examples are Fred Carl, the founder of Viking Range, and Alex Malouf, who has made John-Richard an international name in high-end home furnishings.

But there are lots of smaller entrepreneurs as well.

That’s why we selected “The Creative Economy” as the cover theme of this year’s Profile edition.

Take farming as an example. It’s one of mankind’s oldest economic enterprises, yet there are farmers and ginners here still finding ways to innovate, such as processing and marketing their own brand of rice or developing an all-natural cotton fiber that can compete with plastic fibers.

In retailing, the Tylers, Cindy and Tim, have shown that traditional brick-and-mortar operations and e-commerce are not mutually exclusive. They do both successfully, right from downtown Greenwood.

Food here, with so many excellent homeowned restaurants, is truly an art form. Taylor Ricketts applies her creativity both in the

On the cover

Staff Editor and Publisher Tim Kalich

Advertising Director Larry Alderman

Managing Editor Charles Corder

Advertising Sales Linda Bassie Helen Gwin Amy Pleasants

City Editor David Monroe Sports Editor Bill Burrus

Graphic Designers Demario Greer Anne Miles

Lifestyles Editor Ruthie Robison

Production Manager Ben Gilton

Staff Writers Bob Darden Kathryn Eastburn

Circulation Manager Shirley Cooper

Contributors Johnny Jennings Andy Lo Susan Montgomery

kitchen and on canvases. Her eclectic Fan & Johnny’s was recently one of five Greenwood restaurants to make a bicentennial-inspired list of the best places to eat in Mississippi. Easily a couple of others could have been included.

These are just some of the success stories we try to tell in Profile, our annual effort to shine a large, positive light on the people, businesses and institutions that make Greenwood and the surrounding area such a unique and wonderful place.

A good community newspaper should be both a town’s biggest critic and its biggest cheerleader. Profile is the single largest project we do each year as a cheerleader.

Its 104 pages emphasize what works well in our community, not what’s broken. It features in a big way the people who make the area’s economy and quality of life better. It is filled with good news that might otherwise get overshadowed by the crises and conflicts that often grab the most attention, and thus the biggest headlines.

There’s been plenty of those kinds of headlines this past year. It’s been a tough time politically in the country and a rough one economically in Mississippi. But if anyone needs an antidote to discouragement, all you have to do is read this edition cover to cover.

We appreciate all those who let us tell their stories. We especially thank those advertisers who support this project, now in its 31st year.

There would be no Profile edition without them.

Their successes, as told in their advertisements, are a big part of the story, too. Ô qáã=h~äáÅÜ

Business Manager Eddie Ray Editorial and business offices: P.O. Box 8050 329 U.S. 82 West Greenwood, MS 38935-8050 (662) 453-5312

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2017 Community Service Award winner: Richard Beattie

Golden Rule living

Richard Beattie, right, stands with his son, Josh, in front of the former site of National Picture & Frame Co., where Richard Beattie once worked. Inset: In a photo from 1986, Josh urges people to “Buy National.” The building on Commerce Street is now occupied by Greenwood Leflore Recycling, and Richard Beattie said the former location of his office now has only a soft-drink machine and a filing cabinet.

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Life of service has biblical roots

ichard Beattie says his interest in community service stems from a well-known principle.

“One of the things that I remember most when I was growing up was my parents instilling in me the idea from the Bible of the Golden Rule — about treating others the way that you would want to be treated,” he said. “That’s

something I’ve always read in the Bible and believed wholeheartedly — the idea of serving others.”

He got involved with community endeavors in Greenwood more than 30 years ago after starting work at National Picture & Frame Co. Since then, he has left his mark through work with First Presbyterian Church,

the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce, the Community Kitchen, Greenwood Little Theatre and other organizations. He also thought up the Celebrity Waiter Dinner, which raises money for the Community Kitchen, and has been a prominent organizer of Bikes, Blues & Bayous, a popular event for cyclists in

the region.

For all that hard work, he has been selected as this year’s Community Service Award winner by a vote of the Commonwealth staff. v v v

Beattie, 65, who calls himself a “repa-

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However, after doing some substitute teaching, he realized he wanted to do something else.

For a while, he worked as a manufacturer’s representative for Jack Shine and Associates, representing companies that made houseware products.

One of those companies was National Picture & Frame Co. He met Jesse Luxton — who was the company’s vice president and later became president — and was offered a sales job in Greenwood.

National eventually became Greenwood’s second-largest employer, but it was a small operation when Beattie moved from Pittsburgh.

“It was only 11 or 12 million dollars in sales when I came here, and they needed a sales manager,” he said.

“They were looking for a young guy.

Didn’t have to have experience, thank goodness, because I didn’t — and I wanted to get in sales. I thought that was a glamorous life, traveling around the country and flying on planes and staying in hotels and all that sort of thing.”

It turned out not to be as glamorous as he thought, but he said he enjoyed the work and adjusted to the change in culture from moving to the Deep South.

Luxton made a big impression on him, too, particularly when it came to community involvement.

“I was never a big joiner,” Beattie said. “I didn’t join a lot of clubs in high school, and I wasn’t an athlete or anything like that. I didn’t belong to all these different organizations that kids like to have at the bottom of their picture in the yearbook.”

But he found ways to make a difference in Greenwood. He joined the Kiwanis Club and also got involved in the chamber committee that organizes the annual 300 Oaks Road Race, eventually becoming that committee’s president. The race has become the largest event of its kind in the state, and Beattie takes pride in his efforts to get

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Aubrey Whittington The Rev. Milton Glass Barbara Biggers Bill Crump Dr. John Fair Lucas III Belva Pleasants Dale Persons Alix H. Sanders Dr. V.K. Chawla Dr. Alfio Rausa William Ware Hank Hodges Allan Hammons Mary Ann Shaw

more businesses to participate.

The organizational part of it appealed to him.

“That’s always been my thing — organizing, doing plans and executing plans and making things run smoother and getting more people involved to do the task and so forth,” he said. “The marketing aspect of it, promoting it — that’s what I like to do. And I think I’m fairly good at it.” v v v

National Picture & Frame filed for bankruptcy in 2000 and was acquired

by Wisconsin-based competitor Uniek Inc. Uniek closed one of National’s two Greenwood plants a few months later and closed the other in 2002.

In 2000, Beattie, who had become vice president for sales and marketing at National, found another local place to put his skills to use: Viking Range.

“The skill set that I had and the experience I had translated to no other company in town other than Viking,” he said. “And it just so happened, at the very time I was needing employment, they were needing somebody to head up the new venture of the housewares product line. So it was great timing. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here in Greenwood today.”

Viking also encouraged community activity, allowing time for employees to attend meetings and even making facilities available to host some of them.

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The Rev. Calvin Collins Joe Seawright Fred Carl Jr. Donnie Brock Pann Powers Janice Moor William Sutton Charles Deaton Alex Malouf Irvin Whittaker Harold Smith Charles Bowman Howard Evans Aven Whittington

Beattie remained at Viking until April 2012. While he was there, the company’s chief financial officer, Brian Waldrop, pitched him and Bret Freeman the idea of organizing a bike competition, maybe a triathlon. They decided a triathlon would require too much work, but Beattie said they liked the idea that “maybe we can have a little bike ride — get 25 to 50 people to come out and ride bikes with us.’”

That goal turned out to be modest; the first Bikes, Blues attracted more than 200 riders in 2008. It has continued to grow since then, reaching a total of 947 last year. It also has had a number of repeat participants, and three reasons have been cited often in surveys: flat terrain, good event organization and hospitality.

The next goal is to have 1,000 riders.

Beattie said he takes great pride in the event’s growth, although he never thought early on that it would receive such great recognition statewide.

“I didn’t have any idea people from Jackson would come up here and say, ‘What are y’all doing up here that you get so many people?’” he said.

But he stressed that many people help make the event what it is, including representatives of the chamber, Greenwood Leflore Hospital and others. When the number of volunteers is added to the law enforcement officers and others who help in various ways, the total is nearly 300 people.

“I always like to mention how many

people we have,” Beattie said. “It’s impressive for this size town.”

Waldrop estimated he had known Beattie for 15 to 20 years; in fact, it was Beattie who got him into riding about 10 years ago.

He said Beattie is “all about helping his community” and has used his sales skills well for the benefit of Bikes, Blues and Bayous as well as Greenwood Little Theatre and others.

“When he comes to see you, you know it’s a good cause, and the money’s going to be used the right way,” Waldrop said. v v v

Beattie said church has always been a big part of his life.

He grew up Baptist, and his wife also is a former Baptist. But when they came to Greenwood and looked at different churches, they found a home at First Presbyterian.

“One of the things that impressed me about the church was the role that it plays in the community — all the people in the church who are doing things of community service,” he said.

Beattie began working with the Community Kitchen after Jeff Lambdin stepped down as First Presbyterian’s representative. While trying to think of fundraising ideas, he hit on something that someone he had known had done in Chicago: a dinner featuring celebrity waiters. Of course, Greenwood doesn’t have the access to big stars that Chicago does, but each year people dress up as celebrities to serve the meals.

The first dinner was held in 2006, and it has continued to be successful; the 2016 event, held at The Historic Elks Building, raised between $6,000 and $7,000.

Carlee Bailey, the executive director of the kitchen, called Beattie “a diamond in the rough” who is always willing to help.

“You really couldn’t ask for a better person,” Bailey said.

Beattie also has brought his marketing and fundraising skills to Greenwood Little Theatre. He had been a member of the organization,

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The exterior of the W.M. Whittington Jr. Playhouse has never had a significant renovation in 60 years. The Renaissance 60 fundraising campaign, which started last year, has raised about $40,000. Beattie said they will need much more money to do everything they want to do, but they plan to start spending some this year.

“Hopefully we don’t have to do it but once every 60 years,” he said. “But the community is responding, and we’re going to get it back to where we’re proud of it like when it was first built.”

Linda Perkins, president of Greenwood Little Theatre, said working with him has been a pleasure.

“He has great ideas and is a great organizer,” Perkins wrote in an email.

“Richard has spent many hours working on various GLT projects including our current capital campaign, Renaissance 60. GLT will be in great hands as he assumes the position of president for the 2017-2018 season in June.” v v v

Since 2012, Beattie has run Beattie Marketing, an independent business, on a part-time basis.

The main reason he no longer holds a full-time job is that he was diagnosed

well as the weddings of Douglas’ daughter and son.

“He only does excellent work,” Douglas said. “He’s not going to do it if it’s not excellent.”

Douglas said Beattie also was a fine elder at the church and has shown his organizational skills by planning the annual Kirkin’ O’ the Tartans.

“He is bright; he is engaging; he is very detail-oriented,” Douglas said. “He is a person of great integrity. He knows how to get something done.” v v v

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with Parkinson’s disease in 2014, although he said his symptoms are not as severe as some other people’s.

Biking helps mitigate some of his balance problems, but he can’t bike as long or as fast as he once did because the decreased muscle stamina.

“You know it’s incurable, and all you can do is fight against it,” he said.

Even with that limitation, he has remained active with volunteer work.

In fact, “more opportunities have come my way to fill in my time, so I’m as busy now as I was when I was employed full-time,” he said.

He also stays busy with hobbies including photography and videography, helping to preserve memories for his family, his church and others.

Dr. Rusty Douglas, pastor of First Presbyterian, said Beattie has shot video of a number of events there as

Beattie and his wife, Christie, have been married for 41 years.

“Unbeknownst to me, she grew up about 40 miles from me, but we met in Kentucky and eventually got married,” he said.

They have one son, Josh, who lives in Greenwood and has three children.

Beattie said they moved a number of times in the first 10 years of their marriage, but he has no desire to move now, since he has grandchildren and many friends in Greenwood.

“What we found when we came here was a different experience from what I hear from a lot of people,” he said. “We never felt so much like strangers in a strange place. We felt like people welcomed us into the social circles. I’ve heard people complain about that — that it’s so cliquish — but we never felt any of that.” n

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Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce

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Centennial celebration Chamber has played important role in community O ne of the oldest organizations of its kind in the state, the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce is celebrating 100 years.

“This chamber is the bedrock of improving the quality of place and quality of life in our community,” said Beth Stevens, who is in her 14th year as executive director of the Chamber of Commerce. “You won’t find another organization here that shares our comprehensive mission and brings together so many people from all parts of the community to work on its improvement and growth.”

The Chamber of Commerce is composed of 495 members and has 20 board members and four officers.

“To be a part of that is so fulfilling,” said Stevens. “Going to work each day with a sense of purpose and a satisfaction that we are making a positive impact is very gratifying for me. But, it’s not just about me. It’s so much bigger than me. I’m just a small cog on the big wheel that turns every day here in our community.”

Over the last 100 years, the Chamber of Commerce has maintained its mission — to promote business, improve the quality of life, assist with

the growth and development of the community and work to stimulate the local economy.

“Our goal is to be successful in everything that we do, and the people who invest in our organization make that possible for us,” said Stevens. “When people hear the words ‘Chamber of Commerce’ in any community, they know it’s synonymous with stability, business growth, community quality of life and progress. That name ‘chamber’ has a good connotation associated with it.”

Although the Chamber of Commerce officially began in 1917, it had a prede-

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cessor — the Greenwood Business League.

In 1893, a group of local businessmen organized and began meeting for the purpose of advancing the best interests of Greenwood. They contributed to local business enterprises and charities.

“It started out as a business club,” said Mary Carol Miller, a Greenwood historian. “The chamber of commerce in America was a new concept at that time.”

Thirteen years later, the Greenwood Business League was formally created in 1906 after a large meeting was held in Greenwood City Hall. The league

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The major contributions made by the Greenwood Business League included getting a better railroad schedule to Greenwood.

The Greenwood Commonwealth reported, “A motion was adopted inviting Supt. King of the Y. & M.V. Railroad to visit Greenwood the following week, and in the event it was not convenient for him to come, (a committee) was named to go to Memphis and present him the resolution adopted at the mass meeting, relative to running a passenger train from Tutwiler to Jackson and return each day.”

The league was overseen by T. Ellwood Frazier, a well-known New Orleans newspaperman, who was elected the first secretary of the league. It operated under the name until Nov. 30, 1917, when it was formally changed to the Chamber of Commerce.

The group declared that the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce’s purpose was “for the advancement of commercial, industrial and civic interests of Greenwood and the vicinity and to have a part in representing the city in discussion of state and national questions, which affected its local or general welfare.

“The Chamber of Commerce is headquarters for all public spirited movements and is a general community center,” its mission stated.

The first president was Henderson Baird, who was the president and founder of Henderson & Baird Hardware Company.

“It was a group of business owners who wanted to promote the town,” said Miller. “And it made it through the Great Depression.”

Miller’s mother, Sara Criss, began working at the Chamber of Commerce in 1941. She worked under one of the chamber’s best-known executive secre-

taries, Botts Blackstone, who took over the position in the 1930s.

“He was a real character. He was one of Greenwood’s all-time great characters,” said Miller.

He hired Criss when she was about 20 years old. World War II was starting, and Criss’ fiance was in Europe fighting in the war.

“Botts kept her so busy, which kept her from sitting at home and worrying,” said Miller.

Criss worked at the Chamber of Commerce for about nine years, and Miller recalls her mother saying she loved every minute of it.

“The chamber was like the welcome wagon and the economic promoter for the town,” said Miller.

One of the things Blackstone was known for was his effort in landing the Air Force base in Greenwood during World War II. Many towns wanted to be the location of an Air Force base during that time, and it was a big coup for Greenwood when the city was selected.

The government would come and pour money into an area and bring in several thousand people, who could not all be housed on the base. It created jobs and fueled the local economy with the extra additions shopping in Greenwood.

“The chamber became the clearing house for the officers who needed housing, which put my mother and Botts front and center in welcoming these people from all over and finding them places to live,” said Miller. “They were liaisons of the base, and the people who were stationed here went back to their homes raving about Greenwood, and some of them even stayed.”

Miller said the economic impact from having the base in today’s dollars would be in the 10s of millions.

“There was about 3,000 people living there,” she said. “They bought groceries, went to the movie theaters and bought clothes. It was a huge thing for the

chamber to get that in here.”

After the war, Miller said, the chamber began focusing on getting industries to Greenwood.

“It was not always an easy sell,” she said.

Greenwood was mostly an agricultural community, and agriculture was becoming more mechanized.

In 1955, the Chamber of Commerce was able to help bring in Conmar Products Corporation, a zipper factory.

“That was a huge thing to get a Northern factory to come to Greenwood,” said Miller.

Soon Medart Lockers came to Greenwood, followed by Baldwin Piano & Organ and National Picture & Frame, just to name a few. Many of these industries employed about 400 to 500 people and also brought in new residents to the area.

“Greenwood went from being an agriculture area to a more balanced agricultural area,” said Miller. “They had to find better- paying jobs, less physically demanding, and jobs that came with the benefits of these big companies, and the chamber was critical in getting each of them here.”

The Chamber of Commerce has not only helped to bring industries to Greenwood over the years, but it has also maintained and grown many beloved events, such as the Roy G. Martin Delta Band Festival and Christmas Parade; Stars & Stripes; the 300 Oaks Road Race; Bikes, Blues & Bayous; and the Viking Half Marathon.

During the past several years, the Chamber of Commerce has revitalized its Young Emerging Leaders of Leflore (YELL) youth leadership program, and more than 250 high school juniors have graduated from it.

The chamber was a part of the research and implementation of the Greenwood-Leflore Recycling Program.

It also added Bikes, Blues & Bayous to its list and has helped grow the event to

a record attendance and recognition as the state’s largest event of its kind.

The chamber has reformatted its annual meeting to add the Taste of Greenwood to highlight local restaurants and caterers and added new awards, including Big and Small Business of the Year.

The chamber recently partnered with the Greenwood-Leflore Industrial Board to get the ACT Work-Ready Certification in the community and is working more to focus on the needs of area small businesses through its Chamber University seminar series.

“I attribute our success to our willingness to stay relevant and to be able to change and adapt to the needs of our community through the years,” said Stevens. “We’ve worked hard to listen to our community and to find ways to continue improving upon what we do based on the needs of businesses and residents that we hear every day.”

The Chamber of Commerce also has big plans for the future, Stevens said.

“With our new membership investment structure, additional funding will allow us to do more things like small business grants, more resources and workshops geared towards business and personal growth,” she said.

This year, the chamber will also launch its new Women in Business Council.

“We are looking at further strengthening our partnerships with our city, county and tourism entities to expand on things we are already doing well,” Stevens said.

Throughout the years, the chamber’s goals have continued to remain the same — promoting Greenwood and Leflore County.

“The men who started this organization 100 years ago had a very focused mission, and we’re still laser-focused on what we’re trying to do,” said Stevens.

“It’s just fun to be able to continue to expand on that and grow.” n

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The Creative Economy: Taylor Ricketts

Art of the meal She’s creator in and out of kitchen I

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t’s not easy mixing art and commerce. But for artist/chef Taylor Bowen Ricketts, there’s not a choice.

A James Beard Award semi-finalist for her New Delta cooking, owner of the Greenwood creative eatery Fan & Johnny’s, and a painter who has shown her work at the Museum of the Mississippi Delta and fine art galleries across the South, Ricketts sees the creative impulse that drives her cooking and her painting as one and the same.

And mixing those creative enterprises with the more functional aspects of building a business raises unique challenges.

Like trying to open a restaurant on a street the city has decided to dismantle to build new sidewalks. With no warning. Like dodging backhoes, cement mixers and bricklayers to get through the doors for more than four months.

