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daughterofthedelta 
I was wondering if you had any association to the Tutors or Parrishs of Sledge, MS?
Nicole,
I’m not sure. I know my grandfather Bonnie Hicks lived in Sledge and had four daughters, but I am unsure of who they married. I can find out, if you’d like. Thanks for commenting.
Great blog. I found you through a search for “Bama Moon” – something I am considering including in a book I’m writing. For some reason one of your photos showed up, the one of 3 little girls holding flowers in front of a house with an open door through which you can see an open window. It was enough for me to check you out.
Steph,
Those little girls are my mother, Sara Criss, and her two older sisters. Likely taken around 1926 or so.
I just recently saw your blog on Fountain’s Department Store and enjoyed it very much. Do you by any chance have any pictures of the inside of the store, especially at Christmas, or the tea room?
Janet, I wish I did have interior photos. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen any of those, although Turnrow Books, which now occupies the main floor of the Fountain Building, does have some old Fashion Show programs and such. My mother’s fondest memories were of that big plate glass corner window with the curtains hiding the Christmas toys until Thanksgiving afternoon. She loved that store more than all others. Is this your family?
Yes, my mother is Janet Fountain McIntyre, my grandparents were Maynard and Janet Fountain and my great, grandfather was W. T. Fountain. I have been putting together information and pictures for some genealogy and history of the family. Do you have any ideas on where to find some pictures? I have a few but would love a few more.
I believe your cousin met my brother and sister-in-law and that is how I heard of your blog.
Thank you for your interest.
Janet, I am so pleased that you found the blog, and my cousin Melanie Liles did let me know about your family coming into her antique store. It’s a very small world, particularly when Mississippi is involved. Your great-grandfather gave Greenwood such a gift with “Fountain’s Big Busy Store” and I marvel every time I go into the building at what a remarkable, enduring monument that is to him and to the community that existed in the early 1900s. I have been hoping that the stores and owners of the building will want to do some sort of commemorative event for it’s 100-year anniversary in 1914 and certainly your family should be the center of that if it happens. For more information on Fountain’s and many other Greenwood sites, I would strongly recommend Donny Whitehead’s website, http://www.aboutgreenwoodms.com. Donny has been collecting postcards and researching Greenwood’s history for years and this is an excellent website. I will also forward your email on to Allan Hammons, another master of all things Greenwood. Please let me know if you will ever be in town and we’ll arrange the grand tour of the Fountain Building and anything else you might want to visit.
We have visited Greenwood periodically and really appreciate what Viking has done to conserve and promote the city and the old Fountain’s site. They did an excellent job! I have seen Donny’s site and enjoyed what he has done preserving the history of Greenwood. You can tell he has put in a lot of valuable work. Thank you so much for your comments. Those were great years and memories.
I just stumbled upon this site, and it’s fascinating. I’m glad the material from your mother has found a place so it will be remembered. As a newspaper reporter in Greenwood, it was a pleasure to meet your mother and talk with her briefly a couple of years before her death (at a garden club meeting at the country club).
Charlie Smith
Thanks, Charlie. That means a lot coming from a newspaperman. My mother’s life was very rich and full, but her journalism career truly defined her, and we were all very proud of her accomplishments. I hope you’ll enjoy the blog and I would appreciate any suggestions you might have on someday transforming this into a book.
My name is Jack Bennett.
I am Jerome Bennett’s son. He and Sara were classmates. We visited Greenwood a year ago.
We went down memory row and had a wonderful stay.
I know Sara covered the news for years.
Are there any pictures of Bob Dylan’s visit to Greenwood during the Civil Rights Movement in early 1960’s you may wish to share?
After watching “The Help”….. A Dylan song was used….. Just wondering if there is anything you could put on your blog?
Jack Bennett
Hi, Jack. I’m so sorry I missed you and your father (and brother, I think?) when you came last summer. My aunt and uncle thoroughly enjoyed your visit and we all hope you’ll come back. I heard about your father my whole life, as Sara adored and admired him so much. Going through her collection of photographs and negatives, I have not found any photos of Bob Dylan in Greenwood, nor have I seen any anywhere else that were definitively taken here. Let me do some more checking with a couple of sources and I’ll get back with you on that. Hope all is well with you and your family, and please give my best to Jerome.
Thank you so much for your quick reply.
I am sorry we missed you in our trip to Greenwood last year!
My father talked about Sara for his entire life! I felt like I knew her. My mother referred to her as my father’s girlfriend……in a joking manner. She was also very fond of Sarah.
Sarah made sure that my father “never left” Greenwood.
Your aunt and uncle were extremely nice to us when we visited unannounced last year. We had some incredibly interesting conversations about Greenwood.
It is so interesting to see the national focus on Greenwood and Mississipi lately. Lester Holt on NBC is doing a Dateline on May 20 on Mississippi and Greewood. Last week the NY Times did article on Booker’s Restsurant……….
Your blogs are extremely interesting. Are they in a book…….????
If we can get back to Greewood…..we will.
Sincerely,
Jack
Jack, It’s true, Greenwood seems to be in the spotlight lately, and as always it’s a mix of good and bad publicity. My mother never wavered in her belief that it was the finest place in the world to grow up and to raise her own children, and I guess we should all be blessed with such an attitude. I’m so glad that your father has warm memories as well, for his life made hers much richer. Looking forward to your next visit to the Delta, and please do keep in touch.
