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Hattiesburg, Southern Miss recall Jimmy Buffett before he was legend

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Jimmy Buffett, pictured at the bronze plaque honoring Buffett and Fingers Taylor in front the The Hub at Southern Miss. Credit: USM Communications

HATTIESBURG — Former Southern Miss president Martha Dunagin Saunders was a USM undergrad in the late 1960s at the same time as Pascagoula native Jimmy Buffett, the future billionaire singer-songwriter. The two were friends.

“My most vivid memory of Jimmy from those days is of coming out of night class, and seeing him racing across campus with a guitar over his shoulder, obviously running late to play a gig,” Saunders said Saturday, hours after learning of Buffett’s death. “All Jimmy wanted to do back then was play his music. He really had a passion for it.”

Rick Cleveland

Saunders, now the president of the University of West Florida in Pensacola, described a young Buffett as, “Crazy witty. Always smiling. Always funny. Always with a story.”

That wit and passion, along with a keen business acumen developed later in life, catapulted Buffett to remarkable fame and fortune. At the time of his death early Saturday, at age 76, he was ranked No. 18 on the Forbes’ list of the Richest Celebrities of All Time with a net worth of $1 billion.

Saturday, in Hattiesburg, news of Buffett’s death superseded even the anticipation of the Golden Eagles football opener with in-state rival Alcorn State. An announced crowd of just over 30,000 watched Southern Miss defeat Alcorn 40-14 and was serenaded with Buffett’s familiar ballads during timeouts throughout the night. A video tribute and moment of silence to honor Buffett preceded the opening kickoff. Thousands stood, swayed and sang his hit anthem “Margaritaville” during a timeout midway through the second quarter. Flowers were left at the base of a bronze marker in the center of campus where Buffett met fellow student and harmonica player Greg “Fingers” Taylor in front of The Hub where the two first played music together. Taylor was a long-time member of Buffett’s famed Coral Reefer Band.

Buffett was inducted into the USM Alumni Hall of Fame in 2018. Credit: USM Communications

“The Southern Miss family mourns the loss of our 1969 graduate, Jimmy Buffett, whose work ethic and global success exemplified Southern Miss grit,” current USM President Joe Paul said. “Our prayers go out to his family, friends and all who knew and loved him.”

Paul, as many, attended the game in a Hawaiian shirt, a paean to the island/beach lifestyle Buffett’s music celebrated and to his millions of followers often referred to as “parrot heads.”

Paul and Saunders weren’t the only presidents mourning Buffett’s death Saturday. President Joe Biden issued a statement: “Jill and I send our love to his wife of 46 years, Jane; to their children, Savannah, Sarah, and Cameron; to their grandchildren; and to the millions of fans who will continue to love him even as his ship now sails for new shores. We had he honor to meet and get to know Jimmy over the years and he was in life as he was performing on stage – full of goodwill and joy, using his gift to bring people together.”

Buffett once told a California reporter, “I’m not a great singer, and I’m not a great guitar player. But I’m a good entertainer.”

He was also a terrific story teller, stories he told not only in his songs but in books. Indeed, he is one of six authors to have topped both the New York Times fiction and non-fiction best seller lists. Three of the others: John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and William Styron.

Buffett’s music often received harsh critical reviews because of its simplistic style and limited musical range. Buffett never made apologies and, in fact, received praise from the likes of Bob Dylan. Dylan once listed his six favorite songwriters: Buffett, Gordon Lightfoot, Warren Zevon, John Prine, Guy Clark and Randy Newman.

Dylan reportedly was particularly smitten by the lyrics to Buffet’s “He Went to Paris,” a ballad Buffett penned in the early 1970s after meeting musician Eddie Balchowsky, a one-armed veteran of the Spanish Civil War. Here’s the closing stanza:

Now he lives in the islands, fishes the pilin’s

And drinks his green label each day

He’s writing his memoirs and losing his hearing

But he don’t care what most people say

Through 86 years of perpetual motion

If he likes you he’ll smile then he’ll say

Jimmy, some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic

But I had a good life all the way

Buffett’s family moved from Pascagoula to Mobile when he was young and he grew up in Alabama’s port city. He first attended Auburn University but flunked out, and then found his way to Pearl River Junior College in Poplarville – and from there to USM.

He was very much a non-traditional student, majoring in journalism, joining the Kappa Sigma fraternity but spending much of every week playing music in the New Orleans French Quarter 100 miles away.