“We’ve actually had people fall,” Ricketts said of the construction zone that surrounded Fan & Johnny’s from the time it opened in July until near the end of 2016.

Then there are the more philosophical choices that must be made by restaurateurs who seek to keep their businesses viable: surefire sellers or more adventurous cuisine?

“If I had to make only those dishes I knew would easily sell, that would frustrate me the most,” Ricketts said.

“It would be like having to paint only landscapes because you know they’ll sell.”

At Fan & Johnny’s, Ricketts has approached that problem by offering a line of po-boy sandwiches and salads that customers can rely on, and a changing lineup of plate lunches, palettes on which she can experiment, creating new flavors and taste experiences.

Case in point: A recent plate lunch choice featured a steaming piece of fried catfish atop a caper-studded risotto, with a black-eyed pea creation and a splash of basil vinaigrette on the side.

“I tried putting the flavors of tartar sauce in the risotto,” Ricketts said.

Or consider another plate lunch: crawfish etouffee with white beans over creamy polenta, topped with fried parsley — slightly crunchy and cooked to a deep forest green. v v v

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A native of Jackson and a graduate of University of Mississippi with a fine arts degree in painting, Ricketts came to Greenwood nearly 12 years ago.

In Oxford she’d worked with several food outlets, including the iconic Yocona River Inn, and in Greenwood her first venture was Delta Fresh Market on Park Avenue.

“Things were very different then,” Ricketts said.

“There was a more vibrant, somewhat subsidized economy that made it easier for creative businesses to survive.”

The subsidy to which she refers came from Viking Range and its founder, Greenwood native son Fred Carl Jr., who for a number of years helped start businesses across the community to meet the needs and desires of an influx of employees and visitors coming from outside the Delta.

Delta Fresh Market, she observed, was “an optimistic, aggressive market before its time, mixing dining with groceries and a fresh product line.”

That experiment and those that came after helped to put Greenwood on the culinary map.

“When ‘The Help’ was being filmed here, people who came from outside Mississippi to the Delta appreciated the creativity and creative businesses in the area,” Ricketts said, “sometimes even more than locals.”

That is not to knock locals, she emphasized, especially loyal ones dedicated to good and adventurous food choices. They supported Ricketts’ second venture at Delta Bistro, in the Main Street location that now houses Fan & Johnny’s, the restaurant that put her on the map. v v v

This was Ricketts’ heyday. Starting in 2008 with the opening of Delta Bistro, acclaim began to pour in.

In 2011, Ricketts was nominated and became a semifinalist for a James Beard Award for Best ChefSouth.

In 2012, Garden & Gun magazine ranked a recipe of Ricketts’ as one of its Top 10 Southern Dishes.

Judge John T. Edge, dean of the Southern Foodways Alliance in Oxford, waxed rhapsodic about Ricketts’ Rainy Day Minestrone and its binding ingredient, sweet potato greens grown in Mound Bayou.

“Conjure a delicate cross between spinach, mustard, and purslane and you’re close,” Edge said, “Those starchy greens, which some farmers appropriately call leaves, bind this minestrone. And there’s much to bind in Taylor Bowen Ricketts’s kitchen-sink soup of lima beans, navy beans, red beans, carrots, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes. Bobbing here and there are rounds of venison sausage, which offer a gamy counterpoint to all that natural sweetness.”

Southern Living magazine named Delta Bistro among the best 100 restaurants in the South.

Ricketts’ recipe for her signature blackeyed pea

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cakes, best served with comeback sauce, appeared in Martha Foose’s best-selling cookbook, “Screen Doors and Sweet Tea.” The rising chef’s creative output extended to her painting as well. In 2013, she was part of a show at Cassidy Bayou Gallery in Sumner, exhibiting her oil on metal works depicting Moon Lake scenery. Her painting “High Cotton V” became part of the collection at downtown’s Alluvian Spa. Always, the walls of her restaurants served as galleries for her work.

In 2015, Delta Bistro morphed into the more casual small-plate bar and bistro, Delta Bistropub, located on Howard Street.

Ricketts parted ways with the Bistropub and, about a year later, opened her own place, Fan & Johnny’s, in the location of the original Delta Bistro.

Media and customers alike continue to link the chef who brought fame to Delta Bistro and Delta Bistropub with those institutions, though one is defunct and the other has a new chef now.

“Thousands of followers on Facebook think I’m still there,” Ricketts said. v v v

Born of a need for change, Fan & Johnny’s has returned Ricketts the chef to the Main Street building she still loves and to her cooking roots, classic Cajun and Creole flavors absorbed in the kitchen of

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her Louisiana grandparents — you guessed it, grandmother Fan and grandfather Johnny.

In a way, she says, she has evolved back to her original goal of running a non-corporate, family-based, team-oriented restaurant that allows its staff to create a particular atmosphere.

The walls of Fan & Johnny’s are covered with Ricketts’ work as well as her husband Darby’s mixedmedia creations. Creative dishes flow out of the kitchen daily, at lunch only, and regulars as well as visitors to Greenwood —- those beloved outsiders who look to the town for culinary excellence and can track her down — are happy for Ricketts’ return, despite unforseen complications that have made the restaurant opening tenuous and even treacherous.

“We opened on July 11,” Ricketts said. “The construction on Main Street, right outside our building, started just a few weeks later.

“Business dropped in half.”

Ricketts said that although she is happy with what she is creating at Fan & Johnny’s and customers seem pleased as well, she is waiting to make any decisions about how to grow the business.

“I’m not rushing to any judgment right now,” she said. “Being in a creative economy, you have to constantly analyze your customers to discover what they want. And I don’t really know yet who would be a customer here if not for the chaos outside.”

For now, she supplements revenue for the restaurant with catering and personal cooking gigs through Sela Cooking, an offshoot of the business. She stages occasional pop-up dinners at the restaurant. They always sell out, she said, and are more profitable than lunch.

But decisions about whether to expand hours or change anything must wait, she said, until she can evaluate what normal looks like with passable sidewalks and an approachable front door.

Most importantly, Ricketts hopes to hold true to her goal of balancing art and commerce in a way that doesn’t compromise creativity.

“I don’t want to choose between making more money and making more art,” she said. “I don’t want the business of either occupation —- painting or cooking — to take over. That goes against my nature, my desire for simplicity.”

When the street and sidewalks on Main looked more like a war zone than a business district, Taylor and Darby Ricketts decorated the handrail above the plank walkway into Fan & Johnny’s with ribbons made of torn strips of cotton fabric. Hand-painted on the rough boards below, a simple message: “When life gives you lemons ...” n

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The Creative Economy: Tim and Cindy Tyler

Sharing Mississippi

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Couple built thriving retail, online business

W

hen Tim and Cindy Tyler were first getting their business off the ground, they had been married just a few months.

In the midst of a chaotic week of packing and shipping boxes in a toosmall space, Tim lost his wedding ring.

“We were in this crowded hallway, filling orders,” Cindy said. “Tim’s parents were helping us out.”

A few weeks later, Cindy got a call from a customer, a woman in Kentucky. Or maybe it was North Carolina.

“She told me, ‘I just got my package

from you, and somebody who works there must have lost their wedding ring. I found it in my package.’”

Little did the customer know that the company had only two employees — husband and wife.

That was back when the couple knew their client list by heart — and when they had far fewer products for sale than they do now at their successful retail and online business, Mississippi Gift Company.

“Our goals haven’t really changed over the years,” Cindy said. “The niche is still the same — all Mississippi prod-

ucts for people who love Mississippi.”

But technology and the times have changed, and with them, the business has grown and adapted.

“We got into e-commerce when it first started,” Tim said.

The company started its first website 20 years ago, in 1997. Now its website is a constantly changing online catalog featuring nearly every one of the hundreds of items found at the flagship store on Howard Street in downtown Greenwood.

Anyone, from Hong Kong to Houston, can order gourmet cheese straws made

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in Yazoo City with the click of a mouse.

Tim said the staff at the store is trained to support the website.

“Everyone knows how to take pictures of the products and how to upload them to the site.”

The company used to mail over 20,000 printed catalogs each year, a huge expense that the internet has changed.

Now, on the inside page of the small catalog the company publishes at Christmas, beneath the hashtag @pÜ~êÉjáëëáëëáééá, Mississippi Gift Company lists its online addresses on

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Still, the lure of Mississippi Gift Company remains the same. It’s a place where people can experience some aspect of Mississippi, whether through food or home decorating items, T-shirts, jewelry, pottery, or Mississippi-made bath and beauty items.

Tim had been working for the Boy Scouts when he and Cindy married on Nov. 6, 1993. He had an idea to start a company that would sell Mississippi-made products to organizations for fundraisers. On Thanksgiving weekend, the couple launched Mississippi Product Sales. At the time the couple was beginning to look at Mississippi-made food products, the gift basket and gourmet foods market was just beginning to take off.

“We’ve been blessed by good timing,” Tim said.

Soon Tim reached out to corporations, including Viking Range in Greenwood, to offer his company’s line of products for gift baskets. Viking liked the baskets and liked Tim — so much so that they hired him in 1994. He still works for the company as its director of public relations and marketing.

The Tylers’ fledgling company continued to grow with Cindy running the day-to-day business, and in 1995 it moved to the building that now houses Fincher’s, across the street on Howard. The first catalogs went out that year.

Meanwhile, most downtown retailers in Greenwood had relocated to the Park Avenue corridor.

“Juanita’s bridal gifts was downtown, and we were here,” Cindy said. “We were the only two.”

It was less expensive running the business out of a downtown building, and it fulfilled a passion of Cindy’s to be part of a movement to bring businesses back to downtown. When Main Street Greenwood

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was established in 1993, Cindy was one of its first board members.

In 2002, Mississippi Gift Company moved to its current location, on the same downtown block as the run-down Hotel Irving, which Viking bought and rechristened as a luxury boutique hotel, The Alluvian.

As downtown Greenwood came back to life, thanks largely to Viking’s overwhelming presence under the leadership of native son Fred Carl Jr., so did Mississippi Gift Company, expanding its inventory of unique Mississippi-made gift items, as well as its corporate customer base.

The recession of 2008-2009 proved to be a major challenge to the company’s business model.

“The amount of money businesses spent sending out gift boxes was huge before 2008,” Tim said. “That changed dramatically with the economic collapse.”

A big break came for the Tylers when Cindy was invited to participate in Mistletoe Marketplace, an annual gift bonanza organized by the Junior League and held during the holidays at Jackson’s Trade Mart.

“You usually have to apply to be a part of it a year ahead of time,” Cindy said. “I got a call one month before the show saying somebody had backed out and asking if I could participate.”

Cindy pulled together in one month what most retailers spend a year preparing for, and the exposure for the Mississippi Gift Company proved to be worth the effort. She continued doing the marketplace for seven years.

Now her focus is largely on the retail presence and on what she does best: choosing items for the store’s unique line of products.

“Our inventory has evolved over the years,” she said. “It was mainly food at the beginning; then we added pottery, then books, T-shirts, jewelry and so on.

“We look for trends. A lot of people come to me when they have an item they want to sell.”

Tim says Cindy is “very particular” in her choice of what she will carry in the store. For an item to pass muster, it must be of high quality.

Food, they agree, is still probably the biggest seller.

Shelves in the store’s back corner are loaded with Delta and Mississippi items such as barbecue sauce and dry rubs from Doe’s Eat Place in Greenville, shrimp and fish sauces and salad dressing from Lusco’s, and specialty items such as Hoover Sauce from a tiny grocery store in the town of Louise.

Tim says marketing Mississippi Gift Company is relatively straightforward and simple.

“The company kind of stands apart because there’s no one else doing what we’re doing,” he said.

“Recently we’ve tried to get across the message ‘Keep all your tax dollars in the state.’”

“And people are fascinated with the cultural aspect, what some of the things in here mean,” Cindy said.

“Like door monograms — it’s a Mississippi thing.”

Most importantly, the company’s mission drives its message: It’s about sharing Mississippi with your friends and family. Without the community of Greenwood and the Tylers’ friends and family, Tim said, the company would not be here.

Cindy says Mary Ann Mobley, a Biloxi native and the 1959 Miss America, who died in 2014, was a great customer who called frequently to make orders, because she loved Mississippi and loved the store.

“I never met her,” Cindy said. “She just loved what we did.”

Sometimes it’s just about making a down-home connection with a customer.

“I’ll get a call and someone will say, ‘Can I just sit and talk to you on the phone for a while? I love your accent.’” n

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Local flavor

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The Creative Economy: Rice

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Y

Does Delta-grown product have unique taste?

ou’ve heard of “farm to table” and “farm to fork,” the catch phrases for locally produced food available from garden plots and through farmers markets. Now rice is joining that group of foods, and you will find it at shops and restaurants around Greenwood and the Delta.

It’s different from regular grocery-store rice because it is not mixed with rice from other producers around the country or the world. Some would maintain the Delta rice has a specific flavor and scent. Why not? Mississippi is a flavorful state.

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The three men who own Delta Blues Rice had pulled up chairs and stools in a farm shop near their headquarters off Highway 8 between Ruleville and Cleveland.

The subject of grits came up — not hominy or corn grits but those from broken pieces of rice.

“It’s not the rejects,” said Hugh Arant, who was speaking in the company of his brother and nephew, David Arant Sr. and David Arant Jr. Delta Blues Rice grits are deliberately ground, and the Arants love them.

“Look, are you talking about shrimp and grits? You try rice grits,” Hugh said.

David Sr. eats rice grits for breakfast, and David Jr. likes leftover garlic cheese grits reheated for the same daily meal. “Add a little milk to it,” he said.

Hugh said, “Rice is not sexy. Rice has always been on your plate. But until you get ahold of some good rice ...” and he began to tell how a New York City chef who emailed them about the rice he had received from them. He wrote that when he opens a bag, the rice smells fresh. “How many times do you hear that?” Hugh asked.

“There is a huge market for this kind of stuff,” he said.

They didn’t understand that until three or four years ago. The farmers have been raising rice for decades.

David Jr. is a fourth-generation farmer, and the Arants have a 3,800-acre place where they also grow soybeans and corn. Most of their rice crop is shipped to buyers for processing into the white rice found in plastic bags in grocery stores. Then, at the end of 2013, the Arants decided to see if they could sell their own rice to stores and restaurants.

David Jr., a licensed engineer, had

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returned to the Delta with his family after living and working in Jackson since graduating from Mississippi State University in 2006. “We were sitting right over there one morning, just talking about how our friends liked rice,” he said.

Who actually made the suggestion?

The men weren’t sure. They knew they could mill the rice because they had been doing it for themselves and their friends for decades.

“We have been milling for probably 35 years, but is wasn’t on a commercial scale,” Hugh said. Friends, he said, “always seemed to want more.” He joked that he wasn’t sure whether their requests were motivated by “the taste of the rice or price of it.”

Then Whole Foods set up shop in Jackson, and one of those friends noticed the store was handling locally supplied food but didn’t offer rice. The friend sent a message, “Whole Foods

wants your rice.”

“That gave us a kind of catalyst,” David Jr. said.

At the time, they were using an old mill that produced white rice, but this is has been replaced by more modern equipment. The Arants currently offer white rice, white rice grits, brown rice and brown rice grits. It’s packaged simply in 1- and 2-pound tan bags with labels that suggest, “Feed the body.

Feel the soul.” David Jr.’s wife, Rebekkah, has some input in the labeling, and they credit her with thinking of the name Delta Blues Rice. It has local, national and international appeal.

David Jr., who heads the operation, called the experience “a learning process,” and his father said they have made a large and careful financial investment. After the rice is harvested, dried, milled and packaged — all on the farm — it has to be supplied to cus-

tomers, who either are operating restaurants or stores or are consumers ordering from Delta Blues Rice’s website.

They all try to educate people.

For example, Hugh said, “A lot of people think that white rice and brown rice are two different things.” After rice is harvested and dried, its husk is removed. It has a bran covering. This is milled off for white rice. Brown rice is more nutritious, but it takes longer to cook.

David Jr. said, “They are one and the same. A lot of people just don’t have any idea of how food gets on their plate. It’s amazing that people don’t know there is rice growing in Mississippi.”

What makes their rice different is that it is not commingled with rice from other parts of the country and the world. It’s local. It has the taste of the Stoneville variety they use and perhaps of the soil and water in which it is grown.

“We are in restaurants from Dallas to New York. Not a hundred or anything, but we are in a few. I just shipped some to the state of Washington last week,” David Jr. said.

Already, there have been awards as well as rewards. David Jr. has been cited by both Garden & Gun and Southern Living magazines. He’s pleased and flattered and hopes the publicity will bolster the group’s marketing efforts.

“We get a lot of internet orders,” he remarked, explaining that it is his job to get the product milled, packaged and out. He also works on the farm, so he’s multitasking, with occasional part-time help.

“We are just three years into it. I know we have increased sales 100 percent a year or more,” he said.

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Lawrence Wagner, 24, pulled up a map of his family place near Minter City and showed how the water flows throughout it, remaining on rice fields that might have been drained before planting the 2017 crop.

But he and his dad, Mike, 55, retain water on purpose. They will plant rice over it by broadcasting seed by air. In this manner, the soil and the crop receive the benefits of huge flights of snow geese that fertilize the land while feeding there during the winter months.

“All of the water that comes onto the farm stays on the farm,” Lawrence explained. There’s less water pumped from the underground aquifer and therefore less waste, and the fields are maintained by natural byproducts.

On the “eco-fields,” they don’t use any insecticides or fungicides, Lawrence said.

He drove toward a field full of snow geese. “Those fine creatures right there — they actually till the fields for us.”

Is this sustainable agriculture? Yes, say the Wagners. They’re into it. In fact, they are invested in it with their local rice brand, Mississippi Blue Rice, which is grown, milled, packaged, marketed and delivered from their farm.

The rice’s packaging, carefully developed with Mike in charge, says, “Mississippi Blue Rice. Tastefully cultivated ... naturally. Ecologically grown on the world’s most fertile BLUE gumbo clay soil in the land of the BLUES.” The label also includes a Mississippi map partly overlaid with a rice stem

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shaped like the Earth and bearing the names for rice in other languages from 13 different parts of the world.

Mike said, “I wanted the logo to look like the planet. Rice is such a universal product. I hope at some point we sell in each of those 13 places.”

He continued, “It is also 20 percent of the world’s supply of calories.” So it is important that rice varieties offer health benefits.

“We grow four varieties. They are very trait specific,” he said. The traits include not only taste, size and how well they cook but also the inclusions of antioxidants and other nutrients. Mike said, “You are a fruitcake to put things in your mouth that don’t bring mean-

ing to your health.”

He’s kind of a foodie. He cooks, develops recipes and is a co-founder of the Sumner Grill, which started up in 2013. That’s also when he and Lawrence began working on Mississippi Blue Rice, although the operation didn’t get fully under way until Lawrence graduated from Mississippi State University more than a year ago. His sister Abbey, 22, recently graduated from Mississippi State and will be involved in the operation.

“We hope she will be an integral part of it,” Mike said, explaining that she will help with marketing and through her interest in the product’s quality.

“She is the nutritionist among us,”

her father said. “We want to grow things that are healthy. I think she will take the ball and run with it.”

The four varieties — two from Stoneville and two aromatic rices — result in a number of products. The Wagners produce white rice and rice grits, brown rice and brown rice grits, and brown, white and aromatic rice flours. The names of these products range from Beulah Land Rice Medley to Delta Belle to Blue Jasmoon, a jasmine rice.

They are processed in a spic-andspan building with modern equipment.

