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Voter ID going to ballot in November
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OUT VHS softball team torn up by Clinton B1
By Emily Wagster Pettus The Associated Press
WEAThEr Tonight: Showers; low near 63 Wednesday: Showers; high near 72 Mississippi River:
28.2 feet Fell: 0.9 foot Flood stage: 43 feet
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DEAThS • Lee Manuel Burns • Kristie Connor Diltz • Herbert Menger Jolly • Joseph James King Jr. • Maud Esther Lee
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TODAY IN hISTOrY 1796: The future emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, marries Josephine de Beauharnais. (The couple later divorced.) 1862: The ironclads USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimac) clash for five hours to a draw at Hampton Roads, Va. 1916: Mexican raiders led by Pancho Villa attack Columbus, N.M., killing 18 Americans. 1945: U.S. B-29 bombers launch incendiary bomb attacks against Japan, resulting in an estimated 100,000 deaths. 1959: Mattel’s Barbie doll, created by Ruth Handler, makes its public debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York. 1964: The Supreme Court, in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, rules that public officials who charged they’d been libeled by news reports may not recover damages unless they proved actual malice on the part of the news organization.
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ONLINE www.vicksburgpost.com VOLUME 128 NUMBER 68 2 SECTIONS
KATie CARTeR•The Vicksburg PosT
McKinley Williams, 60, 1408 Main St., points to houses he thinks should have been demolished in 2007.
Fires across city leave injuries, fears By Tish Butts tbutts@vicksburgpost.com A Vicksburg mother handed her toddler to another as she ran in to a burning house to save the life of one of two children badly burned in an Oak Street inferno. “I’m hoping anybody would have done that,” said Oak Street resident Cliftina Grissom, who blinded by smoke, followed their uncle Anthony Evans into the house. “He handed me the baby, and I held him until the ambulance got there,” she said. Grissom, who was visiting the family at 2314 Oak St., rescued 4-yearold Robert Evans, and Anthony Evans brought out Stephon Evans, 8.
The two children remained in serious condition today at Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Ga., hospital spokesman Anne Cordeiro said. Anthony’s mother, Barbara Evans, 57, was also initially was taken to River Region Medical Center. Vicksburg Fire Chief Charles Atkins and a spokesman for River Region said she was transferred, but her location and condition could not be confirmed today. Atkins has ruled the fire accidental. It also destroyed two other homes, 2312 and 2316 Oak. All were owned by Floweree LP. Property owner S.J. Tuminello said he was concerned for the family’s well-being. He also said there are no plans to replace the structures. “The
other tragedy is those were Marine barracks that housed Confederate soldiers. It’s a part of history gone,” said Tuminello. Tuminello said he was just yards away at his home, the antebellum residence Floweree, when the flames ignited, and the explosion, reported by neighbors and onlookers, shook the house. Sunday’s blaze followed three other fires destroying multiple homes throughout the city within weeks, even days, of each other, including two investigated as arsons. Nearly two weeks ago, blazes destroyed three houses owned by Henry Mayfield in the 1500 block of See Fires, Page A9.
JACKSON— Petitioners gathered more than enough signatures to put a voter ID initiative on Mississippi’s November 2011 ballot that will include candidates for governor and other offices, the state’s top elections official said Monday. Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said his office had determined that 131,678 signatures of registered voters were collected. That’s Delbert significantly Hosemann more than the minimum 89,285 needed. Republican organizers, led by Sen. Joey Fillingane of Petal, spent about a year collecting signatures and submitted them last month. The secretary of state’s office spent weeks double-checking the numbers. Mississippians will be asked to decide whether the state constitution should be amended to require each voter to show a governmentissued photo identification at the polls. Supporters say voter ID would help deter fraud, See Voter ID, Page A9.
Vicksburg tourism Limited public transit is a driving concern These stories are the third in a series by staff writer Steve Sanoski and journalism students from the University of Mississippi. On Wednesday: Blues is at the root of music here and nature tourism has untapped potential. By Andrew Mullen Scott For The Post Local transportation is a “driving” concern for some tourists visiting Vicksburg. For a city with almost 25,000 residents, public transportation is limited. Francis Simmons, who has been a travel counselor at the Mississippi Welcome Center for 17 years, talks to tourists every day. She said she’s routinely asked about easy ways to get around town.
file•The Vicksburg PosT
A passenger boards an NRoute bus. “We get asked several times for bus tours,” Simmons said. “We have a small transit system, but we
do not have transportation to take people around.” The city’s public transit system, NRoute, is working
to get two trolleys on the road to carry passengers in the downtown area. According to the head of the Vicksburg Heritage League, Shirley Waring, the new trolleys will go a long way to help solve the city’s transportation problems. “It is a very visual thing as well as being helpful in getting people from point A to point B,” Waring said. The two trolleys will be paid for with federal stimulus money, along with two 25-passenger buses, one 40-passenger bus and $50,000 worth of shop materials, said NRoute Executive Director Evelyn Bumpers. If there’s demand, the trolleys could be used for
The project Five journalism students from the University of Mississippi spent two days in Vicksburg last month — to gather and report on the future of tourism in the area. Their stories, directed by reporter Steve Sanoski and Executive Editor Charlie Mitchell, are being published today through Friday.
See Transit, Page A8.
No crystal ball on convention center hotel By Donica Phifer For The Post The $13 million Vicksburg Convention Center was not sited, designed or built to make Vicksburg a major convention destination; it was just to take a step up from Vicksburg Auditorium. Since the center opened in 1998 and until the economic downturn of late 2008, the man hired as the first director — even before the center was built — has reported steady upticks in events and rentals. Larry Gawronski agrees that a downtown hotel, perhaps one adjacent to the convention center on Mulberry Street, could be a
‘A hotel won’t come because I want it to come. It will be a combination of many things.’ Larry Gawronski conVenTion cenTer direcTor plus. “A hotel won’t come because I want it to come,” Gawronski said. “It will be a combination of many things. The city will have to see a need for it, developers will have to be willing to build it. There are many factors, but there would be a larger draw for conventions.” Directories now list 31 hotels and 13 bed and
breakfast inns in Vicksburg, but most of the hotels are on the city’s Interstate 20 perimeter and the bed and breakfast facilities, though downtown, don’t have enough rooms to accommodate a conventionsized booking. “Last year we had literally hundreds of new hotel rooms opened,” said Bill Seratt, executive director of the Vicksburg Conven-
tion and Visitors Bureau. Rooms are filled for big events, such as the annual Miss Mississippi scholarship pageant and youth sports tournaments, but the overall rental rate is low by market standards. That can be deceptive. The people are still coming. “If you really look at it, we’ve not lost that many overnight visitors, but we’ve got such a surplus of rooms that the occupancy rate on paper looks awful,” Seratt said. Any developer of a downtown hotel, however, might be dissuaded by the saturation. In fact, in 2002, the city heard proposals from two See Hotels, Page A8.
Aline Carambat
Andrew Mullen Scott
Elizabeth Pearson
Donica Phifer
David Hopper