Mississippi Today

Tornado-battered Amory in clean-up mode, but spirit and grit remain strong

Published

2 years ago

March 28, 2023

Staff Editor

Tornado-battered Amory in clean-up mode, but spirit and grit remain strong

by Rick Cleveland, Mississippi Today
March 28, 2023

This is what remains of the Amory High baseball park, home of the 2022 state champs, after last Friday night’s tornado. (Rick Cleveland)

AMORY — The defending baseball state champion Amory Panthers, off to a sparkling 14-1-1 start this spring, were supposed to play a home doubleheader against rival Noxubee County here on Tuesday afternoon.

That won’t happen. There’s no place to play. The Friday night tornado that turned many Amory neighborhoods into rubble, damaged hundreds of homes and downed thousands upon thousands of trees left the ballpark unrecognizable.

Amory High School suffered heavy damage and the baseball and softball complex was essentially blown away. The outfield fences were gone. The press boxes blew over onto the grandstands, which were dislodged. The screen behind the home plate is no more. Light poles were down all around the fields. The infield, carefully manicured before Friday night’s horrific storm, was strewn with trash and debris. Outside what used to be a concession stand were soiled baseball uniforms. The indoor batting cages were leveled, as was the team’s clubhouse. Amazingly, last year’s state championship trophy survived the storm. Across the campus, the football stadium was also heavily damaged with one set of goal posts sheared in half.

Nearby, Amory baseball coach Chris Pace spent the weekend helping with neighborhood clean-up in the heavily damaged Meadowbrook Circle area, where many of the Amory coaches and faculty live.Like it or not, Pace has become an expert at applying blue tarps to damaged roofs, including his own.

“I think Chris has helped about everyone in this neighborhood with their roofs,” down-the-street neighbor Mike Price said. “There’s been a lot of neighbors helping neighbors.”

Amory baseball coach Chris Pace outside his home in the Meadowbrook Circle neighborhood of Amory. (Rick Cleveland)

Just as Price said that, a couple came by in a small pickup truck. “Y’all need some cold bottled water?” the driver asked. “Can I interest you in a hamburger? Got some hot off the grill in here.”

A few doors down live James and Dorothy Burrow, both in their 90s, in the same house they have lived in for nearly 60 years. James was once a point guard at Mississippi State. Dorothy is one of the all-time Mississippi high school girls’ basketball greats, averaging 50 points a game one season. You’ve probably heard of their grandson: Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, the former LSU Heisman Trophy winner.

The storm severely damaged the Burrows’ home when the brick chimney fell through the ripped apart roof into the den. The Burrows were safe, riding out the tornado in the storm cellar they built beneath their carport after the deadly EF-5 tornado that ravaged nearby Smithville in 2011. Jimmy Burrow (Joe’s dad) and his wife drove all night from Athens, Ohio, after they received news of Friday night’s storm.

Jimmy Burrow outside his parents’ Amory home. (Rick Cleveland)

For now, the Burrows are staying at a Tupelo motel until contractors can determine whether their house can be saved. Like hundreds in this town of 6,600, the Burrows will then deal with insurance and, hopefully, rebuilding. All know it could be worse. A short drive around town is all it takes to know how amazing is is that nobody within the Amory city limits died as a result of the tornado.

Said Jimmy Burrow, standing outside the house where he grew up, “Much of this town is unrecognizable, but you can’t imagine how much has already been cleaned up. These are tough, strong people here in this town and everybody’s helping everybody.”

Pace, the Amory baseball coach since 2007, says the doubleheader with Noxubee will be rescheduled but he does not know where the games will be played. A home game with Saltillo on Saturday will be played at Saltillo instead. Pace said schools from all over north Mississippi have called offering to help and support. He’s heard from Chris Lemonis at Mississippi State and Richie Harralson at Northeast Community College offering support and a place to practice. He says nearby high schools in Hatley, Smithville and Hamilton have offered their baseball fields as a home away from home for the Amory Panthers to play and practice.

Amory lost five key players off last year’s state champs, but the Amory baseball program is one that traditionally reloads rather than rebuilds. Pace has 44 players in his high school and middle school baseball program.The goal remains a repeat state championship, but the Panthers will have do it as baseball nomads.