The operation is kosher certified, which attests to its cleanliness, Mike said. “I think it is the ultimate sign in sanitation. You can lick the floor in that place after we have milled, and it won’t get dirty,” he said.

He reflected on how farming motivated migration in the United States. “My family has been doing this since 1742, I think.” They farmed in Virginia and the Carolinas, moved westward, and he moved to Mississippi in 1985 from Missouri. “People wore out their soils and moved west. We can’t do that any more,” he said.

“There are no more soils on this planet to find and be a pioneer on,” Mike said. “That’s my mission as far as this Earth goes. It is to help people understand how to take care of the resources they have.

“If they are going to make a living off the land, they are going to have to take care of it. ... We don’t have a choice. We want to exceed our contribution on my place.” n

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Mechanical Contractors, Design, Build, Plan & Spec, Negotiated 2606 Baldwin Road • Greenwood, MS 38930 P. O. Box 8106 • (662)453-6860

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The Creative Economy: Bill Bynum

The opportunity business

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Nonprofit expands into ‘underserved communities’ W hat does the term “financial services” conjure for you?

Retirement plans, IRAs, stocks and bonds, wealth management perhaps?

For Bill Bynum — CEO of Hope Enterprise Corporation, the $112 million nonprofit that includes Hope Credit Union, among other entities — financial services means opportunity for everyone, even the poorest.

For Bynum and Hope, it means turning the traditional banking model of maximizing financial returns to a few individual shareholders on its head.

“Our shareholders are members of the credit union. Every member has the same vote and the same returns as any other member,” Bynum said.

“Profits generated go back into providing lower-cost loans and higher returns on deposits. It’s a different model than other financial institutions.”

In an age of great wealth and income disparity, Hope Enterprise’s mission statement — “strengthening communities, building assets, and improving lives in economically distressed parts of the Mid South” — defies popular perception of the financial industry in gen-

eral.

Bynum, who has lived in Mississippi for 20 years but hails originally from New York, says he has built a successful business by believing in people’s capabilities, regardless of their economic circumstances.

“Everywhere I’ve lived, people are very much the same,” Bynum said in a telephone interview from his Jackson office. “They have the same aspirations, but the resources for people to realize their dreams differ dramatically from place to place.”

In the Delta, for example, there is

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great degree of poverty, but many great and successful people have risen from poverty when given the opportunity.

Bynum and his co-workers saw an opportunity in an unusual circumstance when the financial crisis of 2008-09 hit. Banks across the country started closing branch offices, and since that time, more than 2,000 branches have closed, with 90 percent of those located in poor communities.

“Over that same period, we have more than tripled our presence in underserved communities,” Bynum

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said. “We’ve gone from seven to 28 branches since the recession.”

Those branches are located across the Mid South, including five cities in the Delta: Greenville, Drew, Shaw, Moorhead and Itta Bena.

Some 40 percent of depositors at Hope’s branches didn’t have a bank account before joining the credit union, meaning their financial transactions often depended upon for-profit check-cashing services and payday loan operations that charge notoriously high interest rates, strapping people with few resources into unmanageable long-term debt.

Bynum said Hope is designed to replace that circumstance.

“Unfortunately, in certain communities, among certain segments of the population, they’re more likely to have access to a check casher than a banking service,” Bynum said. “We don’t believe those most vulnerable should be abused by predatory financial practices.”

Offering basic banking services, including making personal loans, is a key part of Hope Enterprise’s strategy, and it serves a very simple operating principle. That is that people generally want the same basic things — a safe place to live, a quality home, a good job and good education for themselves and their children.

“For all of those things, financial services, access to capital is an important piece of the puzzle,” Bynum said. “At Hope, we work hard to make sure that everybody has access to the tools.”

The company practices the same kind of banking it encourages among its membership.

“When we saw the financial crisis occur, we realized that residents all of a sudden didn’t stop needing financial services to buy a car, to start a small business,” Bynum said. So when traditional financial institutions were pulling out, leaving a big void, Hope moved in. “”We’d learned over the years that we were very capable of making prudent financial decisions, making loans in communities that performed, and we didn’t make the kind of speculative loans that led many banks to fail,” Bynum said. “We actually took time to sit down with each individual borrower and helped them understand how much they could afford to pay.”

That kind of advice, he said, goes a long way in improving quality of life, teaching people how to make good decisions when times get tough.

During the financial crisis, Hope’s mortgage portfolio outperformed major national banks with mortgage borrowers whose average incomes were less than $50,000 per year, Bynum said.

“Those individuals who have less do everything they can to hold on to that asset, their home,” Bynum said. “Every now and then they may falter, they may have less of a safety net and late payments might be a bit higher, but losses are comparable and were

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lower than others during the crisis.

“That’s because we took the time to sit down and help individuals understand what they could afford.”

Beyond personal and family financial services,

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Hope continues to expand its presence in community development through business financing.

“We finance nonprofits, rural health clinics, hospitals, the service industry, mom-and-pop stores, restaurants, organizations that need money for operational support. We finance churches,” Bynum said.

In the Delta, Hope has helped finance catfish processors, a lumber yard and a recycling company.

“Just about any kind of business we’ve financed over the years,” he said, “and collectively those jobs are very important to small towns.”

In recent months, Hope was one of a group of financial institutions from around the country chosen by the USDA to distribute $400 million in long-term, low-interest capital into impoverished communities.

And at the policy level, Bynum works with organizations such as Bill and Melinda Gates’ U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Poverty.

But as Hope Enterprise Corporation and Hope Credit Union continue to expand, Bynum maintains his focus on the bottom line: people.

“I firmly believe that betting on people is what works,” he said. “When you equip people with the tools they need to help themselves, they can do anything that people anywhere can do. The people in the Delta are just as capable as people in Palo Alto, but people in Palo Alto have more resources.

“There are beautiful people in the Delta, and we’re really excited to be a part of these communities.” n

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318 Howard Street

Greenwood, Mississippi 38930

662.453.2114

thealluvian.com

THE ALLUVIAN HOTEL • THE ALLUVIAN SPA • VIKING COOKING SCHOOL • GIARDINA’S

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The Creative Economy: Suresh and Dinesh Chawla

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Growing together S

Family found success focusing on Delta

uresh Chawla says he and his brother, Dinesh, thought their father was crazy when he decided the family’s motels and hotels should all be in the Mississippi Delta.

After all, Suresh and Dinesh, who grew up in Greenwood, had gone away to colleges in bigger cities — Millsaps College and Tulane University — and earned their master’s degrees in business. Their father’s credentials were in agricultural chemistry.

“My father said we should keep the

hotels close together so we could keep an eye on each of them,” Suresh said.

“The old man was right. He focused strictly on the Delta. He might not have had an MBA, but he knew what he was doing.”

Dinesh, too, recalls his father when he speaks about the family’s hotel empire in the Delta.

“I’m the same age my dad was when he got into the hotel business in his early 50s,” Dinesh said. “He was playing it by ear, learning as he went.

“I feel like I’ve taken residence in his old shoes.”

Dr. V.K. Chawla passed away unexpectedly in 2014, and now his sons, the brothers Chawla — managing partners of the family company, Chawla Hotels Inc. — are expanding their Delta empire to include a new complex in Cleveland that will break the mold.

The Lyric Hotel complex is a major departure from the 17 hotels they own across the Delta, all franchises of established hotel chains. It will be the com-

pany’s first luxury boutique operation, especially designed and tailored for international tourists seeking a Delta experience.

“This new project will cost us triple what a normal Holiday Inn costs,” Suresh estimates. That translates to $16 million, give or take a million or two.

The Chawlas have owned hotels that are limited-service enterprises up to now. The Lyric will break that pattern, offering choices of lodging types, both

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high-end and casual dining, live entertainment, a spa and a variety of concierge services to orient visitors to the area.

Franchise models, said Dinesh, have “forecastable income and marketing shares,” something that has proven profitable for the family business.

“With this, there’s a sort of frontier aspect to it,” he said. “There’s no template. Nobody’s done anything like this before, not here, at least that I know of.”

The Chawlas will continue to oversee their other 17 properties, each a separate business entity. Dinesh, who lives in Cleveland, will be the primary executive of the Lyric project, and Suresh, who lives in Greenwood, will be the money man, making sure financing is in place.

“My brother has long wanted to build a hotel like the Lyric and will run the show there,” Suresh said. “I helped raise money for it and helped in hiring key personnel.

“I’ll be the silent partner.”

Not too silent, however.

Suresh is vocally enthusiastic about the creative range of the project.

“We’ll be tying into music and international tourism,” Suresh said. “We’ve seen the marketing plan for the state of Mississippi, and we can see that bringing the Grammy Museum to the state has been a huge coup.”

Dinesh describes what they’re doing at the Lyric as a new type of tourism for the region.

“Come and see the whole Delta!” he said. “We don’t think of our project as a stand-alone entity.”

Dinesh said he has already signed agreements with travel agents and tour bus operators, has made presentations to over 100 agents in Canada, and has gone to international trade shows to pitch the project to agents and government contractors in Germany, Australia, India, France, England and China.

Plans include marketing the cultural experience of the Delta as a multi-day tour featuring food, museums, music, art, history and culture and covering the entire area from Clarksdale to Greenwood.

“There’s nothing anywhere else in the world like the Crystal Grill,” Suresh said. “And Greenwood has The Alluvian. I don’t look at it as competition. I hope we can find ways to cooperate that enhance growth for all of us.”

Dinesh agrees. Aside from introducing international travelers to all of the Delta, he is excited to cull talent from within the region for any number of products and services in the hotel

Dinesh Chawla, who grew up in Greenwood and lives in Cleveland, will “run the show” at the family’s new Lyric Hotel complex.

Here, Chawla addresses a crowd at the hotel’s groundbreaking ceremony, flanked on the left by Cleveland Mayor Billy Nowell and on the right by state Sen. Willie Simmons, D-Cleveland. complex.

“I probably have 20 to 25 meetings a week,” he said. “I’ve met with musicians, stagehands, chefs, people who make bagels for a living, all kinds of people who have something to offer that we will need.”

He sees it as a reciprocal arrangement. Someone with a product or service to sell can advise him on the needs of his clientele while he can offer a venue for them to do business.

“We have a lot of groups and individuals here in the Delta who just don’t have access to capital but want to go into business,” he said. “We’re giving them a very low threshold to cross financially and an opportunity they may not normally have.”

Dinesh is also proud of his all-woman executive staff. He says they work hard, come in on weekends, come to work early and generally do whatever it takes to get the job done during the development phase.

From finding ways to enlist unique local talent to utilizing new technologies that will make a lodging experience easier, more convenient and interesting, the brothers are expanding

their visions exponentially.

Suresh is excited about the 400-to500-capacity meeting room at the Lyric, The Gin, which will be used for conventions and large gatherings.

“It’s not going to be your typical 70to 80-room Holiday Inn,” he said.

“There’s nothing else like it in the state of Mississippi.”

He’s also excited about introducing 21st-century trends to the Delta such as keyless rooms, mobile check-in and reservations and automated services that free up employees to offer more personalized concierge services.

And, of course, some good old Southern hospitality.

“That goes a long way in our business,” he said.

“The way I look at it is, people say, ‘We appreciate what you’re doing for the community,” Dinesh said. “I appreciate that the community has supported us so much.”

All of it is a far cry from the family’s first hotel, a Comfort Inn in Greenwood.

Dr. Chawla, an immigrant who had experienced brutal cultural strife and personal loss as a boy, owned and oper-

ated a convenience store and a fried chicken outlet in town before he opened the family’s first hotel, which led to many more.

Suresh says the Delta was paradise for his father and has proven to be a good home for him and Dinesh as well.

“Before we came to the U.S., my father worked for the government in Canada,” Suresh said.

It was the 1960s and ’70s, and Southeast Asian immigrants flowing into the country often experienced discrimination.

“They called us ‘Pakis.’ It affected me at school, and it kept my father from being able to advance,” Suresh said.

“Imagine. We escaped racism by coming to Mississippi! My father had experienced caste prejudice in India and was discriminated against for his cultural background in Canada. He found a level playing field in Mississippi.”

Now, Mississippi roots and hospitality, a family building empire and an international outlook are all combining under a new set of roofs in Chawla Hotels’ latest venture.

Sometimes staying put has its benefits. n

“We’ll be tying into music and international tourism.

We’ve seen the marketing plan for the state of Mississippi, and we can see that bringing the Grammy Museum to the state has been a huge coup.” pìêÉëÜ=`Ü~ïä~

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Lyric centerpiece of Cleveland’s West End District

T

he dream project of Suresh and Dinesh Chawla in Cleveland is multifaceted and ambitious — a hotel complex that will draw international travelers to the Delta and function as both a comprehensive meeting space and a hub for tours of the region.

All of it will be built at what’s called the West End District, a 17-acre site at what was previously known as the west end of Mississippi 8 in Cleveland, about a mile from the Grammy Museum.

Dinesh Chawla said construction is well under way.

“We’ve done a lot of the exterior elements so far,” he said.

A 2.5-acre lake has been dredged and filled, the ground has been leveled and parking lots are “about 40 percent taken care of.”

The complex will include the main hotel, the Lyric, whose basic form and exterior structure are now in place.

The next phase, scheduled to start in February, will include framing the 8 West Grille, one of two restaurants planned for the site; the Gin meeting room; the Spa; and the Clubhouse and Statehouse, two other onsite hotel configurations offering different style lodging.

Construction should be near completion by August, and the planned opening date is Oct. 1.

“We’ve worked pretty hard on it,” Chawla said. “It’s sort of like when you cook in a wok. You lay out everything linearly, then at the last minute throw everything into the hot oil.

“Most of the work is in the preparation. We’ve spent years in development.”

When the complex is completed it will comprise indoor and outdoor eating spaces and entertainment venues, a full-service spa, a large capacity meeting space and three different types of lodging.

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Another boutique hotel development is moving forward at the same time on Cotton Row in downtown Cleveland.

Luke Chamblee of Chamblee Hospitality Group is planning a 95-room boutique hotel similar to his Graduate Hotel on the historic downtown square in Oxford. Casual dining, a rooftop bar and shuttle transportation to the Grammy Museum are among the amenities at the as-yet-unnamed hotel.

The Chawlas are counting on drawing large groups to

their complex by providing group rates and on-site group travel planning and functioning as a hub for day and multi-day travel throughout the Delta.

Marketing will be aimed at corporate clientele looking for private places to meet as well as music- and food-loving Delta tourists.

“So far, we’re 17-for-17 with hotels,” Suresh Chawla said. “If it doesn’t work out, I can always return to my dream job writing sports at The Greenwood Commonwealth.” n

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The Creative Economy: T.J. Beall Co.

Getting real

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Firm aims to replace synthetic fibers with cotton nonwovens

awson Gary has a simple vision for his cotton products. “Hygiene is our future,” says Gary, 38, the chief operating officer of the TJ Beall Co., which is headquartered in Money.

The company employs 60 people in Money, in Drew and at its sales office in West Point, Georgia.

Gary and his father, Tommy, the company’s chief financial officer, and Julian Beall, its chief executive officer, serve as the management team.

Gary and his father own Wildwood Gin, which was the sole processor for TJ Beall’s raw gin mote for about 25 years.

“It was a merger between two family businesses. We were intimately locked in the supply chain, so we decided to merge,” Gary said.

The product is cotton that has been cleaned using a proprietary process — “essentially to the point that it can circumvent bleached cotton,” he said.

The market they are shooting for is exclusively nonwoven fibers, a subsector of the textile industry.

“We’re trying to find a cheaper way to get cotton into nonwovens,” Gary said.

“Cotton has almost no marketplace in the voluminous industry. Worldwide, less than 1 percent of nonwovens are

made with cotton.”

He said nonwoven fibers are used in house insulation, such as Tyvek, as well as in the automotive industry in products ranging from trunk liners and fire walls to upholstery and bedding.

Gary said typically each motor vehicle produced has between 50 and 60 pounds of nonwovens used in its construction.

Baby wipes and diapers are another big market for nonwovens.

“There are hundreds of thousands of things that you don’t think about that are very thin sheets of fabric, all of it nonwoven,” he said. “Anything that

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makes you say, ‘How did they make this? It looks really thin,’ that’s a nonwoven.”

He said Beall’s goal is to replace synthetic fibers, such as polypropylene and polyester, with cleaned cotton.

“Bleached cotton has its place; it’s just very, very expensive. That’s where we come in,” he said. “There’s a reason that cotton has no market in nonwoven: It is the most expensive fiber they can buy.

“In strategic partnership with some bio-based fiber companies, we’ve been able to to drop the price of our fiber to be more competitive with plastic fibers.

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Greenwood’s wheels are turning, business is booming, and the City of Greenwood is busy planning for a productive 2017! :H DUH JHDULQJ XS IRU WKH JUDQG RSHQLQJ RI WKH EUDQG QHZ 5DLO 6SLNH 3DUN WKH IXOO\ UHQRYDWHG *UHHQZRRG 3ROLFH 6WDWLRQ DQG GRZQWRZQ V 0DLQ 6WUHHW VLGHZDON LPSURYHPHQWV Community events will return bigger and better than ever, with the Viking Half Marathon, Que on the Yazoo, Stars and Stripes, and Bikes, Blues & Bayous rolling out the red carpet again this year. Come see why Greenwood’s motto, “The Sky is the Limit� proves to be a statement on which to build and bring success for the year ahead!

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i~ïëçå=d~êó=~åÇ=gÉÑÑÉêó=_ìëÄóI=qKgK=_É~ääÛë=íÉñíáäÉ=éä~åí=ã~å~ÖÉêI=äççâ=çîÉê=ëçãÉ=çÑ=íÜÉ=éä~åíÛë=ÑáåáëÜÉÇ=éêçÇìÅíK ... Dropping our price below synthetics is the Holy Grail,” he said.

Gary said the demand for cotton nonwovens is there. “These people would use it. They want to be able to market that in their products.”

In the competitive, fast-moving, high-volume, lowmargin world of consumer goods, “price point is everything,” he said.

Personal hygiene items include feminine care pads, diapers, adult incontinence diapers and wipes. Wipes include everything from baby wipes and facial cleaning wipes to industrial wipes and hard-surface cleaning wipes.

Mechanically cleaned cotton, such as that produced

by Beall, fits right into the personal hygiene line of products offered today. “We knew we had a different fiber,” Gary said. “It’s a novel material because no one has been able to use cotton in its natural form.”

“We’re basically taking it right off the plant, ginning it, it comes to our plant here and we basically remove the foreign matter,” he said. “We’re cleaning it without the use of water or chemical means. It’s a totally mechanical process. It’s very ‘green,’ very sustainable. It also makes it very economical.”

By comparison, he said, bleached cotton requires several steps: “They’ll take it and scour it with chemicals, and then they’ll bleach it white.”

A major drawback of bleached cotton is that it will

absorb water. Mechanically cleaned cotton does not.

The cotton produced by Beall is hydrophobic, unlike Rayon.

“It’s very, very good for hygiene,” Gary said. “With hygiene, you’re trying to get urine or blood quickly through the top layers to the core of the diaper or pad.”

The core of the diaper or pad is composed of superabsorbent polymers and wood pulp.

Another plus, Gary said, is that Beall’s mechanically cleaned cotton is much softer than other fibers.

“Softness is the driving force in American and Asian markets,” he said.

Disposable diapers have undergone a transformation over the past four decades.

“This is one of the most highly engineered items you will find at Walmart — how thin they are today, how efficient they are,” Gary said.