Delighted to have stumbled onto your blog of Greenwood. I was born in Greenwood in 1941 and raised there until attending MSU. Your tales of E Adams Street strike a chord, as Kim McLean and I dated for a couple of years in the late 1950’s. It was a great place in which to grow up, full of weird Mississippi Delta character … And characters.
Gerry, how nice to hear from you. We lived two doors down from the McLeans and I was fascinated with the glamorous Kim and gentlemanly Hite, who were teenagers during the years I remember them. That was quite a neighborhood and it’s still just as lovely as it was when you were picking Kim up. I’m sure you had some interesting conversations with Big Hite and Lenore….
Hey Delta! Saw your story in the DEPA newsletter. Great to see what you’ve been up to. I remember you fondly from our days at MC.
How wonderful to hear from an old MC friend! I have thought of you often over the years and wondered what you were up to; hopefully, still in Mississippi?
Hello,
I am the granddaughter of Lucille McAlexander (Pillow), who Sara mentions frequently from her high school days. It was a fun suprise to come across this website, read funny stories, and see photos of my grandmother as a teenager. What a fantastic little peek into her life as a youngster. Thank you so much for sharing these!
~ Leslie Faulkner Mosley, daughter of Patricia Pillow Faulkner, daughter of Lucille McAlexander Pillow
Leslie,
I just saw your post. If you will send me your email address, I will share a story involving your mother Patricia of about 1958. GLadner@charter.net
Wonderful memories of a very special person and era. I’m honored to share Sara’s birthday and to to have met her so long ago.
A welcome voice from way back when! How in the world did you stumble across this, Lynn?
Once a Mississippian, always a Mississippian. I have an acute interest in history, particularly our southern heritage. I am fascinated by old bridges, locomotives and buildings. Your books on old buildings are much more interesting than mine on petroleum engineering.
It’s hard to make petroleum engineering riveting, I’m sure. You might enjoy the Greenwood books that Allan Hammons, Donny Whitehead and I have been publishing over the past year or so. Lots of buildings, bridges and locomotives. Even better, get back to Mississippi and we’ll show you in person!
Sent from my iPad Mary Carol Miller stonylonesome@yahoo.com daughterofthedelta.com 705 Olivia Street Greenwood MS 38930 662 231 8567
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I loved reading about your “romantic” adventure with Billy Mallette. Billy was my uncle, the third of four brothers. Billy passed away in 2006 at age 85 of congestive heart problems. You might like to know that he was a true WWII hero, a bomber pilot who received not one, but two Distinguished Flying Crosses, as well as seven Air Medals for heroism in aerial flights in the Bismarck Archipelago Area in 1944 and 1945.
We never knew he was a decorated hero until his son, Billy, Jr., found his medals on a closet shelf one day around 2003. Billy had seven children with his wife, Doris. She died tragically of liver cancer at age 40, and Billy never remarried. He moved to Memphis in 1960, after Mallette & Co. (the family meat-packing business in Greenwood) closed and worked well into his late 70s as a designer of custom corrugated cardboard containers for product shipping.
Thanks for sharing these memories of Billy, Lawrence. Several people have “found” Greenwood family members through this blog, and that’s a nice surprise. You might be interested to know that there is a picture of Mallette & Company in my book, Greenwood:Mississippi Memories, Volume II. It’s from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, part of a large collection of photos taken on Carrollton Avenue and Johnson Street in the early 1930s.
Thank you so much for the information. I’ll look for the photo. We would drive down from Memphis 2-3 times a year to spend time at the Leflore Ave. house, out in front of the Mallette & Co. plant, with Bom Mom and Paw Paw. It was a great place for a kid to visit because the city park with its large (to me at the time) wading pool and multiple swings and slides was right next door. You couldn’t go bare foot in the park though, because the grass there grew these little stickers that would torture you if you tried.
Thanks for the December 5, 2014 post about Roy Martin and the Greenwood band and festival.
My Dad played baritone and tuba in Roy’s bands and always spoke fondly of Mr. Martin as a great man, great teacher, and great musician. The year after Dad graduated, the Greenwood HS band was invited to march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in NYC. Roy invited Dad back to make the trip with the band. Dad was a freshman in college, but he took time off to make the trip. It was Dad’s only trip to NYC. They did Greenwood proud that day.
Although Dad never took up his instruments again after college, there was always recorded music in our home, and dad encouraged me to become a musician. He got me started on clarinet, which I played, along with sax, for some 11 years. Later I switched to baroque recorder to play Renaissance and baroque music, and still later took up Irish flute and penny whistle, which I am doing full time now that I’m retired from my profession ( and ). So Roy Martin’s influence is still being felt.
Hi Mary Carol, I just came across your blog and will enjoy getting to know it. This is Allen Bridgforth from Yazoo but now living in Goodman in Holmes Co. I just saw a great Italianate house for sale on the edge of West and wondered if you know anything about it. Also please come see my house in Goodman sometime.
Thanks
Allen
Thanks, Allen, good to hear from you. I’m afraid I don’t know much about the homes in West, although I maintain that it is one of the loveliest small town in Mississippi. We are slowly setting up housekeeping at the recreated bungalow and I hope to post a blog update on that soon. Please let me know when you’re up this way and we’ll give you a tour.
I’d love to be able to read this blog but it’s not visible to me!