North Mississippi Herald - Top Stories January 2006

By William Browning
\The Water Valley cheeleading squad ended 2005 with a first place finish at the state cheerleading competition on Dec. 17.
The win was the first first-place finish for the squad since 2001.
Competing against eight other 3A schools from Mississippi, the Blue Devils claimed their victory in the Large State division.
The Large State division is composed of squads made up of 13 members or more. The Blue Devils had 18 team members, six more than used on the sideline during football games.
Captains for the team are seniors Kelsey Reed and Austin Shaw, while fellow senior Ashley Armstrong is co-captain.
Christy Lott is the fourth senior member of the team.
“These are a group of dedicated, hard working girls who set out to achieve this goal and I am so proud for them,” said Suzanne Reed, who along with Jennifer Carwile and Shelly Rotenberry, sponsers the cheerleading squad.
The team is led by first-year coach Shannon Johnson.
“I knew back in April that these girls had the potential to win state,” Johnson said, who also said that in the weeks leading up to the competition’s Dec. 17 date, the girls practiced everyday for two hours a-day tightening their routine.
“They gave me 115 percent from day one. Even on the days when they fell - they picked themselves up and motivated each other to get better every time out,” said Johnson, who cheered for three years for the University of Mississippi.
Mississippi’s cheerleading cometition is composed of two areas, a cheer competition and a dance competition. The Blue Devils competed in the cheer competition.
The team finished third in last year’s competition.
The girls began training for the competition in April of 2005, Reed said, right after tryouts were completed.

By William Browning
The Yalobusha County Multi-Purpose Center’s interior will soon be adorned with colorful pictures, posters, banners and letters that all declare, in adorable, elementary, clumsy scribbles, a resounding “Thank You” to staff members of the county’s Extension Service Office.
The messages of thanks were born over 300 miles south, in the hearts of approximately 165 Lopez Elementary (located in Biloxi, Miss.) students who were inspired by the Christmas time efforts of a few Yalobushians.
“Christmas on the Coast” took place (television station WLOX covered the event) on Dec. 1 in one of the first coastal schools to open its doors after Hurricane Katrina’s destruction; 18 Yalobushians traveled in four vehicles following a 40 ft. trailer into a still recuperating coastal region to deliver to children - many of whom were left with, at best, barely standing, gutted homes - presents and Christmas time cheer.
The Yalobushians received some gifts of thanks that very day, when they delivered the gifts (they made the trip and returned, in one day). A bedsheet was prepared and given to them, by the third graders of Lopez Elementary, signed by every student at the school. The noontime celebration was constructed around a lunch in the school’s cafeteria, whose walls read “Thank you, Yalobusha County.”
“That was a complete surprise to us,” Cummings said of the children’s efforts in saying “thanks.”
\That was over a month ago, and messages of thanks still arrive in the mail at the Multi-Purpose Center.
“After the first of the year, all of the pictures, posters and banners will be put on display at the Yalobusha County Multi-Purpose Building for all to stop and see,” Fielder said.
\“You can bet Yalobusha County’s relationship with Lopez Elementary School is not over,” she added.
\Diane Bounds, a special education teacher at Lopez Elementary and former Miss Mississippi (1975), whose long friendship with Cummings - dating back to their years at Mississippi State University - was the seed of the relationship, will provide entertainment on Feb. 27’s Yalobusha County Agricultural Appreciation Banquet.

Built in1952, the Biloxi elementary school was originally called West End Elementary, and served the entire Biloxi community’s elementary needs in those days.

Changing its name in 1978 to Lopez Elementary (in reference to Lazaro Lopez, one of the first and most distinguished Biloxi settlers), on August 29, 2005, the day Katrina made landfall, the school’s enrollment - kindergarten through sixth grade - was listed at 316.

When Lopez Elementary opened its doors after the storm - one of the first on the coast to do so - its enrollment had dwindled to 171.

Built approximately two blocks from the shoreline, the original school building still stands, surviving both Camille and Katrina.

Scheduled to begin classes after the storm on Oct. 3, construction and clean-up, which included removing ten inches of “sludge” from most of the classroooms, “went so good” that the doors opened up on Sept. 26 - a mere 28 days after the worst natural disaster to ever hit our country.