Competing in the billion-dollar disposable hygiene industry is tough.

Beall’s first big break came in 2014 with the Seventh Generation Touch of Cloth diaper, which uses the company’s mechanically cleaned cotton.

Seventh Generation made a video for Target in Money, Gary said.

Hygiene products containing Beall’s fibers are especially big in North America, Europe and Asia.

Gary is especially proud of Beall’s state-of-the-art

textile plant, located in Money.

“It’s very modern, very high-tech, very automated equipment that we run over there,” he said.

Beall also runs a hybrid cotton gin in Money.

Source material for the textile mill is obtained from Staplcotn, not the Garys’ farming operation.

“We are extremely lucky to have the strongest cotton cooperative in the U.S. located right here in Greenwood,” Gary said. “Staplcotn has bent over backwards to help accommodate and support us as we search for new uses for cotton.”

The company’s regin operation is Beall’s core business.

“We source raw gin motes from across the Cotton Belt and repurpose them for use in paper and textiles,” Gary said.

Using a proprietary process, the mote is repurposed into personal care items such as ear swabs, cotton balls, facial pads, yarn spinning and currency.

“Reginned motes are utilized in currency paper for its high strength, unique feel and durability — and we’re in Money, Mississippi,” Gary said.

Gary said he travels extensively as a result of generating more customers for T.J. Beall’s products.

Making inroads into hygiene products is a “highbarrier entry,” Gary said: “You’re dealing with huge, huge companies. You have to answer millions of questions.” n

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The Creative Economy: Lacy Lary III and Lacy Lary IV

Into the woods Sawmill only part of family’s businesses T

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here’s not much free time in the sawmill business, but here and there over the past year, Lacy Lary IV has had shaved off enough to start bringing a furniture line onto the market.

One of his goals has been to turn slabs of cypress and other hardwoods into tables and table tops — big ones and even bigger ones, the type that seat a dozen people or more. He and his father, Lacy Lary III, aren’t thinking small.

“We know they are going to sell,” Lacy IV said. “There’s a huge demand.”

The 24-year-old sawmill owner-operator custom cuts hardwoods including oak, walnut and pecan, for example, and all kinds of cypress. He has been thinking about making furniture for ages.

The father and son are partners in Delta Hills 4. The business consists of two sawmills and a large office-warehouse east off U.S. 82 at the edge of the hills near Greenwood-Leflore Airport.

Lacy III, 56, also owns Quality Medical Equipment and manages operations for Express Grain Oil Mill, both in Greenwood.

“It’s kind of unique, isn’t it?” Lacy III mused. “Medical equipment. Sawmills.

Oil mills. I am a very diversified person.”

Lacy IV has similar tendencies, but most of his are directed at owning and operating every aspect of Delta Hills 4.

He grew up in the woods and fields of their 400-acre farm, which runs from Valley Hill into the Delta flatlands.

Lacy IV lives on the farm, as do his dad and mom. Lacy III and his wife, Linda, have been building a new home there for several years. That’s how Lacy IV started in the sawmill business.

Before he began, he studied at the University of Mississippi, where he learned about businesses that own the various companies and operations along their lines of supply. The idea appeals to Lacy IV. “We’re kind of going vertically integrated,” Lacy IV said. He wants to selectively harvest logs, cut them, cure them, sell them for building and turn them into furniture. He doesn’t yet own a logging operation, but he occasionally slips away to retrieve a sinker cypress log from lake bottoms.

These are cypress logs that either fell

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“It’s kind of unique, isn’t it? Medical equipment. Sawmills. Oil mills. I am a very diversified person.” i~Åó=i~êó=fff

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His father retired. The mill idled.

Lacy III’s entrepreneurial bent led him in other directions.

Then, Lacy IV arrived in time to help his parents build their hilltop dream home. It is almost complete and has been totally constructed with cypress and indigenous woods.

Lacy III said they wanted lumber for the house and found “you couldn’t find anybody to cut good cypress lumber anymore.” They sawed 117 beams and 60,000 board feet of wood for the house.

But Lacy IV had furniture in the back of his mind.

“My dad gave me a $4,000 tractor,” Lacy IV remembered. “I traded it for a sawmill, maybe a hobbyist mill.”

He made some furniture and sold some, but he wasn’t satisfied. “I got frustrated and sold the hobbyist mill and my truck, and I went truckless for about six months. I took the $4,000 for my tractor and $10,000 for my truck and bought a $14,000 sawmill.”

Now they have a circle mill and a band mill, which is the more modern.

“It is more automatic and more accurate,” Lacy IV said. “We have carefully bought high-grade logs. We can cut spot on.”

They sold 22,000 board feet for renovations at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium at Ole Miss. Their woods has been used for projects at Rowan Oak, which is William Faulkner’s home in Oxford and for home and hunting-lodge construction or remodeling. DH4’s wood was used for Locus Benedictus, the Catholic retreat at U.S. 82-49 west near Greenwood.

Sales stretched regionally to 12 states, from Kansas down to Texas and eastward to Georgia and Florida.

Lacy III said cypress is prized for

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building because it is long lasting and termite resistant. The wood contains cypressene, a natural preservative. Old growth trees have more of this substance than younger ones. However, pecky cypress is cypress heartwood that once was attacked by fungus.

Sinker cypress has the most value because it of its rich beauty. People particularly like the look of sinker cypress for desks and conference room tables as well as for home furnishings.

By the end of last year, DH4 had hired someone to make furniture and was in the process of buying equipment, including a straight line rip for making even edges on already dried wood. They have goals to be able to cut 10-foot wide slabs of hardwood. And their plans for the warehouse included retail. Customers could come out to buy lumber as well as furniture.

Meanwhile, Lacy IV has been working on superior finishes for the wood, and he has devised his own recipe. The finish doesn’t have the look of plastic and yellow color that polyurethane sometimes develops His days are full. He takes most of his sawmill orders over the phone, meets with loggers and saws planks himself with the help of one employee.

He’s willing to tackle almost any project related to the business. “I used to make myself too big a list every day,” he said. But he has learned he must not “ask too much of myself.”

Lacy III is proud to work with his son. “He is a very hard worker, and he has a very good business mind.”

Moreover, Lacy IV is likable and modest. His dad has noticed that customers and people in the business community “trust him almost instantly.

That’s very pleasing for a father.” n

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The Creative Economy: Beard + Riser

Decade of success

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Determination, passion fuel firm’s work

W

hen skeptics said starting an architecture business in the Mississippi Delta at the start of an economic downturn was a bad idea, John Beard and Dale Riser decided to make a leap of faith.

The architects made a good call.

Their business, Beard + Riser Architects, will celebrate its 10th anniversary in March.

“I think that’s just a testament to who we are and the work that we’re doing,” said Riser. “You just have to have faith.”

The road to the milestone had some challenges, but hard work, determination and a passion for the work helped

Beard + Riser succeed. Although neither architect is from the area, Greenwood has become home for both, and the Delta’s culture and landscape inspires much of their work.

“There’s a real need here in housing, modernization and updating buildings and upgrading buildings, and we draw so much inspiration from the surrounding landscape,” said Riser. “You couldn’t want anything more as an architect than to be in a place where you look out the door and there’s opportunity.” v v v

Riser arrived in Greenwood first in

2003.

After graduating from Louisiana Tech University, the Crowville, Louisiana, native began his career as an architect in Austin, Texas.

“I probably never thought I would end up in the South again or anywhere near where I grew up,” said Riser.

Soon after, he made a move to San Antonio to work at Lake Flato, an architecture firm known for its high-end sustainable designs.

“Of course I got married, and we had a little girl, and it was like ‘Let’s get closer to my family,’ and the Mississippi Delta had just always interested me,” Riser said.

“There’s such a sense of place here and some sort of magic with the history and the landscape. There was just a lot that intrigued me, and so it’s actually one of the places I was targeting when my wife and I were in San Antonio then and looking to move back.”

Riser was offered a job in Greenwood at The Johnson-McAdams Firm, which specializes in military and federal design projects. He said he enjoyed his job there but was interested in doing more local work that had an impact on the Delta.

Beard, a San Diego native, moved to Greenwood in 2006.

His family had moved to Pontotoc, his

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“One of the things that I’m really proud of is that some of our best work we’ve been able to do is in Greenwood, in our town, which is pretty great. A lot of architects don’t get that opportunity. You end up doing your best work 200 miles away.” gçÜå=_É~êÇ

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father’s hometown, after the retirement of his father, who had served in the Navy. After graduating from Shannon High School, Beard attended Mississippi State University’s School of Architecture. He received his degree and moved to New York City, where he worked for the curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, focusing on high-end residential design.

“I left Mississippi with no intention of ever coming back,” he said.

But after years in the New York, he did move back to Mississippi when he accepted a position at Belinda Stewart Architects, located in Eupora — moving from a place with a population of 8.4 million to one with a population of 2,137.

“It was an amazing contrast,” he said.

Beard said coming from Manhattan to rural Mississippi made the small town that still had gravel parking lots magical to him.

After working for several years at Belinda Stewart’s, which is known for its historical preservation projects, Beard began thinking about opening an architecture firm of his own.

“I was looking for a place where there was maybe a need and a place I wanted to live, and Greenwood just sort of popped up,” he said.

Beard began doing consulting work for Viking Range, and he and Riser met soon after. With similar backgrounds

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_É~êÇ=H=oáëÉêI=ïáíÜ=i~åÇaÉëáÖå=çÑ=`Ü~êäçííÉI=kçêíÜ=`~êçäáå~I=ÇÉëáÖåÉÇ=o~áä=péáâÉ=m~êâI=ïÜáÅÜ=áë=ÅìêêÉåíäó=ìåÇÉê=ÅçåëíêìÅíáçåK=qÜÉ=éêçàÉÅí=áåîçäîÉë=íÜÉ=ÅçåîÉêëáçå=çÑ=~=íïçJ ãáäÉ=ëÉÅíáçå=çÑ=íÜÉ=~Ä~åÇçåÉÇ=ê~áä=ÅçêêáÇçê=íÜêçìÖÜ=Ççïåíçïå=dêÉÉåïççÇ=íç=ÅêÉ~íÉ=~=åÉï=äáåÉ~ê=é~êâK= and architecture interests, they quickly became friends. Beard said at some point “it just make sense” to him and Riser to became business partners and launch their own architecture firm.

“It was just a good fit,” said Riser. v v v

In March 2007, Beard + Riser set up shop in Beard’s downtown Greenwood loft.

“Looking back, it probably was not the best time to start an architecture firm,” said Riser. “With the national economy, things were starting to go south, and as the housing market goes down, usually so does the rest of the country, and new construction kind of follows.”

Although the nation’s housing bubble burst in 2007, the new Greenwood business managed to sprout up and flourish in the Mississippi Delta.

“What’s interesting is both of us sort of moved here because of wanting to be closer to our families in some way, and I think both of us never thought we’d end up here for sure,” said Beard. “But we saw there was a need in Greenwood and in the Delta. We were just as surprised as anyone else to find that we were able to make a living here, because everyone kept telling us in a region like this it’d be hard.”

Beard and Riser both said they have had challenges along the way but have always maintained a steady flow of work.

“This is 10 years now, and we’ve been a little bigger and a little better each year,” said Riser. “We’ve got more and more work, so it’s worked.”

Beard + Riser has been a part of

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about 100 projects in the last 10 years.

About half were privately bid, and the other half were publicly bid.

“I think there were people who thought we wouldn’t have been able to do one or two jobs a year when we started,” said Riser.

The majority of their work has been in the Delta. Their projects located the far-

thest away from their base on Main Street were in Columbus and the Jackson area.

The about 50 public projects they have worked on were an estimated $40 million of construction — all primarily in the Delta.

“No one knows the market in the Delta the way we do,” said Riser. “We’ve

done various sizes, and we know what things cost, and we’ve got a record of estimating those projects. ... Overall, we’ve had about 100 projects in 10 years. That’s really good. That’s a lot of work.” v v v

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Their portfolio includes everything from creative to historic preservation to new construction to residential. It also includes commercial, educational, health care and military projects.

“We’re not a specialty firm,” said Riser.

“We do have expertise in different areas.”

Educational projects have become a big category. Those include Mississippi Delta Community College’s Vandiver Student Activity Center, J.T. Hall Coliseum renovations, Boggs-Scroggins Student Services Building renovations, Edwards-Stonestreet Residence Hall renovations and Allen-Foley Career technical electrical upgrades. They’ve also done work at Mississippi Valley State University, Pillow Academy and Greenwood High School.

Another market they specialize in is historic preservation. Some of their projects include the E.E. Bass Cultural Arts Center in Greenville, Ben Roy’s Service Station in Money, The Winery at Williams Landing in Greenwood and the Bledsoe House renovations on Grand Boulevard.

Some might perceive the breadth of their projects as a negative, but “we tend to get our hands in a little bit of everything,” Beard said. “You have to be a jack of all trades, I think.”

Beard + Riser has also worked on several projects with Delta Health Alliance, including recently completing about six Head Start centers in Sunflower County.

“One of the things about working for Delta Health Alliance is a lot of the projects that we do for them, like the Head Start centers, you are really making a difference,” said Beard.

“The quality of the building spaces really matters. It affects how you live, and it affects your psychology. Some of the centers have children from transitional neighborhoods, and we have the kids in a healthy, nurturing and learning-based environment with a really beautiful playground.”

Some of their most visible current projects in Greenwood are the renovation of the Police Department building and the construction of Rail Spike Park and its pavilion.

“One of the things that I’m really proud of is that some of our best work we’ve been able to do is in Greenwood, in our town, which is pretty great,” said Beard. “A lot of architects don’t get that opportunity. You end up doing your best work 200 miles away.”

The two have developed creative and efficient designs for both projects.

The Rail Spike Park project, which Beard + Riser designed in conjunction with Landdesign of Charlotte, North Carolina, involves the conversion of a two-mile section of the abandoned rail corridor through downtown Greenwood to create a linear park. The revitalized

those parameters,” said Beard. “We’re working with an existing building with some real strict parameters.”

Both architects agree they would rather work with the existing police building, a high-quality structure, rather than constructing a new one.

“There’s a saying that says the greenest building is reusing an existing building,” said Beard.

With the renovations, the police department will double its usable space, and “that’s not just modernizing, that’s life-changing for a police department,” said Riser.

Beard and Riser approach each project differently, focusing on each client’s needs, wants, budget, space and surroundings.

“I think what drew John and I together in the first place is that I came from working at Lake Flato with that school of green building, sustainability or designing buildings to respond to their local climate and the culture around them,” said Riser. “You don’t put a certain type of building in a certain type of place if it doesn’t belong.” v v v

a~äÉ=oáëÉêI=äÉÑíI=~åÇ=gçÜå=_É~êÇ=í~äâ=~Äçìí=ìéÅçãáåÖ=éêçàÉÅíë=~í=íÜÉ=_É~êÇ=H=oáëÉê çÑÑáÅÉ=äçÅ~íÉÇ=áå=Ççïåíçïå=dêÉÉåïççÇK area will connect downtown from the Amtrak station to U.S. 82 and will include a greenway and multi-use pavilion. Its design is intended to reflect the utilitarian nature of the rail corridor and gin buildings common to the agriculture of the Mississippi Delta.

“It’s something that you don’t see in every small town,” said Riser. “This is just going to provide another area where you can go and exercise and get out and do things, which is something that we

need here.

“I think (the pavilion) is going to be something really special on that corner.

And I think it’s going to be a huge asset to the town.”

Beard and Riser are also excited about the renovations at the police headquarters. They are working with the existing 1960s and 1970s modern-style building.

“When you see the final product, the interior will have a lot of throwback to the ’60s and ‘70s and working within

Beard + Riser, now located on Main Street in the Klein Building and renovated by the architects, has only four to six employees, and that allows the architects to be hands-on with all of their projects.

“It’s critical to quality control, and also being in a small town, you expect a certain level of personal service,” said Beard.

Creating new relationships and maintaining the ones they have formed over the past 10 years is an important part of the business, and they both enjoy it.

“What’s the point of living in a small town if you’re not going to develop those relationships, especially with clients who have trusted you and have come back to hire you again?” said Riser.

“You’re able to build closer friendships with people and get to know people, and at bigger firms in bigger cities you become just a face working at a place cranking things out.”

The architects said they are proud of what they have accomplished, including establishing a solid foundation for their business that has created many opportunities for future growth.

“It’s amazing,” said Beard. “We’ve struggled against some really tough odds. We started a business in an economic downturn in a place where people said we couldn’t make it.”

Riser added, “John and I can be a little stubborn sometimes against the odds, and I think that just sort of made us want to work even harder and dig in and prove to people you can make it if you’re willing and work hard.” n

“John and I can be a little stubborn sometimes against the odds, and I think that just sort of made us want to work even harder and dig in and prove to people you can make it if you’re willing and work hard.” a~äÉ=oáëÉê

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Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017

The Creative Economy: Alan and Lynda Galbraith

Accidental career Saw home furnishings as ‘something different’ A

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lan Galbraith has worked in the home furnishings field for more than 30 years, but he says he got into it “probably by mistake more than anything.”

In 1984, when the Scotland native was working for a computer company and living in Coral Springs, Florida, a “headhunter” called and asked whether he was interested in doing something different.

“At the time, I must have been frustrated at work or something, so I said, ‘Sure, I’ll listen to something different,’” he said.

He met a man who had a small lighting company, Fine Art Lamps, and was trying to grow his factory. The two of them hit it off, and Galbraith took the job — but he got off to a rough start.

On his first day, with no warning, the business received a cease-and-desist order from environmental authorities because of a lack of proper equipment.

“All of a sudden, I had to become the technical expert on ceramics, and I knew absolutely nothing about ceramics,” he said. “But I had to learn kind of quickly, because they stopped us making them.”

He had been accustomed to running a factory and being surrounded by technical people. But now, he said, “instead of being able to turn to a bunch of engineers and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a problem over here; one of you guys fix it,’ whenever we had a problem, people would look at me and say, ‘Now what do we do?’ So it was a little different.”

He figured it out, though, and found he liked the work. He and his wife, Lynda, moved to Greenwood in 2005 after he joined John-Richard, where he is president and chief operating officer.

Having always liked the kind of highend products that John-Richard makes, he enjoys being intimately involved in the creative decisions.

“In this job and in this industry, every six months we have to come up with a completely new product line, and you’re involved in every aspect of it, from the conception of the idea right through to the marketing and sale of it,” he said. “And that’s just been a lot of fun.”

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v v v

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“I think we’re (John-Richard) going to have a nice, bright future for the next year or two, I hope. None of us can figure out what may happen globally or in the economy, but we’re pretty well set. We’re in good shape.” ^ä~å=d~äÄê~áíÜ

Galbraith, 62, and his wife, who is 63, met at a birthday party put on by a mutual friend when they were 16-yearold high school students in Clydebank, Scotland. They now have been married 40 years.

“We clicked, and that’s it — and we’ve been together ever since,” Lynda said.

Alan earned an accounting degree from the University of Glasgow. He thought he would work in finance, and his first job was as a financial analyst for Burroughs (now Unisys) in Scotland.

But after getting involved in the development of new products, he shifted more to an operational role related to manufacturing and found he enjoyed it.

He also had been interested in moving to the United States, and the United Kingdom was going through strikes and other problems.

“It was a bad period in the U.K., and so I thought there was more opportunity in the United States — which, turns out, there was,” he said.

Burroughs transferred him to Detroit in 1980, when he and his wife had two small children. Lynda, who has a degree in physical education, had taught PE and anatomy/physiology/ health in high school in Scotland for three years but stayed at home for a while after they started their family.