Petal photographer/author Vaughn Wilson was a student at Southern Miss two years behind Buffett and, like Buffett, a musician at the time. “Jimmy lived off campus in a house with about four or five other guys, and I was over there pretty much every night,” Wilson said. “When I walked into the house, Jimmy would point to his acoustic guitar standing in the corner and tell me, ‘Go have at it.’ I loved that guitar and he’d let me play it. He was just a good guy, a funny, fun-loving guy. He was just Jimmy then, before he was Jimmy Buffett. But he had that big ol’ smile that became so famous.

“He left Hattiesburg and I guess it was about four or five years later, I turned on the radio and heard him singing ‘Come Monday.’ The rest is history.”

Wilson says he never saw Buffett in person again. Dunagin did.

“Jimmy and I graduated on the same day,” Dunagin said Saturday, chuckling. “I went into academia and he became a legend.”

Jimmy Buffett, left, with Martha Dunagin in 2010. Credit: USM Communications

Saunders served as USM president from 2007 to 2012 and brought Buffett back to campus several times.

“I remember once he dropped in and it turned out we were both going to attend a New Orleans Saints game the next day,” Saunders said. “So he said, ‘Why don’t you just fly down with me?’ So my husband and I got on his fancy jet and flew to New Orleans. Jimmy was the pilot.”

Saunders said Buffett made it clear to her that although he originally attended Southern Miss because of its proximity to New Orleans, he very much enjoyed his college days in Hattiesburg. He was inducted into the USM Alumni Hall of Fame in 2018.

“I have always thought that Jimmy is proof that heart will get you further than talent,” Dunagin said. “If you want it and if you are passionate about it, that passion will take you a long, long way.

“Look at Jimmy. He brought so much joy to so many people. I was talking to a mutual friend this morning who said, ‘You can’t think of Jimmy Buffett and not smile, can you?’ It’s so true. I thought that was a perfect description. And how’s that for a legacy?”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Mississippi Legislature approves DEI ban after heated debate

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-02 16:34:00

Mississippi lawmakers have reached an agreement to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from public schools across the state education system, following the lead of numerous other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump’s administration.  

House and Senate lawmakers approved a compromise bill in votes on Tuesday and Wednesday. It will likely head to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his signature after it clears a procedural motion.

The agreement between the Republican-dominated chambers followed hours of heated debate in which Democrats, almost all of whom are Black, excoriated the legislation as a setback in the long struggle to make Mississippi a fairer place for minorities. They also said the bill could bog universities down with costly legal fights and erode academic freedom.

Democratic Rep. Bryant Clark, who seldom addresses the entire House chamber from the podium during debates, rose to speak out against the bill on Tuesday. He is the son of the late Robert Clark, the first Black Mississippian elected to the state Legislature since the 1800s and the first Black Mississippian to serve as speaker pro tempore and preside over the House chamber since Reconstruction.

“We are better than this, and all of you know that we don’t need this with Mississippi history,” Clark said. “We should be the ones that say, ‘listen, we may be from Mississippi, we may have a dark past, but you know what, we’re going to be the first to stand up this time and say there is nothing wrong with DEI.'”

Legislative Republicans argued that the measure — which will apply to all public schools from the K-12 level through universities — will elevate merit in education and remove a list of so-called “divisive concepts” from academic settings. More broadly, conservative critics of DEI say the programs divide people into categories of victims and oppressors and infuse left-wing ideology into campus life.

“We are a diverse state. Nowhere in here are we trying to wipe that out,” said Republican Sen. Tyler McCaughn, one of the bill’s authors. “We’re just trying to change the focus back to that of excellence.”

The House and Senate initially passed proposals that differed in who they would impact, what activities they would regulate and how they aim to reshape the inner workings of the state’s education system. Some House leaders wanted the bill to be “semi-vague” in its language and wanted to create a process for withholding state funds based on complaints that almost anyone could lodge. The Senate wanted to pair a DEI ban with a task force to study inefficiencies in the higher education system, a provision the upper chamber later agreed to scrap.

The concepts that will be rooted out from curricula include the idea that gender identity can be a “subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality.” The move reflects another effort to align with the Trump administration, which has declared via executive order that there are only two sexes.

The House and Senate disagreed on how to enforce the measure but ultimately settled on an agreement that would empower students, parents of minor students, faculty members and contractors to sue schools for violating the law.

People could only sue after they go through an internal campus review process and a 25-day period when schools could fix the alleged violation. Republican Rep. Joey Hood, one of the House negotiators, said that was a compromise between the chambers. The House wanted to make it possible for almost anyone to file lawsuits over the DEI ban, while Senate negotiators initially bristled at the idea of fast-tracking internal campus disputes to the legal system.   

