For most of my adult life, I’ve known Indianola as “the stop.”
The city was always the “halfway” point between my hometown of Yazoo City and Cleveland, where I attended Delta State for a number of years, the exact number I’m ashamed to print.
Indianola never failed to break up the Delta drive, which could get quite monotonous. A brief stop at the corner Double Quick for a green apple slush, and then I was on my way toward Shaw and finally Cleveland.
Today, I’m excited that my family will be calling Indianola home for the foreseeable future.
My wife Callie and my 20-month old daughter Ellie will be joining me here in a couple of weeks as we move into our new home here in town. In mid-September, the newest addition to our growing family, Sarah, is scheduled to arrive.
Callie and I have spent the better part of four years working at some amazing jobs in the state of Alabama, but nothing compares to coming home to Mississippi, and nothing beats practicing community journalism in a great town like Indianola.
I got my start in the newspaper business stringing football games for Andy Collier and the Bolivar Commercial in Cleveland.
Many a fall Friday night I spent roaming the sidelines of Delta high schools like Ruleville, North Sunflower Academy and back then Drew High School.
I was lucky enough to be hired out of college by Jason Patterson at the Yazoo Herald, my hometown newspaper. That’s where I really began to cut my teeth as a journalist, covering everything from sports to the occasional spot news story and feature photograph.
I got to know the ins and outs of writing in a small town, and the training I received under Patterson and then publisher Gary Andrews paved the way to my first editor job in West Point, Miss. a couple of years later.
Since then, I have spent time in the big city of Birmingham, Ala. covering real estate and economic development at the Birmingham Business Journal and most recently serving as the research/media coordinator at the Alabama Center for Real Estate at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
My wife, who is a graduate of the Mississippi University for Women, obtained her real estate license in 2016 and has been tearing it up in the real estate world in Tuscaloosa during the past year.
No matter how great the jobs and no matter how good or bad the bank balance looked at the first of the month, Alabama still was not home. Our daughter, and her sister to be, have four grandparents and three great grandparents living in and around Yazoo County. These things and just general homesickness had been tugging at us for some time, as we waited for the right opportunity to come along that would allow us to return to the Delta.
That chance came when the position of publisher at the Enterprise-Tocsin came open in July and that opportunity turned into reality later that month when I was offered the position.
I am excited about serving this community as the publisher of its paper of record. My pledge is the pledge that most publishers and editors make when arriving at a new paper and that is to promote this community and the great things about this city and county and to be fair to all whom we cover on a weekly basis.
I encourage this community to hold me accountable to that pledge.
My wife and I are thrilled to be here, and we hope that Indianola, for us and our children, becomes home instead of just “the stop.”