Also, she said, she came to the United States on his visa and had to wait until they had their permanent residency before she could work.

Lynda said they never felt out of place in Detroit because Midwesterners, like Southerners, are very welcoming. Also, Detroit was booming economically then.

“We enjoyed our time in Detroit, other than that it was freezing cold,” Alan said.

They spent a couple of years there before Alan was transferred to Florida.

He spent two years with Burroughs and then joined Fine Art Lamps in 1984. He spent 13 years with that company, then two years with Kichler Lighting in Cleveland, Ohio; more than four years with Corbett Lighting in Carrollton, Texas; and about nine months with Harrison & Gil, a manufacturer in Indonesia. Lynda taught pre-kindergarten and kindergarten in Florida, Ohio and Texas before they moved to Greenwood.

For years, Alan has been accustomed to traveling abroad for work. These days, he makes three or four trips to Asia each year to visit factories and vendors and work with design teams.

He also goes to High Point, North

Neiman-Marcus. But even though she liked it, she stepped away about four years ago.

“It’s difficult when you come home from work and your husband and you are in the same business,” she said.

“What do you talk about? You talk about business, and you never talk about other things.”

So she stays involved in other activities, including tennis, golf, and work with Altrusa International, where she served as chairperson of the 2016 Angel Tree program.

Her husband also plays golf, works out and takes part in activities such as the Tough Mudder 12-mile obstacle race, and they do get to travel for pleasure every so often.

Their daughter Frances lives in Greenwood and works at JohnRichard. Another daughter, Carron, lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband and two children, and son Kenneth lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife and two children. v v v

^ä~å=~åÇ=ióåÇ~=d~äÄê~áíÜ=ëí~åÇ=áå=íÜÉ=Éñ~Åí=äçÅ~íáçå=áå=bÇáåÄìêÖÜI=pÅçíä~åÇI=ïÜÉêÉ ^ä~å=éêçéçëÉÇ=íç=ióåÇ~=áå=NVTQK Carolina, twice a year and visits the John-Richard showroom in Dallas, among other locations.

At one time, his wife was a little jealous about this lifestyle. But then she accompanied him on a trip to China and found that it was nearly all work.

“After about the second or third day, I said, ‘Is this all you do?’ Go to factories; go back to the hotel; eat dinner; go to bed. ... I think, ‘Mmm ... maybe next time I’ll stay home. I won’t complain so much,’” she said with a laugh. “It’s definitely not a glamorous life.” v v v

The Galbraiths said they found peo-

ple in Greenwood to be friendly, although getting used to the smalltown lifestyle took some time. With fewer restaurants to choose from than in a big city and no movie theater, “it becomes more of a project to be entertained, shall we say,” Alan said.

Also, in general, “you have to give a place two years to be settled and feel comfortable and start to make friends,” Lynda said.

After not teaching for a while, she began to get bored and started working on projects at John-Richard on a parttime basis. These involved areas including purchasing, shipping and setting up a closeout store, and she helped deal with major clients including

Alan said he is optimistic about John-Richard’s prospects.

The company had between 160 and 170 employees as of December, and it is well recognized in the marketplace, he said. John-Richard also has opened a factory in India and bought new equipment for its Vietnam location, and business is going well in China.

“I think we’re going to have a nice, bright future for the next year or two, I hope,” he said. “None of us can figure out what may happen globally or in the economy, but we’re pretty well set.

We’re in good shape.”

He added that the company also has good creative people, including some who are homegrown.

“If you hire someone from the outside, for them to learn any individual product category takes a while,” he said. “But if they have good taste and if they’re interested — intellectually curious — about the process that goes into making something, then typically they can come up with some nice-looking products.”

He said John-Richard has kept up its focus on unique and interesting items that get customers excited. That makes work fun, and something new or interesting comes along every day, he said.

The Galbraiths’ stay in Greenwood is now their second-longest in one place in the United States, and they have enjoyed it, he said.

“We’re here for the long haul,” he said. n

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Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017

The Creative Economy: Delta Design-Build Workshop

Team approach

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At intersection of market forces, public good

T

he Delta Design-Build Workshop is a team determined to improve the living conditions of Delta residents.

Emily Roush-Elliott, the company’s social impact architect, works alongside her husband, Richard Elliott, who is its design build lead.

The couple has been involved extensively involved with the renovations in Baptist Town for several years. While that work continues, the company works for the Carl Small Town Center at Mississippi State University.

Emily has also taught at State for more than a year. Richard has run the company since it was established in 2016 while Emily was finishing her

work as an Enterprise Rose Scholar with the Greenwood-Leflore-Carroll Economic Development Foundation.

Now, they both work full time at Delta Design, which is located at 209 Main St. in Greenwood.

Richard is in charge of the majority of the construction sites, focusing on the design and building aspects.

Emily said Delta Design is “at the intersection of the market forces and the public good” and can “do a range of work for any type of client.”

Delta Design-Build Workshop consists of three entities: R19 Architecture, the architectural arm; Design-Build Solutions, the construction company; and Delta Design-Build

Workshop, the nonprofit, which serves as an umbrella.

Recently, the company began working in the East Moor Subdivision in Moorhead.

“It’s two different pieces,” Emily said.

“We’re looking at the individual homes there and how we can rehab individual homes that are in need and at the site scale — how we can adopt all kinds of neighborhood-scale issues.”

East Moor has multiple problems apart from the individual homes. “They have flooding problems. The public space, the parks, have not been maintained. It also involves lighting and crosswalks, those types of things,” Emily said.

East Moor has had a troubled past as a subdivision, she said: “It opened as an affordable housing project in 1971, and right away there were some problems with the people who owned it and managed it.”

There also were city and county issues relating to storm drains and roads, she said.

“The Law Clinic at Ole Miss came in and actually tried to work with the owners,” Emily said.

When that failed, the Law Clinic filed a lawsuit naming the developer, the city of Moorhead and Sunflower County as defendants. In the end, the Law Center won the lawsuit.

“The sewage problems have been

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fixed, the roads are under construction and the storm water drains are under construction. We got brought in to do as much as we can in terms of home rehab and design,” Emily said.

Delta Design was hired by Hope Enterprises of Jackson, a nonprofit community development financial institution, to help with the residential assessments, which would be similar to the ones done in Baptist Town.

“An outside entity said, ‘This is a neighborhood that we want to make sure gets invested in so that it can be a good place to live,” Emily said.

She said they are interested in community engagement: “There’s nothing more important to us — that is, the community actually leads what happens.”

Emily said that concept goes beyond individual houses to parks, streets and lighting. “We do planning, design and, then, when we’re lucky, there’s funding in place for construction.”

In 2016, some of the jobs included the design for remodeling the RC Construction Co. office as well as the design work for the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce’s lobby and construction of a “Tiny House” tree house in Carrollton.

Richard recently flew to Roche, Tanzania, for two weeks, to supervise the Village Life Outreach Project, also known as the Roche Health Center, something that Emily and Richard have done since 2009.

“We feel it’s important to work in a place where you live or visit and really

understand the local culture and learn what their customs are,” he said.

While the center is being built, Richard uses Skype to communicate with teams on the ground in Tanzania.

Richard, a native of Alabama, and Emily, a native of Ohio, now consider the Delta their home.

“It’s a place of such opportunity to do the work that we’re doing,” Emily said.

The couple is still involved in Baptist Town, and Emily sits on the Baptist Town Community Development Board. She said their hope for the community is twofold.

“One is it is a positive change in the built environment. You can see if it is better or worse. The other thing we try to do is build capacity; what that usually means is partnering with local organizations.”

She described capacity as the ability to reach a specific goal. It involves “resources, tools and knowing how to use them,” Emily said.

“We want to see more investment in communities, especially where housing is concerned,” Richard said.

“As the housing stock ages, we want to improve existing conditions for people,” he said.

They have already worked with the Greenwood-Leflore Fuller Center for Housing.

Emily said the work is all about partnerships.

“We might be experts on the build environment, but if you live in a house, you’re the expert in that house, you’re the expert in your life, you’re the expert in your neighborhood,” she said. n

Delta Design-Build Workshop also works on smaller projects, such as this “tiny house” tree house in Carrollton.

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Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017

Bank of Commerce

Built on loyalty

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Despite expansion, bank committed to city

C

EO Bryan Thornhill loves to repeat a story that appears on the Bank of Commerce website.

It’s about how, on “an otherwise quiet Saturday afternoon in 1930,” banks collapsed across the country and Bank of Commerce in downtown Greenwood managed to keep its doors open.

In a scene straight out of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the bank’s first president, Dr. T.R. Henderson, stood out in

front of the bank. Bags of coins and bales of currency were stacked in the windows where people could see them, and Dr. Henderson told the gathering crowd: “Folks, if you want your money, come and get it.”

Most customers, as legend would have it, were impressed enough by Henderson’s brave gesture to keep their money at Bank of Commerce, where they believed it would be safe.

That bold move yielded customer loyalty that carried the bank through the Great Depression.

Nearly 90 years later, Thornhill still believes it’s that kind of customer loyalty that has kept Bank of Commerce steadily growing, well into the 21st century.

In 2016, the bank added a branch in Columbus. Prior to that, it expanded first to Oxford in 2007 and then to

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Starkville in 2012. Since 2006, the bank’s capital has expanded from $167.6 million to $375 million, and 20 new employees have been hired.

But although the bank has added to its market base and has become a small regional bank instead of simply a leading local one, Thornhill contends that it’s still attention and fealty to Greenwood that keeps the business running and growing.

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Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017

With $207 million in loans in Greenwood and Carroll County, Bank of Commerce’s bread and butter, according to Thornhill, remains providing mortgages to homeowners.

“Housing, commerce and agriculture — those are our three foundations,” Thornhill said, adding that nothing makes him feel better than driving around town and seeing the houses his bank has helped families move into. Or seeing an agricultural field in full production, knowing the bank has provided an operating loan for the season.

“If you take care of people,” he said, “they take care of you.”

Thornhill and Senior Vice President Luther Wade point to the downtown building at 310 Howard St., occupied by the bank since the early 1900s when First National Bank closed and Bank of Commerce moved in.

“If you look around most of the businesses and buildings downtown, the upstairs are empty,” Thornhill said.

“Since we’ve been growing and hiring over the last decade, we just re-did the whole fourth floor of this building for offices,” said Wade.

A tour of the building reveals operations on all four levels.

Most local banking takes place on the first floor, in and beyond the highceilinged lobby, bathed in white, or at the Park Avenue branch, where Wade is headquartered.

Upstairs, all of the operations from tech support to check clearing, from industrial loan processing to mortgages, keep a busy hive of workers and executives buzzing.

Thornhill — who admittedly eats, drinks and dreams banking — says the secret to the bank’s success is focusing on the local picture. In this case, it’s his hometown of Greenwood.

“I grew up out in the county,” he said.

“I graduated from Greenwood High School in 1981.”

Following a stint at Mississippi Delta Community College, then Mississippi State University, and another longer stint in the Army National Guard, Thornhill earned a degree in business administration at Delta State University and eventually began working for Bank of Commerce, where he’s been for 26 years.

His philosophy of banking is simple.

“A lot of banks grow to sell,” he said.

“We bank to invest back into Greenwood. I want everybody to bank at the Bank of Commerce.”

To that end, in recent years the bank has added a new affordable housing loan, administered by Tim Stanciel.

Stanciel, also a Greenwood native, joined the bank in 2015 after 10 years in the export division at Staplcotn. His mother, Dolores Stanciel, has worked in loan operations and community reinvestment at the bank for 40 years, longer than Tim has been alive.

“They liked my work in the commu-

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nity, and we’re a community bank,” Stanciel said.

Stanciel, 34, a longtime volunteer in Greenwood, has served on the boards of the Museum of the Mississippi Delta, Greenwood-Leflore Airport and the United Way of Leflore County. He also has volunteered extensively with the Fuller Center for Housing, worked with the Chamber of Commerce’s

Young Professionals program and put in countless other hours on community causes.

Thornhill wanted everyone to own a home, according to Stanciel, and since not everyone in Greenwood is well off enough to get a standard mortgage loan, the bank’s affordable housing program was born.

Customers who qualify, after vetting

credit scores and demonstrating an income, can get a 20-year fixed rate on 95 percent of the value of a home that can’t cost more than $60,000. The bank picks up the 5 percent down payment, making it possible for those who can’t deliver a bundle of cash up front to get a loan.

Stanciel said about 20 loans have been closed so far, and the program is going well.

His duties also include community outreach, including sponsoring financial education classes that can help people with poor credit ratings raise them and can help those who have never had credit to get a foot in the door.

The most recent class at Providence Missionary Baptist Church enrolled at least 30 people.

“Since I’ve been doing loans, I’ve seen people learn to manage their money and get their credit scores from the low 500s to the 600s,” Stanciel said. “We know we can’t help everybody, but we’re working on helping as many as we can.”

Thornhill believes that communitybased approach can go far in bolstering customer loyalty and can even explain continued growth in an era when banks have gone bust nationwide for reaching too far.

“It’s real simple,” he said. “Without Greenwood, we ain’t got no bank.” n

“A lot of banks grow to sell. We bank to invest back into Greenwood.” _êó~å=qÜçêåÜáää

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Mission Mississippi

‘Working together’ Group aims to build relationships T

m~ëíçêë=oáÅÜ~êÇ=lïÉåë=çÑ=tÉëíãáåëíÉê=mêÉëÄóíÉêá~å=`ÜìêÅÜI=äÉÑíI=~åÇ=`~äîáå=`çääáåë=ë~ó=ÜÉääç=ÇìêáåÖ=~=jáëëáçå=jáëëáëëáééá=ÄêÉ~âJ Ñ~ëí=~í=`çääáåëD=ÅÜìêÅÜI=kÉï=wáçå=jáëëáçå~êó=_~éíáëíK

he Rev. Calvin Collins told a story at his church, New Zion Missionary Baptist, to a racially mixed group of 50 or more men and women having breakfast there early one Thursday morning.

There were two men at opposing ends of a forest. Each started walking into the trees. One fell into a patch of briars and scratched his eyes. The other stumbled off a cliff and broke his legs. Both kept crawling until they met.

They wondered whether they would make it out of the woods.

But one could see, and the other could walk. Then, Collins said, they told each other, “By working together, we can make it out.”

The story expresses the intention of Mission Mississippi. Its chapters across the state use short prayer breakfasts to help unify people of different races, denominations and backgrounds. The organization has existed for decades, but the Greenwood chapter, which Collins helped to start, had its first meeting 2½ years ago.

Since then, Mission Mississippi has been hosting hourlong prayer breakfasts on the first Thursday of each month at various churches in the community. Everyone’s invited for a quick meal, a short address by a pastor, group discussions and communal prayer. Everyone forms a circle, holding hands in prayer before leaving.

“The local pastor speaks two to three minutes; then in groups of three to five, people kind of share what is on their heart,” said the Rev. Peter Gray, rector of the Episcopal Church of the Nativity.

He and Collins are the chapter’s founding co-chairs.

“The idea is that you are using prayer to build relationships,” he said.

And, said Collins, “Grace is bigger, better and stronger than race. ...

Mission Mississippi wants us to sit us down at the table and have us talk about what we like and don’t, so we get along as a city and a county and as a people.”

He is pleased by the simple format.

It’s religious. “The glue that holds it together is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” Collins said.

It builds relationships. People are encouraged to explain their past and present experiences and their ideas about how the community can

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Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 PageSO molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

WORSHIP “For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.”

Romans 12:4-5

We invite you to join us on Sundays and Wednesdays as we seek to learn, sing, worship and grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ.

Each Sunday we broadcast our 11 a.m. worship service live on our website for those not able to be with us in person.

300 Main Street • 662-453-4680 • fpcgreenwood.org

PageSP Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

“Everybody doesn’t have to agree on everything to move forward. We don’t have to agree to get along.

This is more about what we have in common than what separates us.” qÜÉ=oÉîK=`~äîáå=`çääáåë

jáëëáçå=jáëëáëëáééá=é~êíáÅáé~åíë=ë~ó=~=Öêçìé=éê~óÉê=áå=íÜÉ=ë~åÅíì~êó=çÑ=kÉï=wáçå=jáëëáçå~êó=_~éíáëí=`ÜìêÅÜK= progress. “Everybody doesn’t have to agree on everything to move forward.

We don’t have to agree to get along.

This is more about what we have in common than what separates us,” Collins said.

It’s practical. The meetings start at 6:45 a.m. and end at 7:45 a.m. so people can get to work on time.

Julia Collier, a member of Grace Bible Church and one of the regular participants, said she comes because she wants to address the underlying topic of every meeting — improved communication between the races.

Collier, who is retired, said, “I keep going back because it is my desire that people should care for one another, really love one another. My main purpose is to talk about the love of God.” “I would rather we get together in love and try to get along. If a person is going to heaven, he is going to have to get along!”

The topics aren’t particularly easy.

People will speak up about injustices, past and present, that have influenced them. Other topics include ignorance and misunderstanding, knowledge and understanding.

“We talk about things,” Collier said.

“We talk about being white or black and living in Mississippi.

“We are not ignoring anything. We recognize the reality of our differences.

When you recognize something, then you can deal with it.”

The Rev. Terry Williams, a United Methodist, is one of the younger pastors who have become involved. He said, “Who should lead the talk about this but the church?”

He’s involved in particular, along with another participant, John Downs, in helping to organize where the meet-

ings will be. “John and I have taken on the responsibility to be the church planners, so we are trying to incorporate some of the churches that have not participated.”

Many churches already are involved.

The location changes with each prayer breakfast. The pastor of the host church speaks, and members of the church help with the food.

“I am very adamant about this ministry that God has given us, and thank God for Calvin and Peter coming together to co-chair this,” Williams said.’

Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 PageSQ molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

“The goal — it really is about relationship. Prayer is a piece of that relationship. What is nice about Mission Mississippi is that it really doesn’t have an agenda in building relationships. What we need to build relationships is a chance to come together.” qÜÉ=oÉîK=mÉíÉê=dê~ó

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jáëëáçå=jáëëáëëáééá=é~êíáÅáé~åíë=gìäá~=`çääáÉê=~åÇ=_çÄ=mêçîáåÉ=ÖêÉÉí=É~ÅÜ=çíÜÉê=ÇìêJ áåÖ= ÄêÉ~âÑ~ëí= ~í= kÉï= wáçå= jáëëáçå~êó= _~éíáëí= `ÜìêÅÜK= pÜÉ= ~ííÉåÇë= dê~ÅÉ= _áÄäÉ `ÜìêÅÜX=ÜÉ=~ííÉåÇë=k~íáîáíó=béáëÅçé~äK

Gray said the chapter was founded because of the enthusiasm of Lee Paris of Jackson. “He had taken a leave of absence from work of a year to give himself over to starting new chapters across the state,” Gray explained. “The two of us started talking to people we knew might be interested.”

Mission Mississippi also has sponsored occasions with directed discussion, he said. One was after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in Baltimore. In April 2016, Mission

an agenda in building relationships.

What we need to build relationships is a chance to come together.”

He continued, “The only negative outcome is I lose a little bit of sleep once a month because I have to wake up early. I roll out of bed and think, ‘What am I doing?’ But there has not been one meeting that I did not come away better off than when I went in.

Every single meeting is enriching.”

Collins said, “It’s not hard for me because I am up early anyway.”

Mississippi held a Day of Dialogue at Leflore County Civic Center, with pastors in a panel fielding questions and sometimes directing topics to people in the audience. A similar event is planned for this April.

