Billy Marlow could fix just about anything.
His work ethic, generosity and love for his family and friends were perhaps only matched by his love for his hometown of Ruleville.
Marlow was born at what was then the North Sunflower County Hospital in Ruleville on January 8, 1953. He passed away on May 29, leaving a legacy of innovation and hard work, two things that led to the successful revitalization of North Sunflower Medical Center two decades ago.
“My dad has worked seven days a week for as long as I have had memories,” Brooks Rizzo, Marlow’s daughter, nurse practitioner and chief clinical officer in administration at NSMC told The Enterprise-Tocsin. “He was a catfish farmer when I was little. He has a patent on the process of cleaning and recycling polypipe. He had a mobile home business. Then he was asked to help the hospital when it was in need of a businessman in the early 2000s. He was always thinking of ways to try and make his surroundings better for other people.”
Marlow grew up working on his family’s farm.
From a young age, he was an innovator, eventually graduating at the top of his class at Mississippi Delta Community College’s Mechanics School, according to his obituary.
He held the patent for a groundbreaking technology that paved the way for Delta Plastics Inc., a company specializing in the recycling of poly pipe, thereby contributing significantly to agricultural sustainability, his obituary said.
A little over 20 years ago, the heartbeat of the town of Ruleville, the county-owned hospital there, was on the brink of closure.
Marlow, determined that the hospital would survive, stepped up.
“There were not that many of us, actually, and we were all doing a lot of different jobs,” NSMC Chief Operating Officer Sam Miller told The E-T. “When he came on board and told me that he wanted to revive the hospital, and he told me what his plan was, I told him, ‘I’m in. I’m all in.’”
Miller, who had been at the hospital for several years prior to Marlow taking over as executive director, said that Marlow had “the absolute determination to bring it back to life.”
“He was a mentor and a very dear friend,” Miller said.
Marlow’s plan worked, and under his leadership, the hospital became a model for rural medicine nationwide, often being featured for its success in magazines and on national networks like CNN.
“Mr. Marlow, I would say, was a blessing from God to Sunflower County,” said District 1 Supervisor Glenn Donald, who served on the board of supervisors during some of the Ruleville hospital’s most perilous years financially. Donald watched Marlow revive the facility, which now employs more than 600 people.
“He helped to restore and brought (the hospital) back to life, and in the process of doing that, he rebuilt the City of Ruleville,” Donald said.
At one time the county was lending the hospital money in order for it to make payroll.
As the years progressed under Marlow’s leadership, the hospital became self-sustaining.
“I remember when we would give the appropriation that we give to both hospitals, Mr. Billy would turn around and give it back to us,” Donald said. “The hospital was making that much money.”
Clinic Director Rizzo said that she first walked onto the hospital’s campus on a professional level when she was 14 years old. Her father told her to ask the late Walter B. Crook for a job.
“I decided then that health care was the career for me,” Rizzo said. “I continued to work in health care part-time while going to college at Delta State. I graduated from nursing school and went back to get my master’s five years later at the urging of my dad.”
Rizzo said that she became a board-certified nurse practitioner about the time that Marlow was starting to turn things around at the Ruleville hospital.
“He said he opened the Rural Health Clinic in a new building and needed another provider because they were getting busy,” Rizzo said. “I started my NP career at the Sunflower Clinic. It wasn’t too long after, my dad changed the name of North Sunflower County Hospital to North Sunflower Medical Center. He encouraged me to grow my practice. I became busy quickly. We started hiring more providers and staff.”
Shortly after that, Rizzo said that she collaborated with Marlow on developing an electronic scheduling system.
Rizzo developed a school screening program called The Screen Team that saw statewide success. She would eventually go on to lead the clinic.
“My dad gave me the courage to answer the call and take on a huge responsibility,” she said.
Since then, the clinic has grown from a half dozen employees to 106, Rizzo said, and the NSMC venture has been expanded to the Sunflower Greenwood Clinic, which opened last fall.
When Marlow was not working at the hospital, he was working to revitalize and beautify the town of Ruleville as a whole, serving multiple terms as alderman-at-large.
In the free time he could find, he spent those hours with his friends and family, and he was also an avid hunter and fisherman, even winning three bass boats during fishing tournaments throughout his life, his obituary said.
Phil McNeer described Marlow as “one of my best friends” for over 30 years.
The two had known each other from a distance for some time, McNeer said, but he really got to know Marlow well through a hunting group.
“If he was your friend, you knew it,” McNeer said.
McNeer said that Marlow owned a track hoe and a dozer, and he spent most of his time on that machinery doing work for other people.
“He didn’t do a whole lot of it for himself. He did most of it for other people. He did a lot of work for the City of Ruleville,” McNeer said. ““He loved the hospital, and he loved the town of Ruleville.”
Marlow’s generosity knew few bounds, his daughter said.
“My dad liked to meet up with friends from his childhood and young adult years at the annual Ruleville festival every year,” Rizzo said. “About three years ago, I walk up to meet him so we could walk around together and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. I said, ‘Daddy! What happened to your shirt?!’ He said, ‘well my old friend Mickey Reynolds is here, and he told me they ran out of the Ruleville festival shirts, and so I took mine off and gave it to him.’ I said ‘Oh, okay.’ He walked around the festival with me without a shirt, and everyone just smiled. I smiled. That’s the kind of person my dad was—he literally would give you the shirt off of his back.”
Marlow leaves behind his cherished daughters, Elizabeth Brooks Rizzo (Paul) and Lauren Whitney Marlow, both of Ruleville, as well as his step-sons William Blake Gibson (Taylor Hackney) and Nicholas Ethan Gibson, his grandchildren, Rian and Rance Rizzo, and his esteemed sister, BJ Marlow of Charlottesville, Virginia. He was predeceased by his loving parents, Billy Marlow Sr. and Jessie Mae Porter Marlow, as well as his spouse, Sallie Carpenter Marlow, and his latest spouse Robyn Marlow, according to his obituary.
Marlow’s gifts of innovation and hard work did not just make a hospital financially solvent.
Marlow’s work has saved countless lives over the years, and that legacy will continue in the lives that will be saved at his hometown hospital for years to come.