Don’t put it past them, says Will Hall, a former state championship quarterback at Amory who also played point guard for the basketball team. Hall, the Southern Miss football coach who played for his father Bobby Hall here, became emotional Monday morning when discussing his old hometown. “I believe in Amory. I believe in its people,” Will Hall said. “I know the fiber of those people. You just watch, Amory has been knocked down but those people build back better than ever. That’s who they are.”

The view from pitcher’s mound at Amory baseball field. (Rick Cleveland)

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

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1906

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3 hours ago

January 22, 2025

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-22 07:00:00

Jan. 22, 1906

Willa Beatrice Brown served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. Credit: Wikipedia

Pioneer aviator and civil rights activist Willa Beatrice Brown was born in Glasgow, Kentucky.

While working in Chicago, she learned how to fly and became the first Black female to earn a commercial pilot’s license. A journalist said that when she entered the newsroom, “she made such a stunning appearance that all the typewriters suddenly went silent. … She had a confident bearing and there was an undercurrent of determination in her husky voice as she announced, not asked, that she wanted to see me.”

In 1939, she married her former flight instructor, Cornelius Coffey, and they co-founded the Cornelius Coffey School of Aeronautics, the first Black-owned private flight training academy in the U.S.

She succeeded in convincing the U.S. Army Air Corps to let them train Black pilots. Hundreds of men and women trained under them, including nearly 200 future Tuskegee Airmen.

In 1942, she became the first Black officer in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. After World War II ended, she became the first Black woman to run for Congress. Although she lost, she remained politically active and worked in Chicago, teaching business and aeronautics.

After she retired, she served on an advisory board to the Federal Aviation Administration. She died in 1992. A historical marker in her hometown now recognizes her as the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license in the U.S., and Women in Aviation International named her one of the 100 most influential women in aviation and space.

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

Mississippi Stories Videos

Mississippi Stories: Michael May of Lazy Acres

Published

19 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – rlake – 2025-01-21 14:51:00

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey takes a trip to Lazy Acres. In 1980, Lazy Acres Christmas tree farm was founded in Chunky, Mississippi by Raburn and Shirley May. Twenty-one years later, Michael and Cathy May purchased Lazy Acres. Today, the farm has grown into a multi seasonal business offering a Bunny Patch at Easter, Pumpkin Patch in the fall, Christmas trees and an spectacular Christmas light show. It’s also a masterclass in family business entrepreneurship and agricultural tourism.

For more videos, subscribe to Mississippi Today’s YouTube channel.

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

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1921

Published

1 day ago

January 21, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-21 07:00:00

Jan. 21, 1921

George Washington Carver Credit: Wikipedia

George Washington Carver became one of the first Black experts to testify before Congress.

His unlikely road to Washington began after his birth in Missouri, just before the Civil War ended. When he was a week old, he and his mother and his sister were kidnapped by night raiders. The slaveholder hired a man to track them down, but the only one the man could locate was George, and the slaveholder exchanged a race horse for George’s safe return. George and his brother were raised by the slaveholder and his wife.

The couple taught them to read and write. George wound up attending a school for Black children 10 miles away and later tried to attend Highland University in Kansas, only to get turned away because of the color of his skin. Then he attended Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, before becoming the first Black student at what is now Iowa State University, where he received a Master’s of Science degree and became the first Black faculty member.

Booker T. Washington then invited Carver to head the Tuskegee Institute’s Agriculture Department, where he found new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans and other crops.

In the past, segregation would have barred Carver’s testimony before Congress, but white peanut farmers, desperate to convince lawmakers about the need for a tariff on peanuts because of cheap Chinese imports, believed Carver could captivate them — and captivate he did, detailing how the nut could be transformed into candy, milk, livestock feed, even ink.

“I have just begun with the peanut,” he told lawmakers.

Impressed, they passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922.

In addition to this work, Carver promoted racial harmony. From 1923 to 1933, he traveled to white Southern colleges for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Time magazine referred to him as a “Black Leonardo,” and he died in 1943.

That same year, the George Washington Carver Monument complex, the first national park honoring a Black American, was founded in Joplin, Missouri.

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