“We asked questions that went deeper,” Peter Gray said. One was, “When did you first become aware of race?”

“The goal – it really is about relationship. Prayer is a piece of that relationship. What is nice about Mission Mississippi is that it really doesn’t have

Working with Gray, he said, has been fruitful. “It’s been good. He’s energetic.

He’s excited. He’s a team player. It’s a cordial relationship, very friendly and open. I think it has broadened both ouf our experiences.”

Gray said getting to know Collins has been important. “We started Mission Mississippi about a year after I arrived in Greenwood, and I already knew Calvin. It really has been one of the great joys of the last 2½ years to get to spend time with him.” n

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Margaret Dean

Woman of words

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Writing has been constant influence in life

H

er favorite music is country — not the new Nashville pop stars but old-school icons. Dolly Parton. George Jones. Loretta Lynn.

She prefers period dramas to newer fare. “Pride and Prejudice.” “The Remains of the Day.” “Gone With the Wind.”

Her truest love, she says, is the written word, especially in its classic forms.

Greenwood Public School District Director of Communications Margaret Dean, one might say, is a woman of her word, heavily influenced by the words of others.

A voracious reader all her life, Dean

says good writing has remained a constant influence for as long as she can remember.

“I have a book that I’ve had since I was a teenager, ‘Jubilee’ by Margaret Walker,” Dean said. “It was the first book I ever read by an AfricanAmerican, and I read it almost without

pqlov=^ka=melqlp=_v=h^qeovk=b^pq_rok

stopping.”

Dean made a promise to herself to read “Jubilee” every year, and she just finished reading it again recently.

A writer in her own right, Dean grew up composing poems and short stories, majored in English and mass communications at Alcorn State University

Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 PageSS molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

and worked as a journalist for 14 years before turning to education and the Greenwood school district for a career as a communications specialist and a teacher.

Now, after 24 years on the job, Dean still believes in the power of words as strongly as she ever did — as tools for communication, community building and self- expression.

Her faith in words never wavers. v v v

Dean’s desk at the district’s downtown offices holds two computer moni-

tors — barely enough for the multitasking she undertakes publishing the district’s newsletters and publicity materials, administering its Facebook page, keeping up with all district events, acting as liaison between the superintendent and the public and constantly updating the district website.

On this particular afternoon, she is posting photographs of district students’ reading fair displays, elaborate collaborations between students and their parents, touting the best qualities of books the children have chosen to read and analyze.

“I don’t think anything’s better than

the written word,” Dean said, reflecting on early reading as a child. She says she would read anything put in front of her when she was a kid growing up in Yazoo City, and she was always a strong student as a result.

“My mother raised six kids — four boys and two girls,” Dean said. Her parents divorced when Dean was 10, and her mother, who married at 17 and had gone to school through 11th grade, did most of the parenting singlehandedly.

“She always taught us that education was the only way out of poverty,” Dean said. “She wanted us to be productive

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citizens.”

Dean’s mother died in 2015 having seen all of her children grow up to live productive lives.

It wasn’t always easy, Dean said, to please such an exacting and demanding task master.

“My freshman year at Alcorn, I was taking 21 hours, a seven-class load,” Dean said.

Grades were mailed out back then, and when the letter arrived at home over the Christmas holiday, her mother studied it with Margaret looking on.

“I said, ‘I got seven A’s,” Dean said.

“And my mother said, ‘Well, you could

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`boqfcfba mr_if` ^``lrkq^kqp 105 West President Avenue Greenwood, MS 38930 Phone: 662-453-7112 Fax: 662-453-7123

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Greenwood Office 1705 Highway 82 West Greenwood, MS 38930 Phone: 662-453-6432 Fax: 662-455-1841

Grenada Office 1332 Sunset Drive, Suite B Grenada, MS 38901 Phone: 662-226-8050 Fax: 662-226-8060

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PageST Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

^=ã~ëíÉê=ãìäíáJí~ëâÉêI=aÉ~å=íÉ~ÅÜÉë=~í=dêÉÉåïççÇ=eáÖÜ=pÅÜççä=ïÜáäÉ=âÉÉéáåÖ=ìé=íÜÉ=ÇáëíêáÅíÛë=ïÉÄëáíÉ=~åÇ=c~ÅÉÄççâ=é~ÖÉI=~ííÉåÇáåÖ=ãÉÉíáåÖë=~åÇ=ëÅÜççä=ÉîÉåíëI=~ÅíáåÖ ~ë=íÜÉ=ÇáëíêáÅíÛë=çÑÑáÅá~ä=éÜçíçÖê~éÜÉê=~åÇ=êÉéçêíáåÖ=ÇáëíêáÅí=ÄìëáåÉëë=íç=ãÉÇá~I=é~êÉåíë=~åÇ=ÇáëíêáÅí=~Çãáåáëíê~íáçå=~åÇ=ëí~ÑÑK= have made eight.’

“I think she didn’t want us to have a hard life like she did.” v v v

After graduating from Yazoo City High School and Alcorn University, Dean took her first job as a news reporter for the Yazoo Herald.

“I was the first African-American in the editorial department,” she said.

That job lasted for seven years until her husband, a police officer, took a job that brought the couple to Greenwood, where Dean went to work for the Commonwealth.

She spent seven years at the Commonwealth as a staff writer, covering everything from police to schools and earning recognition in 1992 as the paper’s Employee of the Year.

By then she was the mother of two young sons.

“It was a mad shuffle,” Dean said. “My husband worked the midnight shift, and there’s no such thing as normal hours in a journalism job. We were constantly working on who would look after the boys when I had to work on Saturday or when one of us was not around.”

A job opened up at the Greenwood Public School District in 1993, and

Dean applied for it, in part because of encouragement from her co-worker, Susan Montgomery, and in part because it represented the possibility of more regular hours.

But merely taking a new job wasn’t enough of a challenge for the ever-reaching Dean, who also that year began working on getting licensed to be a teacher.

Under emergency licensing, she began teaching high school students the things she knew and loved — journalism, Mississippi writers and technical writing — and in three years she was fully licensed, just 17 years after graduating from college. v v v

“I give all credit now to my 14 years as a journalist,” Dean said.

This year at Greenwood High School, she’s teaching debate, oral communication, creative writing, AfricanAmerican literature and journalism.

For all these years, she has overseen the publication of the yearbook and has tried to keep students media savvy in a rapidly changing media scene.

“What we learn in journalism impacts our lives, I tell my students,” Dean said. “We talk about what is fake news? Which news outlet do you

believe? How do you determine what’s credible and reliable? And we talk about why news matters. I help them understand that even though they might think something is not in their world, it can still affect them.”

Dean said she is constantly looking for ways to tie her elective courses back to the core curriculum on which the students are tested for accountability ratings.

“I teach them to treat the lead to a story like a thesis statement for a research project,” she said.

Ten years after having a student in class, she may run into him or her at Walmart.

“They’ll say, ‘There’s Mrs. Dean; you better not use bad grammar!” Dean said, laughing.

As hard as she works keeping up with teaching and her job as district communications director — not to mention her beloved twin boy grandsons, Jayden and Jordan and step-granddaughter Jessilyn — Dean finds time to balance work with friendship, faith and community service. She is an active member of both New Zion Missionary Baptist Church and the Greenwood Rotary Club.

Mildred Sias, a former co-worker at Greenwood High School, said Dean was her mentor and the kind of friend

everyone should have — dependable and loyal. Sias and Dean have been friends for over 20 years.

“I’ve been facing some physical challenges, and Margaret has been there with me every step of the way,” Sias said. “When I get depressed, she has encouraging words for me. She’s very good with words.”

Sias said Dean is a smart person who can take little, make much of it and make it work. She points to 2015, when Dean had just half a year to finish the yearbook because of administrative changes at the schools. Normally it took an entire year to complete the job.

“She just got in there and worked, day and night, and made it happen,” Sias said. “And she didn’t complain. I thought that was mighty big of her.”

Dean smiled when she heard what Sias had said.

“If I have been good at my job, it’s because I’m emulating her,” she says softly. “I call her every day.”

Dean says she’ll keep up her current pace of work at the district until she’s tired, and she’s not tired yet. If any motto sums up her approach to life, she said it’s one by British writer James Allen that she often quotes to her students: “The world steps aside for the man who knows where he’s going.” n

PageSV Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

Life Help

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Growing services Agency building new programs for children, adults L ife Help, Mississippi’s Region VI mental health center, is constantly expanding its programs to better serve the needs of specialized clientele.

Two new programs — one serving children with severe emotional disturbances and another serving adults with dementia — are under development.

Life Help serves 12 northwest Mississippi counties and has headquarters in Greenwood, with its main clinic on Browning Road.

There, nurses under Children’s Coordinator Donna Theriot are developing a “wraparound service” for kids called MYPAC (Mississippi Youth Programs Around the Clock).

“This is an intensive family- and strength-based program that takes place in the community and in the homes of our clients most severely in need, up to age 18,” Theriot said.

These clients are children who have been diagnosed with Serious Emotional Disturbance (SED).

MYPAC is a state Medicaid program that once was offered by waiver but has been opened up to community health centers such as Life Help. Children can stay in the program for a year.

Life Help gets referrals for MYPAC from psychiatrists, doctors’ offices and inpatient facilities where these clients are being treated.

“Across our 12-county area, the facilitator, the one providing MYPAC services, can have up to 10 kids,” Theriot said.

This first year of the program, Theriot expects about 60 children will receive these special wraparound services.

Wraparound refers to bringing in “natural support” to help improve a child’s life and to strengthen the family caring for that child. Natural support might include family members, coaches, peers, pastors, teachers, counselors from Youth Court or anyone else who would want to join for the betterment of that child.

“They still receive individual and family therapy, and under MYPAC, we have a team meeting to identify natural support to help,” Theriot said. “We talk about the client’s needs, the strengths of the family.

Then we build goals and objectives based on those needs and those strengths.”

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and have everyone working on a common goal, with an outcome based on what the family identifies as its vision.

“That goal might be as simple as the family wants everyone to attend school,” Theriot said. “The team identifies objectives to move the family toward that vision, and natural support team members agree to do what they can to help.”

The program is designed to help families develop social and natural support so that they know they’re not alone, whether their support comes from extended family or from the community.

“The whole thing is to get people together who are committed to helping clients meet their goals and objectives,” Theriot said. The family identifies team members they think will be a good match, and several meetings are held to assess that commitment.

“If they come to the meeting and they didn’t follow through, we have the option to replace them.”

Family meetings take place once a month, and if a child is in therapy, the therapist is part of the team.

Life Help’s Mobile Crisis Emergency Response Team, a 24-hour emergency service, is available to these

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Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 PageTM molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

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Toll Free 1-800-898-0730

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families as well.

Theriot said her team at Life Help is in the process of setting up the program and meeting Medicaid requirements and is starting up with four or five children.

Interested families should call the Life Help Center at 453-6211 and ask for the children’s coordinator. v v v

Life Help is also collaborating with the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson to provide telehealth services to local people who might have Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

Telehealth makes it possible for medical providers to communicate directly with patients in remote locations using video and audio technology. The Life Help center in Greenwood has a monitor and technology cart that connects patients in Greenwood to specialists at UMMC in Jackson.

“Life Help and UMMC have worked together since 2009 to bring psychiatric coverage to individuals, using a grant that provides telehealth funding,” said Jonathan Grantham, Life Help mental health services coordinator. The program from that time period has been discontinued, but at the time it provided 1,413 telepsychiatry appointments for Life Help clients.

In a new collaboration, Life Help and UMMC have launched a program designed to evaluate and treat people who may be affected by Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia.

“Using state-of-the-art technology, a specialist at

UMMC in Jackson remotely evaluates individuals here in Life Help’s Greenwood office,” Grantham said.

“Communication takes place through a television over a secure line with a trained RN in the room to serve as hands for the doctor and to provide specific dementia-related evaluations.”

This is advantageous to patients, Grantham said, because it relieves them and their caregivers of the burden of traveling to specialists in Memphis or Jackson, “a trip that can affect not only access to care but also the results of the evaluations.”

Julio Cespedes Jr., project manager for the Center for TeleHealth at UMMC, agrees.

“The goal is not to disrupt current care at a local center,” Cespedes said, “but to enhance care where there might be gaps in coverage.”

If a patient can get diagnostic testing in a familiar and close environment, he said, all the better.

Accurately diagnosing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease might not be possible in a small town or a rural place where there are no board certified geriatricians, physicians who specialize in caring for the physical and mental health needs of the elderly or diseases commonly associated with aging.

Cespedes says a telehealth encounter in this particular program begins with a geriatrician on staff at UMMC. “From her perspective, she will connect on her dual-screen computer,” he said. “On one side is the patient’s health record, and on the other side is a video connection with the client. On the patient end, there is a comprehensive global health cart, including a video screen, and a nurse trained in how it all

works. The nurse serves as the telepresenter.”

Through this video visit, providers are able to do a thorough clinical assessment, Cespedes said.

Physicians are able to observe behavior and do an evaluation just as they would in the examining room.

If diagnostic labs, imaging or further studies are needed, the local partner can provide those or UMMC can help find a place to do them.

This particular telehealth program falls under UMMC’s Memory Impairment and Neurodegenerative Dementia (MIND) Center, where clinical research is being carried out specifically around these kinds of neurological disorders.

“The scope of practice that telehealth can provide includes cognitive evaluations, clinical assessment, and continuous monitoring of the disease,” Cespedes said, “all guided by experts in the field.”

If telehealth can help increase the number of people in dementia treatment, it can help close a gap in coverage that directly affects the quality of life for patients, their caregivers and the community at large.

“It is our hope that both families and caregivers will soon see the benefits of this service being provided locally,” Grantham said.

Meanwhile, Life Help continues to serve people with Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia through its Garden Park day care program, open Monday through Friday, offering a therapeutic environment for clients and respite and support for caregivers. Transportation, snacks and lunch are provided daily. Garden Park is one of two such programs in the state. n

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North Sunflower Medical Center

Homegrown leader Followed in parents’ footsteps at hospital C

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armen Oguz has seen the North Sunflower Medical Center grow and thrive as a go-to destination for health care in the Delta.

“I was born in this hospital. My dad, Travis Cooper, was the administrator of this hospital. My mother, Betty Ann Cooper, also retired from employment at this hospital,” said Oguz, who is the center’s director of rehabilitation and vice president of service line development.

Oguz has been with the center in Ruleville, which is owned by Sunflower County, since September 2004. She said her father, who retired in the 1980s, is largely responsible for recruiting many of the physicians currently on staff there.

In 2013, Oguz — as vice president of the service line program — led the center to open an outpatient wound clinic, an outpatient orthopedic clinic and an outpatient infusion center. The outpatient orthopedic clinic has been replaced by Mississippi Sports Medicine, which comes to the center’s complex on a weekly basis.

Oguz recently gave an overview of the outpatient wound care center, which opened in March 2013.

“We contract our outpatient wound clinic services out. Although I’m in charge of the day-to-day operations of the clinic, we have outside personnel to come in and do the clinical treatment,” Oguz said.

Oguz holds two wound care certificates, so she knows all about wounds and how they should be treated.

The wound clinic is staffed by a company based in Metairie, Louisiana. Dr. James Edward Warrington Jr., who practices at the center, is its full-time physician. He is accompanied by three private contract nurses.

It is housed in the center’s Specialty Clinic building, which adjoins the main hospital complex. Since it is outpatient, Oguz said, patients may come in and schedule an appointment without referral from a physician. It does not offer hyperbaric treatments.

“We have an average of about 10 patients a week. We open in the morning and stay open until the last patient is scheduled,” she said.

The medical center has been a Critical Access Hospital since Oct. 1, 2004.

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“I love what I’m doing. I’ve got the support of the administration to have creative freedom to grow service lines and to make customers happy and healthy.” `~êãÉå=lÖìò

“A Critical Access Hospital is a rural hospital that has 25 or less beds, has an emergency room that is open 24 hours and has a mileage proximity relative to other hospitals in the area,” Oguz said.

“The reason our hospital is so successful is our management understands what makes a Critical Access Hospital tick,” she said.

Many hospitals have attempted to transition from being Prospective Payment System hospitals — which are paid in a different way — to Critical Access. “Many have failed because they didn’t understand the Critical Access Hospital model,” Oguz said.

“Making that transition from PPS to Critical Access is a daunting task. You basically have to forget everything you ever knew about a traditional hospital and learn the Critical Hospital ways — from the billing to the accounting,” she said.

Shortly before the center gained its Critical Access status, Oguz was asked to come on board in September 2004 by Billy Marlow, formerly the center’s CEO and now its executive director.

Oguz worked in every department of Bolivar Medical Center while she attended Delta State University, where she received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business. She then attended a medical center in Jackson, where she received a bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in physical therapy.

Oguz received her wound care certifications in 2008. She is licensed to practice wound care in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas.

At the center, Oguz characterizes herself as a “busy little bee.”

One addition to the center’s team is Jim Tom Pilgreen of Carroll County, a part-time employee. Pilgreen, a 2010 graduate of Pillow Academy, plans to go to nursing school in the near future, Oguz said.

“He wants to be a nurse anesthetist.

We’re not sponsoring him, but we’re fostering his exposure to the health care environment. He knows it gives him the opportunity,” she said.

The center’s Outpatient Infusion Center, located in its main medical complex, is also an advantage for those needing regular infusions of antibiotics, blood or blood platelets or treatment for Crohn’s disease.

“If it is infused, we do it,” Oguz said, adding that the center does offer chemotherapy treatments.

The Infusion Center is beneficial for several reasons, she said.

“For most of their medication, they do not have to drive weekly or monthly to their specialist in Memphis or Jackson or Little Rock. We make it convenient,” Oguz said.

The Infusion Center coordinates with

Carmen Oguz stands in the “Activities of Daily Living Kitchen,” which helps those undergoing occupational therapy. Oguz has seen outpatient services thrive at the Ruleville medical center since 2013. own the Studio 230 Art Gallery in The center’s outpatient operations the treating physician to provide seamCleveland. less care. In addition, the center’s phar- are running smoothly, she said.

Oguz said she’s found her niche.

Oguz is married to Cetin “Chet” Oguz, macy can often provide prescription “I love what I’m doing,” she said. “I’ve a professor of art at Delta State and a drugs at a lower price than other native of Turkey who came to the United got the support of the administration to places, she said.

States on a swimming scholarship. They have creative freedom to grow service “We get referrals from Memphis and lines and to make customers happy have two sons: Cruz, 11, and Cooper, 13.

Jackson. We’ve outgrown our Delta and healthy.” n In addition to their jobs, the couple britches,” Oguz said.

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Sky Lake

‘Spectacular area’

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Home to some of oldest, largest bald cypress trees S ky Lake is a hidden gem tucked away in the remote reaches of southern Leflore County and northern Humphreys County.

Many still don’t have a full understanding of what all the 4,273-acre wildlife management area has to offer, but Greenwood outdoors enthusiast

Hart Henson certainly does.

“It’s simply a spectacular area, one that may not get used like it should.

There is something for everyone,” Henson said. “It’s great to have such a wonderful resource so close to home.”

Sky Lake is probably best known for its 1,735-foot boardwalk, which was

completed in 2010. It takes visitors over a shallow swamp, which is home to some of the largest and oldest bald cypress trees on earth. It is 12 feet above the forest floor and also allows visitors the chance for photography and wildlife viewing.

