Mississippi Today
Archie Manning: Despite New Orleans roots and broader legacy, Mississippi is still home

Note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a new platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here. This week, Children’s Hospital of New Orleans changed its name to Manning Family Children’s hospital.
I really do love Mississippi — all of it. Although my family has lived for more than 50 years in New Orleans, we still have a house in Oxford, and we have so many close friends all over the state.
Where to begin? I grew up in Drew, went to college at Ole Miss in Oxford, and married a gal from Philadelphia. Over the years, seems like I have spent time in every nook and cranny of the Magnolia State. William Faulkner once said that to understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi. While I don’t necessarily always understand it — not all of it — I do know that I love the place. It’s home.
For me, growing up in Drew was much like Opie Taylor growing up in Mayberry. Drew was a little, bitty place, but it had everything we needed. Everybody knew everybody. As kids, we rode our bikes all over town. We played ball every day, went to football games on Friday night, went to Sunday school and church on Sunday. Our house was right across the street from the school, so I didn’t have to go far to find a game. For me, Drew was absolutely perfect.
And so was Ole Miss where I played football and baseball, met the love of my life and mother of my three boys, and where I made some of the best and most loyal friends anyone could ever imagine.
But my love of Mississippi doesn’t end with Drew or Oxford. Olivia, my wife, is from Philadelphia where her family has owned and operated Williams Brothers General Store since 1907. I would challenge anyone to find anything more Mississippi than Williams Brothers, where you can buy anything from cowboy boots and running shoes to freshly sliced hoop cheese to bacon.
Just down state Highway 19 from Philadelphia is Meridian, one of Mississippi’s largest cities and a place I’ve always loved to visit. Olivia and I had our rehearsal dinner at Weidmann’s, then owned by Mississippi State football great Shorty McWilliams. Shorty Mac twice finished in the top 10 in Heisman Trophy voting, once at Army and once at State. Shorty Mac was one of Mississippi’s football greats. And while we’re at it, I can’t tell you how I swell with pride about Mississippi’s football heritage. You’ve got Shorty Mac from Meridian, Charlie Conerly from Clarksdale, Walter Payton from Columbia, Jake Gibbs from Grenada, Brett Favre from Kiln, Jerry Rice from just outside Starkville, Steve McNair from Mount Olive, Lance Alworth from Brookhaven, Willie Brown and Ben Williams from Yazoo City, and Lem Barney from Gulfport. I could go on and on, and, believe me, I do when I brag on Mississippi to football people around the country.
My first three New Orleans Saints training camps were held in Hattiesburg where I made so many friends that I have to this day. Training camps were a lot longer back then when we played six preseason games, but I always enjoyed Hattiesburg, even in that heat of July and August. A couple things I’ll always remember about those training camps: one, was the national guardsmen who would come up from Camp Shelby and watch our practices. It was always fun for me to visit with those guys. And, two, was that the Southern Miss players and coaches would always be around for the last week or 10 days of training camp and we’d share the practice fields, the weight room and the training table. I became friends with a lot of the guys I had played against in college.
So many of my Ole Miss buddies moved to Jackson and the Capital City area, so I have spent a great deal of time there. Plus, I’ll never forget our Ole Miss games in old Memorial Stadium. That’s where we played most of our biggest games and won most of our greatest victories. I have fond, fond memories of Jackson.
All my years in New Orleans, the Mississippi Gulf Coast has been right next door. I have enjoyed the Coast, from Bay St, Louis and Pass Christian, to Gulfport and Biloxi, and on over to Ocean Springs and Pascagoula. I had my annual golf tournament to raise money for cystic fibrosis research at the great golf courses all along the coast, and if there’s a booster club I haven’t spoken to, I’m not sure what it is. I love everything about the Coast – the restaurants, the golf courses, the Deep Sea fishing and that drive down Highway 90. My son, Cooper, has a home there in Bay St. Louis, along with so many New Orleans folks who have second homes in Hancock County. Coop can get from his home in New Orleans to his home in Bay St. Louis in less than a hour. That’s how close we are to Mississippi.
But as I go from place to place in Mississippi both in my travels and in my mind’s eye, I realize what I love most about my home state. It’s the people. There’s no place like Mississippi and no people like the folks in Mississippi.
Archie Manning, a native of Drew in the Mississippi Delta, lives in New Orleans. Manning played in the NFL from 1971 until 1984 and was selected to two pro bowls. He played his college football at the Ole Miss, where he was the Southeastern Conference player of the year in 1969 and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1989. While Manning lives in New Orleans, he has remained active in Mississippi, including participating in numerous philanthropic activities. Manning and his wife Olivia have three sons.
Editor’s note: Olivia and Archie Manning are Mississippi Today donors. Donors do not in any way influence our newsroom’s editorial decisions. For more on that policy or to view a list of our donors, click here.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1965
On this day in 1965
March 13, 1965