The House ultimately held firm in its position to create a private cause of action, or the right to sue, but it agreed to give schools the ability to conduct an investigative process and potentially resolve the alleged violation before letting people sue in chancery courts.

“You have to go through the administrative process,” said Republican Sen. Nicole Boyd, one of the bill’s lead authors. “Because the whole idea is that, if there is a violation, the school needs to cure the violation. That’s what the purpose is. It’s not to create litigation, it’s to cure violations.” 

If people disagree with the findings from that process, they could also ask the attorney general’s office to sue on their behalf.

Under the new law, Mississippi could withhold state funds from schools that don’t comply. Schools would be required to compile reports on all complaints filed in response to the new law.

Trump promised in his 2024 campaign to eliminate DEI in the federal government. One of the first executive orders he signed did that. Some Mississippi lawmakers introduced bills in the 2024 session to restrict DEI, but the proposals never made it out of committee. With the national headwinds at their backs and several other laws in Republican-led states to use as models, Mississippi lawmakers made plans to introduce anti-DEI legislation.

The policy debate also unfolded amid the early stages of a potential Republican primary matchup in the 2027 governor’s race between State Auditor Shad White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. White, who has been one of the state’s loudest advocates for banning DEI, had branded Hosemann in the months before the 2025 session “DEI Delbert,” claiming the Senate leader has stood in the way of DEI restrictions passing the Legislature. 

During the first Senate floor debate over the chamber’s DEI legislation during this year’s legislative session, Hosemann seemed to be conscious of these political attacks. He walked over to staff members and asked how many people were watching the debate live on YouTube. 

As the DEI debate cleared one of its final hurdles Wednesday afternoon, the House and Senate remained at loggerheads over the state budget amid Republican infighting. It appeared likely the Legislature would end its session Wednesday or Thursday without passing a $7 billion budget to fund state agencies, potentially threatening a government shutdown.

“It is my understanding that we don’t have a budget and will likely leave here without a budget. But this piece of legislation …which I don’t think remedies any of Mississippi’s issues, this has become one of the top priorities that we had to get done,” said Democratic Sen. Rod Hickman. “I just want to say, if we put that much work into everything else we did, Mississippi might be a much better place.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

House gives Senate 5 p.m. deadline to come to table, or legislative session ends with no state budget

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-02 16:13:00

The House on Wednesday attempted one final time to revive negotiations between it and the Senate over passing a state budget.

Otherwise, the two Republican-led chambers will likely end their session without funding government services for the next fiscal year and potentially jeopardize state agencies.

The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a measure to extend the legislative session and revive budget bills that had died on legislative deadlines last weekend. 

House Speaker Jason White said he did not have any prior commitment that the Senate would agree to the proposal, but he wanted to extend one last offer to pass the budget. White, a Republican from West, said if he did not hear from the Senate by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, his chamber would end its regular session. 

“The ball is in their court,” White said of the Senate. “Every indication has been that they would not agree to extend the deadlines for purposes of doing the budget. I don’t know why that is. We did it last year, and we’ve done it most years.” 

But it did not appear likely Wednesday afternoon that the Senate would comply.

The Mississippi Legislature has not left Jackson without setting at least most of the state budget since 2009, when then Gov. Haley Barbour had to force them back to set one to avoid a government shutdown.

The House measure to extend the session is now before the Senate for consideration. To pass, it would require a two-thirds majority vote of senators. But that might prove impossible. Numerous senators on both sides of the aisle vowed to vote against extending the current session, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann who oversees the chamber said such an extension likely couldn’t pass. 

Senate leadership seemed surprised at the news that the House passed the resolution to negotiate a budget, and several senators earlier on Wednesday made passing references to ending the session without passing a budget. 

“We’ll look at it after it passes the full House,” Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby said. 

The House and Senate, each having a Republican supermajority, have fought over many issues since the legislative session began early January.

But the battle over a tax overhaul plan, including elimination of the state individual income tax, appeared to cause a major rift. Lawmakers did pass a tax overhaul, which the governor has signed into law, but Senate leaders cried foul over how it passed, with the House seizing on typos in the Senate’s proposal that accidentally resembled the House’s more aggressive elimination plan.

The Senate had urged caution in eliminating the income tax, and had economic growth triggers that would have likely phased in the elimination over many years. But the typos essentially negated the triggers, and the House and governor ran with it.

The two chambers have also recently fought over the budget. White said he communicated directly with Senate leaders that the House would stand firm on not passing a budget late in the session. 

But Senate leaders said they had trouble getting the House to meet with them to haggle out the final budget. 