“The boardwalk takes you right to

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some of the most impressive trees you could ever imagine,” said Steve Burgess, a retired forester for Leflore County and the surrounding area.

“When I have folks in from out of state, I always try and take them down there.

“The oldest trees there are thought to be more than 1,000 years old. That’s

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“It’s just a great experience, a great way to relax and get real close to nature.” e~êí=eÉåëçå

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pretty serious when you stop and think about it.

There are five or six that will really turn your head.”

The largest of Sky Lake’s ancient bald cypress trees, a previous state record, is now the second largest tree in Mississippi — measuring 46 feet, 9 inches in circumference, about 16 feet in diameter and 70 feet in height.

Cypress timber has been prized for centuries because of its resistance to decay, and Burgess said he doesn’t know how these trees survived the clearing and burning that once took place to make room for growing crops.

“I guess the brake was so big at the time they logged it that they didn’t have the equipment to get to them,” he said. “What I do know, though, is these big trees are a true state treasure and will always be protected.”

The majority of the boardwalk, which cost $715,000, was constructed during the drought of 2010, when the water levels at Sky Lake were some of the lowest they had been in almost 50 years. The project first began in 2006 by Wildlife Mississippi, through funds from the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, the Recreational Trails Program, the Federal Highway Administration and the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board.

According to Wildlife Mississippi, a conservation group, the wildlife management area is located on an old channel of the Mississippi River that Native Americans are thought to have occupied up until several thousand years ago.

Greenwood’s Thomas Gregory recommends a trip to Sky Lake for anyone who has any interest in the outdoors and exploring nature.

“We’ve been twice. The first time we took some friends from Oregon, and they were blown away,” Gregory said. “We went back during Thanksgiving with some family. It can be a very educational experience, too. There are some exhibits on site, and the boardwalk is covered with signs explaining the trees and the entire ecosystem.

“It’s only about a 45-minute drive, and it took us about an hour to do the boardwalk. We just made a scenic Delta loop out of the trip and wound up in Indianola for dinner.”

There are also other ways to enjoy Sky Lake. There are limited permit hunting for deer, waterfowl, turkey, squirrel, rabbit, dove and raccoon.

Wildlife Mississippi has developed a paddling trail through the heart of the Sky Lake swamp.

Henson, an avid kayaker, said paddlers can enter the trail just east of the Sky Lake parking lot. It’s a great way to relax and take in the beauty of the wild, she said.

The trail is divided into four main segments, each marked by a different color sign. The white trail is the main segment as it connects to three other segments. It covers 0.3 mile.

Loop A has red signs and covers 0.4 mile. Loop B has yellow signs and covers 1.1 miles, and Loop C, which takes paddlers near the boardwalk, has orange signs and covers 0.8 mile.

The total trail length is 2.6 miles.

Henson said the best time to use the trail is from early summer to late fall, when water levels are highest. “It’s just a great experience, a great way to relax and get real close to nature,” she said.

Sky Lake WMA also has an amphitheater, a comfort station and a pavilion.

Additional parking has been recently added as well as a 1,536-foot educational and administrative office building with a sign-in kiosk for visitors to leave comments.

With the recent upgrades, according to Wildlife Mississippi, the total of cost of Sky Lake is now $1,020,250, with private donors contributing $202,250. n

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Mississippi Valley State University

Major growth Social work fastest-growing department S

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tudents considering registering at Mississippi Valley State University might consider this: The fastest-growing academic program on the Valley campus, at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, is social work.

Dr. Catherine Singleton-Walker, chairperson of the Department of Social Work, has some ideas about why that’s so.

“We’re preparing students to go out and do generalist work, and they can do that in a number of areas,” Singleton-Walker said.

A bachelor’s degree in social work (BSW) might prepare a student to work in a nursing home, a clinic, a prison, a school, a government social services agency, a senator’s office, a police department or a day care center.

It also could be put to use in a number of other places.

“Students in our Master’s in Social Work program specialize in child and family welfare,” Singleton-Walker said.

That encompasses a number of different opportunities as well, from government policy to hands-on counseling to research.

Whatever the reason, students are applying to study social work at Valley as rapidly as the department can handle them. This year there are 217 students enrolled in the undergraduate program and 76 in the graduate program.

“It’s a good fit for students who want to serve,” Singleton-Walker said. “And it allows students to practice what they deeply care for in a number of different arenas, like politics, juvenile justice or human services, for example.”

Singleton-Walker came to Valley from the field, where she worked for the Mississippi Department of Health for a number of years as the District 5 supervisor of social workers. Her experience at the state level prepared her well to guide students to areas of social work that might fit their particular area of interest or expertise.

Officially, the department’s goals are as follows: “The mission of the department is to prepare students for entrylevel social work positions as generalist practitioners. Students are prepared to work with client systems at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels, including individuals, families, groups, organiza-

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St. Francis of Assisi Church and School Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish 2613 Hwy 82 E Corner of Dewey and Washington (662) 453-0623 sfgw.org (662) 453-3980 ihmgw.org Mass Times Daily: M, T, Th & F: 6 AM Convent Wed. 9 AM School Mass Sunday: 11 AM Gospel Choir 1:30 PM Spanish

Mass Times Daily: M, T, Th & F: 7 am Wed. 5 PM followed by light supper and Family Faith Formation Saturday Vigil: 6 PM Sunday: 9 AM

The Catholic Faith Community of Leflore County is served by the Franciscan Friars and Sisters, and the Redemptorist priests of the Denver Province. If you would like to learn more about the teachings and disciplines of the Roman Catholic Church, call any of the above numbers. Please check out our calendar posted on our website for the Sacrament of Reconciliation, family and teen events.

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tions and communities. Our curriculum is firmly rooted in the person-in-environment perspective and frames social work practice as a blend of values, knowledge and skills. A special emphasis is placed in our degree program on the needs of impoverished minorities living in rural regions, especially in the Mississippi Delta. We also emphasize empowerment of client populations through advocacy for social and economic changes in the Delta and other poor and rural environments.”

But even in social work, not everybody gets a job right away, SingletonWalker said.

The best plan is to gain admission to the program and then settle on an area of particular interest, represented by the various research projects of the department’s 10 faculty members, most of whom have doctorates.

Singleton-Walker’s current area of research interest is obesity, and it can be applied to work in hospital environments, early childhood education, schools or institutions serving populations prone to obesity.

Dr. Cynthia Honore-Collins, an assistant professor who came to Valley from New Orleans, said her research is more quantitative, focusing on organizations from a research standpoint.

“That might be looking at the prison system from an institutional standpoint,” she said.

Other research areas currently include homelessness in the Delta, LGBTQ issues, bullying, self-care for social workers, and a number of family and child welfare topics.

Undergrads and grads alike are required to do practical work in the community, and department field coordinators are busy looking for placements for the burgeoning number of students moving though the program.

“Finding placements is a challenge,” said Singleton-Walker. “It takes a lot for a local organization or agency to be a field instructor. It’s a time commitment. They have to promise one-on-one sessions with students each week and lots of on-the-job supervision.”

Undergrads must complete over 400 hours of practicum work. Graduates must complete 900 hours — half in any area and half focused on family and child welfare.

Recent students have interned at Region 1 Mental Health Center, Mississippi Division of Family and Children’s Services, Promise Community of Indianola, Life Help Region VI in Greenwood, the Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Foundation, Coahoma Community College, Youth Court in Greenwood, in U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson’s office, and Head Start in Bolivar County, among other agencies.

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Graduate students can pick from different tracks — one for those who already have BSW degrees and another program that takes in students from all disciplines and takes longer to complete.

Singleton-Walker said undergrads have to apply for admission to the program, including writing an essay on why they want to study social work.

“That usually screens out anybody who thinks this is a good major because it will be easy,” she said. “We recruit around campus, and students often leave other programs and come over to social work.

“But we want them to be here for the right reasons,” she said. “If it looks like they’re here for the wrong reason, I tell them, ‘You need to go and look for a better fit.’”

One attraction for students is the department’s deep and varied interest in cultural and social issues, as illustrated by the Nov. 17 half-day Cultural Fair and Symposium, organized by students in the Methods of Social Work Practice III class.

The program featured AfricanAmerican, Italian, Chinese and Mexican cultures and cuisines.

Speakers included Dr. Vincent Venturini, visiting professor and former MVSU Department of Social Work chair, who led a presentation on “Ethical Practice Across Cultures When Working with Children,” and MVSU assistant professor Dr. William Fuller on “The Latino Diaspora: Diversity Among Latinos.”

For more information on the Department of Social Work at MVSU, visit: www.mvsu.edu/academics/academic-programs/professionalstudies/departments/socialwork/social-work-homepage. n

“A special emphasis is placed in our degree program on the needs of impoverished minorities living in rural regions, especially in the Mississippi Delta.” aêK=`~íÜÉêáåÉ=páåÖäÉíçåJt~äâÉê

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Greenwood Leflore Hospital

Keeping organized

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Unlikely road brought Hemphill to hospital

C

hristine Worachek Hemphill, for most of her life, has liked things neat and organized.

Years ago, while working at J.C. Penney in Shreveport, Louisiana, she got to put that skill to use as a basic logic assistant.

“It was organizing, setting up — the basics, like underwear, socks and sheets. All the basic staples in the store,” she said. “It was an awesome job because that’s when I discovered that I loved things to be organized.”

She said the job gave her the oppor-

tunity to do “Planograms” of the various departments to determine, based on the rate of sales by color and size, how many bins would be needed.

“It sounds really boring and nerdy — and it was — and I loved it,” she said.

Now the Janesville, Wisconsin, native is the director of the Greenwood Leflore Hospital Foundation and also serves as the hospital’s physician liaison.

When she was 10, her mother, Dolly, married her stepfather, Bill Shea, and within six months, they moved to

Shreveport.

“My stepfather worked for General Motors in Janesville; then he relocated to Louisiana to help open a truck and bus plant,” she said.

Her father, Roman “Red” Worachek, still lives in Janesville.

A 1987 graduate of Caddo Parrish Magnet High School, Hemphill lived at home with her parents. She got a job at J.C. Penney at the age of 16 and continued with the company while attending Louisiana State University in Shreveport, where she graduated with

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a bachelor’s degree in marketing in 1992.

“Retail was all I knew at that point,” Hemphill said.

She rose to managing a department within the J.C. Penney store and served as a merchandising assistant before moving to the logic assistant’s job. She joined the management training program, and as a result she was transferred to the Greenwood store in 1993.

She was merchandising manager for the children’s department, which

Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 PageUS molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

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PageUT Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

“I think you can love wherever you are. It’s what you make of it. Attitude gets you a long way.” `ÜêáëíáåÉ=eÉãéÜáää

`ÜêáëíáåÉ=eÉãéÜáääI=ëÉÅçåÇ=Ñêçã=êáÖÜíI=ãÉÉíë=ïáíÜ=dêÉÉåïççÇ=iÉÑäçêÉ=eçëéáí~ä=ëí~ÑÑK=cêçã=äÉÑí=~êÉ=hÉó=_êáííI=îáÅÉ=éêÉëáÇÉåí=çÑ=~Çãáåáëíê~íáîÉ=ëÉêîáÅÉëX=däçêá~=_çóÇI=ÇáêÉÅíçê çÑ=Å~ëÉ=ã~å~ÖÉãÉåíX=jçêÖ~å=oáÅÜ~êÇëçåI=Å~ëÉ=ã~å~ÖÉêX=~åÇ=háã=`~ãéÄÉääI=Å~ëÉ=ã~å~ÖÉêK included buying merchandise for that department as well as managing the people. Her dream was to become a buyer in Dallas, where the company’s corporate buyer’s office is.

Having the ability to make purchasing decisions locally was important. She cites Greenville — with its then-yellow-tinted municipal water — as a case in point.

“They didn’t sell white undergarments very well in Greenville because they stained the first time you washed them in yellow water,” she said. So beige and black undergarments sold better.

“Someone sitting in Dallas isn’t going to understand that about your market,” Hemphill said.

Hemphill’s plan was to stay in Greenwood two years. Things got complicated when she met her future husband, Scott Hemphill, a captain with the Greenwood Fire Department.

“I knew he was not going to want to move, so I was staying in Greenwood for the rest of my life,” she said. The couple married in July 1995.

She also became stepmom to Scottie Rhea Brown, who is now married with a family of her own.

J.C. Penney began phasing out merchandising managers, but she soldiered on until her own position was eliminated in 2005. When she began looking for a new position, Greenwood Leflore Hospital seemed

like a promising prospect.

“I got lucky,” she said. “There were actually two positions that opened up — one a marketing director position and the other the foundation director position.”

She was chosen to be the foundation director, which was a new post.

Hemphill’s job at the hospital is multifaceted.

“We have multiple giving clubs,” she said. “Our first fundraising effort was through our employees. Before you go out into the community, you ask your employees, ‘Hey, we’ve got this new foundation; are you going to give?’ You have to first say, ‘Our employees are doing this.’”

The first program is the KING Club. KING is an acronym for “Kind Investing Nurtures Growth.” Its projects have included updates to waiting rooms or patient care areas. It also included the purchase of steel furniture that is positioned around the hospital’s grounds.

Employees, through payroll deductions — typically $4 per pay period — have made the KING Club very successful, Hemphill said.

For the Pillars of Health Care Giving Club, people donate $100 or more per year. There are also the Gifts of Tribute, a memorial and honorary gift program, and the Business and Corporate Honor Roll for

business donations. Then there is the Heritage Circle, a planned giving club focusing primarily on wills and trusts.

In December, Hemphill sent the year-end appeal letter to potential donors. The goal was to raise $20,000 to help purchase vein finders for the hospital’s pediatrics, radiology, Intensive Care Unit and emergency room.

Hemphill’s job as physician liaison is to “communicate the services that we provide to other providers, other physicians or nurse practitioners in neighboring counties so they know what we have,” she said. “For a town our size, we have a great hospital and a wide number of services.”

Hemphill said she empathizes with patients in the hospital.

“When they’re in the hospital, they don’t want to be here,” she said. “They’re here because they have to be or they have a loved one here.”

Outside the hospital, Hemphill is active in the Greenwood Rotary Club, where she chairs the Fundraising and Special Projects Committee.

She said that although her career has gone through a few changes, she likes where she is and what she’s doing. “I think you can love wherever you are,” she said. “It’s what you make of it. Attitude gets you a long way.” n

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PageUV Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

Ray Nash

Living his dream He owns city’s last full-service station R

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ay Nash says he dreamed years ago of owning a service station, and for a long time now he’s been living out that dream.

Nash, 72, owns Nash’s Service Station, located at the corner of Fulton and Market streets, and has been at that location since 1975. Before that he rented the former Gulf station across the street from Greenwood City Hall, beginning in 1969.

“I’ve been a mechanic all this time.

Even in the service, I was the motor sergeant,” said Nash, a native of Carroll County.

Nash began working in Greenwood in 1956 but didn’t move there until 1959, when he was doing air-conditioner work for Carrier. From there, he went to work at a Gulf station in Winona.

In the late 1950s or early 1960s, he returned to Greenwood and began working for Conoco. Next came jobs with Baldwin Piano & Organ Co. and Landers Machine Works before he opened a Gulf station on Park Avenue in 1966.

A member of the U.S. Army Reserve’s 173rd Petroleum Operating Co., Nash was mobilized during the Vietnam War in May 1968. The unit was stationed at Phu Bai, South Vietnam, and Nash was tasked with keeping the unit’s fleet of 10,000-gallon tankers on the road in an active war zone.

While there, Nash found another mechanic who was a mechanical genius. Using scrap parts, the young man was able to built a fully functioning jeep complete with fake identification numbers on its hood.

“When we had an inspection, we’d take it around the corner and they never knew it,” Nash said.

The off-record jeep was valuable for

Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 PageVM molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

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PageVN Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

oÉåçî~íáçå=çÑ=k~ëÜÛë=pÉêîáÅÉ=pí~íáçå=ÄÉÖ~å=ïáíÜ=íÜáë=êÉåÇÉêáåÖ=Äó=^ää~å=e~ããçåë=çÑ=e~ããçåë=C=^ëëçÅá~íÉëK=qÜÉ=êÉåçî~íáçå=áë=áåíÉåÇÉÇ=íç=Å~éíìêÉ=íÜÉ=ëéáêáí=çÑ=íÜÉ=äçåÖJ íáãÉ=ëí~íáçå=ìëáåÖ=éêÉëÉåíJÇ~ó=Öê~éÜáÅë=~åÇ=ã~íÉêá~äëK=_Éäçï=áë=~=éÜçíç=çÑ=íÜÉ=ëí~íáçå=í~âÉå=Ñêçã=íÜÉ=dêÉÉåïççÇ=ï~íÉê=í~åâ=áå=íÜÉ=NVPMëK the men in the unit, who could use it whenever they had some free time.

“They would take it and go to Coco Beach,” Nash said, adding, “There weren’t no women there.”

After serving a year with the unit — which received a Presidential Unit Citation from President Lyndon Johnson — Nash returned to Greenwood, obtained his business license and went to work at the Gulf station across the street from City Hall.

The filling station business has changed a great deal over the years, he said.

“When I started off in ’67 — I believe it was ’67 — I was selling premium fuel for 24.9 cents a gallon,” he said. “Now the taxes alone are 38 cents a gallon.”

In 1975, H.E. Patrick retired from owning the Gulf station where Nash is currently located, and Nash moved in.

Although some of his business involves selling gasoline, Nash’s bread and butter is car repairs. “That’s what keeps us going — mechanical work, tires, just general automobile maintenance,” he said.

Today, “it’s the only full-service station that I know of in Leflore County,” he said. “The only other one that I know of is an Exxon in Winona. From there, I don’t know where another one is.”

Mechanics build trust over time, as people in other professions do, he said.

“They trust me and depend on me to take care of them,” he said. “I turn on the heater in the winter and turn on the air conditioner in the summertime.”

A large percentage of Nash’s customer base is made up of are widows and widowers.

“If they have a flat or the vehicle won’t start, they call us,” he said — adding that Nash’s will also take care of any towing.

Nash has two employees. Keith Nash, a nephew, serves as manager of the business. Cody Crouch is coming up fast as a general mechanic.

The building that houses Nash’s station is one of

several structures that have received facade grants through Main Street Greenwood.

Nash also provided funds for the renovation project.

The interior office is awaiting renovation. A new roof and new signage have already been completed.

The grants are intended to help “breathe new life” into downtown, and members of Main Street are eligible, said Brantley Snipes, executive director of Main Street.

Allan Hammons of Hammons & Associates provided elevations and design work on the renovations.

“I picked out the colors,” Nash said. “I wanted to go back to the Gulf colors. They’re not exactly Gulf colors, but they’re close to them.”

Some days, Nash ferries fellow Vietnam veterans to the G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery VA hospital in Jackson for treatment. He was diagnosed with diabetes and neuropathy in 1991 as a result of his exposure to Agent Orange, an aerial herbicide used extensively in South Vietnam. “Attitude makes a difference” in facing the longterm health effects from his service to his country, he said.

Nash has been married to his wife, Ramona, for 46 years.

Ramona Nash recently retired from Pillow Academy, where she served as a mid-grade counselor.

Nash said he loves his job. “It’s being out in public.

I just enjoy this type of work.” n

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PageVP Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

Downtown Greenwood

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The changing face Major projects are transforming area

D

rive along Johnson Street or Carrollton Avenue and there, among construction equipment and workers, are the signs: “Pardon our progress as we work to make improvements to your city.”

