Curtis Gene Underwood Sr., a former Leflore County Justice Court judge, was known for his gregarious nature and love of the outdoors as well as his fairness on the bench.
“He was always smiling and happy and telling jokes,” Kim O’Bryant, Underwood’s daughter, said Monday.
Mr. Underwood passed away Saturday at Greenwood Leflore Hospital. He was 83.
Services will be at 11 a.m. Friday at North Greenwood Baptist Church. Visitation will be held from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Friday at the church.
Born and raised in Sunflower County, Mr. Underwood joined the U.S. Air Force when he was 18 and was stationed at Davis Monthan Base in Tucson, Arizona. From 1954 to 1958, he served in the 43rd Bombardment wing of the 36th Air Division, completing training missions in Hawaii, Guam, the Midway Islands and Okinawa.
Following his discharge, Mr. Underwood and his family moved to Greenwood. In 1961, he joined the Greenwood Police Department, serving for eight years.
On a friend’s dare, he ran for Leflore County Justice Court judge in the Northern District. He served as a judge from 1971 to 1976, was elected again in 1986 and held the seat until the end of 1999, when he decided to retire.
Aside from his judgeship, Mr. Underwood worked at a car dealership and owned three businesses in Greenwood. Once he retired, he and his wife, Shirley Underwood, moved to Gore Springs in Grenada County, near Grenada Lake.
Jim Campbell, the current Justice Court judge for the Northern District, who will start his sixth term in January, succeeded Mr. Underwood. In fact, Campbell said he ran for the position at Mr. Underwood’s recommendation.
Campbell had observed Mr. Underwood during visits to the courtroom as part of his work in the loan business. He said Mr. Underwood “got right to business.”
“He was a good man. He was a fair man,” Campbell said. “He could be stern or firm but never in a malicious way.”
Mr. Underwood was voted by his fellow judges to serve as the executive director of the Mississippi Justice Court Judges Association for several years.
Campbell said his father and Mr. Underwood were friends. Campbell also graduated from Greenwood High School with Mr. Underwood’s oldest son, Curtis Gene Underwood Jr., who is now deceased.
Jeff Dunn also knew Mr. Underwood both professionally and personally. Around the age of 3, Dunn moved with his family to a home next door to the Underwood family in Greenwood.
Mr. Underwood “was like a second father to me,” Dunn said. “My daddy and him were good friends.”
A former constable in Leflore County’s Northern District, Dunn worked with Mr. Underwood while he was a judge.
“He was one of a kind,” Dunn said. “When he sold cars, he was good at selling cars. When he was a judge, he was one of the best judges around. He was just a fine Southern gentleman.”
O’Bryant said her father loved to take both adults and children fishing with him at the lake.
“When he retired, that’s all he did was fish, just about every day,” she said.
He still came back to Greenwood every Sunday to attend service at North Greenwood Baptist, she said.
Dunn said Mr. Underwood also enjoyed hunting off family land near Cruger named the Boom Boom Room Hunting, and he and his wife had a camper near the hunting grounds.
Even after a bad knee prevented him from hunting, he would still sit at the camp, awaiting the hunters to ask them how their day had gone, Dunn recalled.
Mr. Underwood is also survived by his other child, Kevin Wayne, his son-in-law, Anthony James O’Bryant, and three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
He will be buried in Evergreen Cemetery in North Carrollton with American Legion Post 29 performing military rites.
Contact Gerard Edic at 581-7239 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com.
Photo and story courtesy of The Greenwood Commonwealth.