On the normally scheduled “conference weekend” with a deadline to agree to a budget last Saturday, the House did not show, taking the weekend off. This angered Hosemann and the Senate. All the budget bills died, requiring a vote to extend the session, or the governor forcing them into a special session.

If the Legislature ends its regular session without adopting a budget, the only option to fund state agencies before their budgets expire on June 30 is for Gov. Tate Reeves to call lawmakers back into a special session later. 

“There really isn’t any other option (than the governor calling a special session),” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann previously said. 

If Reeves calls a special session, he gets to set the Legislature’s agenda. A special session call gives an otherwise constitutionally weak Mississippi governor more power over the Legislature. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Amount of federal cuts to health agencies doubles

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-02 14:48:00

Cuts to public health and mental health funding in Mississippi have doubled – reaching approximately $238 million – since initial estimates last week, when cancellations to federal grants allocated for COVID-19 pandemic relief were first announced.

Slashed funding to the state’s health department will impact community health workers, planned improvements to the public health laboratory, the agency’s ability to provide COVID-19 vaccinations and preparedness efforts for emerging pathogens, like H5 bird flu. 

The grant cancellations, which total $230 million, will not be catastrophic for the agency, State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney told members of the Mississippi House Democratic Caucus at the Capitol April 1. 

But they will set back the agency, which is still working to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic decimated its workforce and exposed “serious deficiencies” in the agency’s data collection and management systems.

The cuts will have a more significant impact on the state’s economy and agency subgrantees, who carry out public health work on the ground with health department grants, he said. 

“The agency is okay. But I’m very worried about all of our partners all over the state,” Edney told lawmakers. 

The health department was forced to lay off 17 contract workers as a result of the grant cancellations, though Edney said he aims to rehire them under new contracts. 

Other positions funded by health department grants are in jeopardy. Two community health workers at Back Bay Mission, a nonprofit that supports people living in poverty in Biloxi, were laid off as a result of the cuts, according to WLOX. It’s unclear how many more community health workers, who educate and help people access health care, have been impacted statewide.

The department was in the process of purchasing a comprehensive data management system before the cuts and has lost the ability to invest in the Mississippi Public Health Laboratory, he said. The laboratory performs environmental and clinical testing services that aid in the prevention and control of disease. 

Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney addresses lawmakers during the Democratic caucus meeting at the State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. The discussion centered on potential federal healthcare funding cuts.

The agency has worked to reduce its dependence on federal funds, Edney said, which will help it weather the storm. Sixty-six percent of the department’s budget is federally funded. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pulled back $11.4 billion in funding to state health departments nationwide last week. The funding was originally allocated by Congress for testing and vaccination against the coronavirus as part of COVID-19 relief legislation, and to address health disparities in high-risk and underserved populations. An additional $1 billion from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration was also terminated. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” the Department of Health and Human Services Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement.

HHS did not respond to questions from Mississippi Today about the cuts in Mississippi.

Democratic attorneys general and governors in 23 states filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Tuesday, arguing that the sudden cancellation of the funding was unlawful and seeking injunctive relief to halt the cuts. Mississippi did not join the suit. 

Mental health cuts

The Department of Mental Health received about $7.5 million in cuts to federal grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. 

Phaedre Cole, president of the Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers, speaks to lawmakers about federal healthcare funding cuts during the Democratic caucus meeting at the State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Tuesday, April 1, 2025.

Over half of the cuts were to community mental health centers, and supported alcohol and drug treatment services for people who can not afford treatment, housing services for parenting and pregnant women and their children, and prevention services. 

The cuts could result in reduced beds at community mental health centers, Phaedre Cole, the director of Life Help and President of Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers, told lawmakers April 1. 

Community mental health centers in Mississippi are already struggling to keep their doors open. Four centers in the state have closed since 2012, and a third have an imminent to high risk of closure, Cole told legislators at a hearing last December. 

“We are facing a financial crisis that threatens our ability to maintain our mission,” she said Dec. 5. 

Cuts to the department will also impact diversion coordinators, who are charged with reducing recidivism of people with serious mental illness to the state’s mental health hospital, a program for first-episode psychosis, youth mental health court funding, school-aged mental health programs and suicide response programs. 

The Department of Mental Health hopes to reallocate existing funding from alcohol tax revenue and federal block grant funding to discontinued programs.

The agency posted a list of all the services that have received funding cuts. The State Department of Health plans to post such a list, said spokesperson Greg Flynn.

Health leaders have expressed fear that there could be more funding cuts coming. 

“My concern is that this is the beginning and not the end,” said Edney.  

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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