Dr. Marion Myles accepted a position at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Three months later, the vice chancellor appointed her an assistant professor of pharmacology, the first Black American on the faculty.
Her appointment came over the objections of some members of the board of trustees of the state Institutions of Higher Learning.
Prior to accepting the appointment, Myles taught biology, botany, agronomy and zoology at several universities. An expert in plant physiology, she studied the effects of drugs and hormones on plant growth. She received a Carnegie Foundation Research Grant and was awarded research fellowships at the California Institute of Technology and at the Institute of Nuclear Studies at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
The same year that the medical center appointed her, the center offered a residency slot to Dr. Aaron Shirley, the first Black resident.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
‘A good start’: Senate passes pharmacy benefit manager reform bill

The Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would increase the regulation and transparency of pharmacy benefit managers, which advocates argue will protect patients and independent pharmacists.
The legislation, authored by Sen. Rita Parks, R-Corinth, beefs up a House of Representatives bill focusing on the transparency of pharmacy benefit managers by adding language to tighten appeal procedures, bar the companies from steering patients to affiliate pharmacies and prohibit spread pricing – the practice of paying insurers more for drugs than pharmacists in order to inflate pharmacy benefit managers’ profits.
Parks said the bill, which passed 46-4, has the support of the House, which can now send it to the governor’s desk to sign or go to conference with the Senate to negotiate changes.
“This is the furthest we’ve been in two years,” said Parks. “We’re bringing fairness to the patient and to independent pharmacists.”
The bill’s passage came after a strong showing of support for reform from independent pharmacists, who have warned that if legislators do not pass a law this year to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, which serve as middlemen in the pharmaceutical industry, some pharmacies may be forced to close. They say that the companies’ low payments and unfair business practices have left them struggling to break even.
The Senate’s original bill died in the House, but the body revived most of its language by inserting it into a similar House bill, House Bill 1123, which was authored by House Speaker Jason White.
The Senate made several concessions in the most recent version of the legislation, including forgoing a provision that would have required pharmacy benefit managers to reimburse prescription discount card claims within seven days. These claims are currently paid within 60 to 90 days, which pharmacists argue is a burdensome timeframe.
The bill is a “good start” to real pharmacy benefit manager reform and transparency, said Robert Dozier, the executive director of the Mississippi Independent Pharmacy Association.
“The independent pharmacists are pleased with the current form of House Bill 1123,” he said. “They did not get everything they wanted, but they got what they needed.”
The bill also gives the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy more tools to conduct audits and requires drug manufacturers, pharmacy benefit managers and health insurers to submit data to the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy, which will be available to the public.
Sen. Jeremy England, R-Ocean Springs, said he is concerned the bill will lead to higher health insurance costs for employers, including the state itself, which provides health insurance to state employees.
Pharmacy benefit managers negotiate rebates, or cost savings, for employers, and some critics of pharmacy benefit manager reform argue that regulating the companies’ business practices will lead to higher insurance costs for employers.
England said that Mississippi employers stand to lose tens of millions of dollars and that regulation could deter new businesses from coming to the state.
“This language that we are trying to put into state law here goes too far, in fact it goes to the point where it could end up costing jobs,” he said.
A vote requested by England to determine if a fiscal note is necessary for the bill failed.
Parks said she disagreed that the bill would raise state health insurance costs and called England’s concerns a “scare tactic” meant to deter legislators from passing the bill.
England also proposed an amendment to the bill to remove self-funded insurance plans, or health plans in which employers assume the financial risk of covering employees’ health care costs themselves, from a section of the bill that prohibits pharmacy benefit managers from steering patients to specific pharmacies and interfering with their right to choose a particular pharmacy.
Self-funded health plans often use pharmacy benefit managers to administer prescription drug benefits and process claims.
Parks argued that excluding self-funded health plans from those guidelines would remove the fundamental protections the bill affords pharmacies and patients.
England’s amendment failed.
“Mississippi’s been a beacon in where we have stood with PBM,” Parks said. “We need to continue to be that beacon and not go backwards.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Crooked Letter Sports Podcast
Podcast: Raymond basketball coach Tony Tadlock joins to talk about high school basketball championships and this week’s SEC Tournament.

One of the state’s top basketball coaches, Tadlock overcame the loss of all five starters from last year’s championship team and losing his leading scorer this season, to win a second straight state championship and the seventh in school history. Tadlock talks about how he works with a 40-man basketball roster and maintaining a remarkable winning culture at Raymond.
Stream all episodes here.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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