The reference is to Greenwood’s new Rail Spike Park, one of three municipal upgrades now heading toward completion downtown. The others are sidewalk and curb replacements on Main Street from Front to Johnson streets and the renovation of the city’s police department headquarters and courtroom, also on Main Street.

“There are very few cities that I know about that have three major projects going on at the same time,” Mayor

Carolyn McAdams said.

She hopes each will be completed within a few months.

It’s all part of the changing face of Greenwood, which involves not only city government but economic development groups and property owners who believe making the city more appealing improves the quality of life and encourages job growth.

Does it work? Many have been persuaded by successes along Howard and nearby streets, such as Front, Market and Main. For retailer Abraham Rustom, whose family has clothing stores on Howard and in Grenada, it seems important. He recently signed onto a facade renovation of an unused building his family has had for three

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Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 PageVS molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

decades at the corner of Walthall Street and Carrollton Avenue, close to Rail Spike Park.

“Anything you can do to try to improve downtown, it’s a good idea to try to do it,” he said.

The family never had a store in the building. It was an investment that used to attract renters, but these dwindled and the building fell into disrepair.

“Everything was in pretty bad shape,” he said.

After a meeting with Brantley Snipes, executive director of Main Street Greenwood, he became more interested in the facade renovation grants that Main Street offers. Main Street has offered 80 percent and even 90 percent to downtown property owners for renovating their facades in ways that are historically accurate to the style of their buildings.

Rustom doesn’t expect the Main Street grant he obtained will pay for all that he is doing. There’s a $10,000 cap.

But it will help.

So far, the brick building’s awning has been replaced, a side door has been installed, and woodwork and windows have been replaced. Rustom thinks the project, which is not finished, already makes the building and the area look better.

Rustom is just one among property owners with facade improvements near Rail Spike Park. To date, $250,000 has been spent on facades along the Carrollton-Johnson corridor, Snipes said. Other incentive programs for total renovation are available. Tax abatements of up to 40 percent of appraised value over seven years are available locally, she said. State and federal tax credits are available for up to 20 percent each.

These incentives are offered along with programs for small businesses by the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce, support from the Greenwood-Leflore Industrial Board and communitywide structural improvements by city and Leflore County.

The new park, being laid where the Columbus and Greenville railroad once ran through town, will cover 1.8 miles, east to west, from Johnson and Lamar streets to U.S. 82. An asphalt walkway is defined by a border of vertical railroad ties and lit by old-fashioned street lamps. The city has a Mississippi Department of Transportation grant that is paying 80 percent of the $2.1 million project.

The centerpiece is a pavilion at the corner of Main and Johnson streets that will provide a location for events and activities, including the Downtown Greenwood Farmers Market.

An 80 percent MDOT grant is also helping to fund the $1.2 million in sidewalk and curb improvements on Main Street. McAdams said the first section of these near Front Street were difficult because crews had to work around infrastructure such as fiber optic cable.

Without that, the work is moving more quickly to Johnson Street. There it will meet street improvements made in recent years.

The attractiveness of Greenwood, McAdams said, “is an ongoing project.”

This is part of what lured Mason

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Meeks, a Winona resident, to look at Greenwood as a location for brewing craft beer. He said it’s an easy commute from Winona — a better one than Oxford, where he first got into the business.

He’s been looking for a spot for a cou-

ple of years and now hopes he has found one on Howard Street. It’s not a done deal, but he loves the old BarrettHodges building. The building has attributes that would make it suitable for housing brewing equipment. And, it is near The Alluvian, restaurants,

stores and the Viking Cooking School.

He said the business would be named for a Greenwood landmark, Point Leflore.

“I like Greenwood,” he said. “I think it would be a good place for a microbrewery.” n

PageVT Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated Chapter President - Cassandra A. Hart 1st Vice President - Linda Thompson-Moore 2nd Vice President - Thelma Thompson-Hubbard Recording Secretary - Belinda Robinson Financial Secretary - Ora Starks Asst. Financial Secretary - Tonya Ball Corresponding Secretary - Gwendolyn Pernell Meeting Date & Time: Treasurer - Annie Lewis 4th Mondays @ 6:00 pm Sept - May Asst. Treasurer - Carla Lawrence Sergeant-at-Arms - Donna Murry Contact: Parliamentarian - Betty W. Sanders 662-299-4844, giacpres@gmail.com Historian - Sonja Jones PO Box 365, Greenwood, MS 38935-0365

Greenwood Itta Bena Alumnae Chapter

Officers: President - Maxine Greenleaf President-Elect - Jane Moss Vice President - Larry Griggs Secretary/Treasurer - Hunter Smith Sergeant-At-Arms - Margaret Clark Past President - Nick Joseph Meeting Date & Time: Mondays at Noon - Serio’s Contact: 662-453-2246 P.O. Box 1825, Greenwood, MS 38930

Officers: President - Clark Bradley Secretary - Jerry Ables Treasurer - Jerry Ables Meeting Date & Time: Every Thursday, 12 Noon 662-299-9009 P.O. Box 546 Greenwood, MS 38935 Officers: President - Barbara Biggers Vice President - Linda Tanous Secretary - Becky Avant Treasurer - Frank Warren Meeting Date & Time: 2nd Thursday of the Month 10:00 a.m.

Contact: 662-453-0925 1608 Hwy 82 West, Greenwood, MS 38930

Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 PageVU molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

PageVV Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

Richard Dillon

Corvette champion

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R

Customized car has captured prizes

ichard Dillon is passionate about his Chevrolet Corvette, and he has the awards to prove it.

“I think anybody that was a kid growing up when I did wants a Corvette. They grew up wanting a Corvette,” said Dillon, 70, of Greenwood.

Dillon’s third Corvette, a 2015 convertible in arctic white with red interior, has turned more than a few heads — and has garnered three awards since it was bought in August

2015.

Dillon’s Corvette, a C7 or seventhgeneration Corvette, had a sticker price of $75,000, but he received some discounts for serving 20 years in the National Guard.

He said he spent another $2,500 to $3,000 on customizing the vehicle with black mag wheels, red accent stripes on the hood and fenders and additional interior work.

On a trip last April to a Corvette show that was sponsored by the

Central Arkansas Corvette Club in Hot Springs, Dillon considered entering his baby in the show.

“I wasn’t all that into it. It rained on us on the way over there,” he said.

That’s when Dillon’s wife, Deveda, provided the necessary motivation to take part in the one-day event. “She said, ‘We ain’t got anything else to do, so let’s go ahead and do it,’” Dillon recalled.

The Dillons detailed the Corvette in the hotel parking lot — waxing, polish-

pqlov=_v=_l_=a^oabk=n melql=_v=glekkv=gbkkfkdp

ing and vacuuming — and then Richard threw his cleaning supplies into the trunk. The car was the secondto-last on to be let into the 280-car field, and the hasty stowing of the cleaning supplies became an issue once the judging began.

“When the judge came around, the first thing that guy said was, ‘Sir, would you mind opening the trunk?’ I thought, ‘Ooh,’” Dillon said.

Dillon wound up getting the Second Place Sponsorship Award.

Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 PageNMM molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

When he entered his Corvette in the 2016 Mississippi Corvette Classic last July, sponsored by the Mississippi Corvette Club, he did not expect much in the Seventh Generation Class.

“I didn’t get third place, and I didn’t get second place, so I thought I was out of it, and danged if I didn’t get first place in the class,” he said. “My daughter, her husband and grandson were all there; they were whooping and hollering.”

That would be Maj. Amanda Dillon Villeret; her husband, Ken; and their son, Dillon, 7.

Dillon also has another daughter, Candy Wells of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, who has two children: Catlyn, 20, and Cameron, 17.

Next Dillon won Best in Show, scoring

a perfect 100.

“I had no idea. I was the most surprised dude in the world,” he said.

Dillon grew up in the Corinth area and has lived in Greenwood since 1986.

His wife is a Greenwood native.

He is now retired, having worked for employers including Magnavox, Baldwin Piano & Organ Co. and Mississippi Printing Co. He reached the rank of captain in the National Guard, where he was affiliated with Special Forces units, and he was director of the Mississippi International Balloon Classic.

Driving a show car on the roads of Mississippi can be risky. Rock pecks on both the windshield and the front end are a major concern. Dillon’s Corvette

has a transparent protective film on the front end.

“A big rock might knock a hole in the whole thing, but it’s not going to happen with the little ones,” he said.

Dillon also said anyone entering or leaving the vehicle must take care not to damage the side bolsters of the bucket seats.

He said his Corvette and his garage are clean, just as he was taught in the Guard years ago. The car has only 9,300 miles on its odometer, but “I do drive it,” he said jokingly.

He said his wife, an insurance agent with SouthGroup — Barry & Brewer Insurance, also is welcome to take the Corvette to work, since “it’s hers as much as it is mine.”

He said they don’t baby the car that much: “I don’t do anything to that car that I don’t think I can clean up when I get home.”

The 2015 model is the first Corvette that is capable of dropping the top while the car is in motion, and Dillon said he drops the top “every chance I get.”

Dillon uses a special soap on the Corvette, blow dries it with a leaf blower and then wipes it down with a towel.

Asked if his high standard for auto detailing was perhaps another career opportunity, he politely said no.

“I couldn’t make any money doing it,” he said. “I’d spend too much time. You know, I’m not going to tell you I’m the fastest detailer in the world, but I may be one of the most meticulous.” n

prmmloqfkd=lro=`ljjrkfqv

NORRIS BOOKBINDING CO. 107 N. Stone Ave., Greenwood, MS 662-453-7424 “Largest Bible Re-binder In The World”

329 Hwy 82 West P.O. Box 8050 Greenwood, Mississippi 38930 (662) 453-5312

MALOUF CONSTRUCTION, LLC P. O. Box 1177 Greenwood, MS 38930 (662) 455-6111

Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 PageNMN molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

Economic Development

Growth area

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F

After good 2016, positive signs for 2017

or Angela Curry, the executive director of the GreenwoodLeflore-Carroll Economic Development Foundation, 2016 was a good year.

“The foundation stayed true to its mission of fostering and encouraging responsible community and economic development activities. ... We not only grew our existing industry base; we also managed to recruit some new businesses to the county,” she said.

The foundation’s efforts of growing the economy go beyond brick and mortar. It is working with Delta Council on two projects: The ACT Work Ready Community and Delta Strong.

“The ACT Work Ready Community is a national initiative that provides a framework for communities to build a community development approach to certifying counties as work ready,” Curry said.

That helps by encouraging everyone in the county to take the National Career Readiness test, which in turn provides a work ready certificate. If a person has such a certificate, it shows a prospective employer “that we have folks that are tested, skilled and ready

for work,” Curry said. “It also helps in a way of helping our existing companies to have a pool of skilled workers to choose from.”

She said ACT is being done throughout the Delta.

Curry and Beth Stevens, executive director of the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce, attended and completed the ACT training.

“Now it is a matter of getting our emerging workforce, our current workforce and individuals in the community to take this test to reach our work ready goals,” Curry said.

Career readiness certificates are now required by many companies. “I’m seeing it on more and more applications now: ‘Are you work ready certified or do you have a work ready certificate?’”

Curry said.

“It lets the employer know that this worker has some credentials or has taken the extra step to assess his or her skill level,” she said.

Those completing the assessment are ranked in descending order: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze. “The higher you score, it says, ‘Wow, this person is really skilled,’” Curry said.

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Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017 PageNMO molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

“We want to assert that the Delta is strong — that we are open for business. We have all the factors that a company is looking for to be successful.” ^åÖÉä~=`ìêêó

páåÅÉ=qêá~åÖäÉ=`ÜÉãáÅ~ä=`çK=~êêáîÉÇ=áå=iÉÑäçêÉ=`çìåíó=áå=OMNRI=áí=Ü~ë=ÅçåíáåìÉÇ=íç=ÖêçïK=qÜÉ=Åçãé~åó=ÅìêêÉåíäó=Éãéäçóë=ÄÉíïÉÉå=NM=~åÇ=NR=ïçêâÉêë=ïáíÜ=ãçêÉ=àçÄë=ÉñéÉÅíJ ÉÇI=~ÅÅçêÇáåÖ=íç=^åÖÉä~=`ìêêóI=ÉñÉÅìíáîÉ=ÇáêÉÅíçê=çÑ=íÜÉ=dêÉÉåïççÇJiÉÑäçêÉJ`~êêçää=bÅçåçãáÅ=aÉîÉäçéãÉåí=cçìåÇ~íáçåK Leflore County has a time line of two years to get the program implemented.

Part of the program, Curry said, is the “emerging workforce,” or the students in public or private schools. That effort, which will begin later this year, involves testing of 10th-, 11th- and 12th-graders.

Another phase involves the “transitioning workforce,” those caught between jobs. That effort will involve working in coordination with the WIN Job Center.

The final component of ACT involves working with current workforces.

“Some of them may want to improve their skills and find other employment,” Curry said. “We’re working with companies to get their employees tested.”

Delta Strong, another regional effort sponsored by Delta Council, includes all the Delta counties in the state. Each county has also contributed monetarily.

“The ultimate goal of this initiative is to recruit new companies to the area,” Curry said. “We — all of the Delta counties — have pooled our resources to employ a team of consultants, which

will include a representative of Delta Council, who will do some targeted visits all over the United States and Canada.”

The team will be calling on companies that may be in the market to expand their businesses.

Delta Strong is the brand and tag line chosen for the marketing and recruitment effort.

“We want to assert that the Delta is strong — that we are open for business,” Curry said. “We have all the factors that a company is looking for to be successful.”

A Delta Strong website is already under construction.

“Probably in the spring or early summer that effort should kick off,” Curry said.

The team approach enables the Delta region to attract prospective industries.

Curry points to some positive signs in Leflore County’s economy: n Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. officials have told Curry that they want to make the Greenwood plant the company’s flagship operation. The company began with 200 employees. Today it

has 700 and plans to add several hundred more, Curry said.

The company, with cooperation from the state and the city of Greenwood, has in the past couple of years expanded into a 200,000-square-foot building in the Greenwood-Leflore Industrial Park.

Growing an existing company is easier than creating a new one, and it is unlikely that any new company could bring 500 jobs into Greenwood any time soon, she said. n Another success story is Express Grain Terminals LLC, which took over operations of the old Delta Oil Mill, saving 40 existing jobs and creating another 20.

The plant now processes soybeans into soybean meal and hulls, which are then sold to the state’s animal feed markets. Also, the plant produces soybean oil, which is sold to edible oil and biodiesel refineries.

Initially Express Grain has invested $15 million into the plant with the help of Delta Council and the state of Mississippi. n Another project, the 55,000-squarefoot Pepsico distribution center on U.S.

82 West, will employ between 60 and 80 workers when it is completed in May. n Triangle Chemical Co., which came to Leflore County in 2015, has already expanded and currently employs between 10 and 15 workers. “More jobs are expected,” Curry said.

She also thanked Emily RoushElliott and the Baptist Town Community Development Board for their work in the revitalization of Baptist Town. She said they had done “a wonderful job” placing homes there and getting first-time homebuyers into safe, affordable residences.

In addition, the North Central Planning & Development District is holding Workforce Investment Opportunity Area meetings in the Baptist Town Community Center on a daily basis for people from 16 to 24 years of age.

Curry said the future is bright for Leflore County.

“We’re fortunate to have a skilled workforce, while at the same time, knowing that we have to continue to be aggressive with our workforce education efforts,” she said. n

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PageNMP molcfib=OMNT =================================================================================================================================================================================

Greenwood Commonwealth/Thursday, February 23, 2017

Index of advertisers Accountants Directory

66

Ainsworth Signs

98

Alford’s Carpet

32

Alfa Insurance Allstate

Alluvian, The

America’s Catch

Bank of Commerce

Barrentine Pool Service

10

Golden Age Nursing Home

Cannon Motor Company Capel Surgical Clinic

Capital City Beverage

8

104

52 84

Greenwood Downtown Drugs

54

Greenwood Leflore Hospital

Inside Front Cover

Harold Floyd Heating & Air

Chawla Hotels

22

Clevenger Jewelry & Gifts

24

Coleman Eye Center

36

Conerly’s Shoes

38

Compass Pointe Apartments

Hairway Express

Edward Jones Investments

26

St. John’s United Methodist Church

32

76

Staplcotn

88

Sunflower Home Health

74

10

KTBuilder

Leflore County Board of Supervisors Life Help

Littlejohn, Dr. Robert

Lusco’s

Triple M Irrigation

16

Upchurch Rental

34

1

Inside Back Cover, 18 58

44

92

Magnolia Home Center

74

92

McCaleb Furniture Magnolia Manor

Sta-Home

76

30

Entergy

EMI Staffing Services

82

Southern Tire Mart

Lynbar Jewelers

70

St. Francis Church/Immaculate Heart of Mary

80

8

24

Emerald Transformer

92

Sim’s Realty Development L.L.C.

Top Dog Power Sports

Leflore Steel

100

Southern Ag Credit

32

52

100

Keith Thompson, State Farm

72

76

Stucky Family Dentistry

54

E&H Realty

36

Shane Sanders Tree Service

Sequel Electrical Supply

84

Delta Steam

46

94, 95

86

Jack’s Package Store

Jones Electric Supply

Lamb’s Photography

Dubard Realty

90

Scott Petroleum Corporation

58

20 62

44

Pulley, Kelvin

J.D. Lanham Supply

Illusions & Accessories

Country Meadow Personal Care Home

Dixie Roofing Incorporated

Pillow Academy

62

Kornfeld’s Department Store

1

Physicians & Dentists Directory

Hoffman’s Locksmith

14

Delta Farm & Auto LLC.

Parker Wrecker Service

Back Cover, 28

34

60

97

Medical Center

56

Economic Development Foundation

Carroll Academy

Clark Insurance Agency

North Sunflower

58

60

Greenwood Music Fest

97

No Way Jose

Sanders Wrecker Service

54

Civic Organizations

100

48

Greenwood-Leflore-Carroll

8

3

Chamber of Commerce

Greenwood Public School District

China Blossom Restaurant

5

30

80

36

98

Powers Properties

74

Caroline Stucky Photography & Design

34, 84, 88

24

Greenwood Market Place

Greenwood-Leflore County

100

3

Greenwood Drugs

100

22

38

56

Mobile Glass, Inc

North New Summit School

Greenwood Commonwealth

Greenwood, City Of

82

Mississippi Gift Company, The Norris Bookbinding Company

16

100

Mid South Copier Systems, Inc.

46

82

40

Mid Delta Rental, LLC.

Mississippi Alarm Co, Inc.

Greenwood Animal Hospital

100

Mid Delta Auction Company

5

8

3

Malouf Construction

Mid-Delta Tow & Transport

100

Goldberg’s

Mai Little China

78

90

98

C&C Auto

26

Gingo Tree, The

Bond’s Towing Service Bowlin Heating & Air

Fresh Laundry

68

98

Bowie Realty, Inc

88

Four Paws

Beard & Riser

Bell Equipment, LLC

Floyd’s Village Car Care

86

100

B & S Barbeque

62

First South Farm Credit

Auto Cash Inc.

AW Tree Service

First Presbyterian Church

80

100

Auto Spa Car Wash

22

Farmers Market Nursery

30

20

Family Dental Associates

90

Annette & Shelia’s Salon Attorneys Directory

Expressions

5

10

60 38 46

14

20, 80

72

Upchurch Plumbing, Inc

26

Upshaw Law Office

97

Viking Range Corporation

70

Uptel Upchurch Telecom

Westerfield Plumbing & Heating

Westminister Presbyterian Church

What's Cooking?

10 72

52

44

5

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