“We can see the beach from (the school) now,” said Lopez Elementary secretary Collen Bosarge of the trees that fell because of the storm.

Of the entire Mississippi coast, only three children (ages 12 and under) died because of Katrina’s effects. None of Lopez Elementary’s students died during the storm.

HOW “Christmas on the Coast” STARTED
After serving as a designated Red Cross Disaster Center during the weeks and months following Katrina, housing donated relief supplies that were shipped to the coast, the Multi-Purpose center was preparing and cleaning itself for an upcoming rodeo, and the question arose amongst the workers: What are we to do with the left over supplies? The bulk of the remaining supplies were school supply related.

Cummings had tried to contact Bounds a few times immediately after the storm, and had been unable - like so many people trying to communicate with people on the coast - to talk to her.

After finally getting through and learning that she and her family were alright, Cummings learned that Bounds’ school was still standing, but had lost many of the surrounding structures, one being its warehouse, which housed the school’s supplies.

Christine Fielder, 4-H Program Assistant, asked Steve Cummings, MSU-ES County Director, “Do you think Diane (Bounds’) school could use this stuff?”

A perfect fit.

The trip took place on Oct. 12.

The school supplies, along with requested bed linens, baby formula and personnel hygiene products, were loaded into the Coffeeville Methodist Church’s van, and Fielder; Jody Bailey, with the Coffeeville Women’s League; volunteer Linda Blair; and Casey Baker, also with the Extension Service, left Coffeeville at roughly 6 a.m., arriving at Lopez Elementary a little after noon.

“We got to talking to the school nurse while we were there, and we heard some of the stories about what some of the students’ families were facing,” Fielder said. “Giving Christmas gifts, in the times and conditions they were living in, was a bridge they were going to have trouble crossing.”

Some of the children’s families, they learned, were still living in tents.

So Fielder and her companions worked with school administrators to give the school’s children the best Christmas possible.

Setting a Nov. 27 deadline for the forms to be faxed to the Yalobusha Multi-Purpose Building, the school was to give each student a form in which they were to write three gifts they wished to receive from Santa Claus, along with coat and shoe sizes.

“We got back that night (Oct. 12) well after dark,” said Baker.

PREPARATION
Over the next month-and-a-half, Baker received a pile of faxes which totalled five inches tall. On each piece of paper was written each child’s three wishes and their sizes. Baker developed a system in which Yalobusha residents could come choose a child (they were arranged much like the “Angel Tree” method) and purchase the “wishes” listed and have them taken to the coast. Every child was chosen, and most got more than they requested, said Cummings.

While so many individual residents “adopted” children, business around the area adopted children too.

“We had so many requests for bikes, we began wondering how we were going to get them all down there,” Cummings said.

Others wanted rollerblades, or scooters, or shoes, or jackets; one boy even wanted a Xbox 360. He got it.

“The response to this thing was unbelievable,” Baker said. “We had a checklist to make sure no child got left out, and none of them did.”

As the gifts came in - most of them in huge ‘garbage bag’ size Christmas bags - the tables at the Multi-Purpose building were all covered in gifts. The floorspace was mostly taken by all of the bicycles.

The Dream Riders, a motorcycle club, agreed to transport the gifts on Dec. 1 - chosen, Cummings said, so that the teachers at Lopez Elementary could give the packages to the children’s parents in time for Christmas morning.

The Dream Riders planned on using a 14-ft. trailer, but by the time Nov. 30 rolled around, they upgraded to a 40-ft.

CHRISTMAS ON THE COAST, DEC. 1
“It brought tears to our eyes,” Bosarge said during a recent phone interview. “Not just the kids, but I mean the staff too. And we knew what was going on,” - the delivery of the gifts was kept beneath the children’s radar: they thought Yalobushians were bringing more school supplies - “The children were elated, but the adults, they were all taken back by the act of kindest by people who were basically strangers.”

Bounds agrees with Bosarge, saying that the blessings, she believes, worked both ways.

“I had no idea the extremes, both friends and people I did not know, would go to help relieve some of the hardships our kids have been experiencing down here,” said Bounds. “We benefitted emotionally so much from this, and I really do believe that (Cummings) and everyone else (from Yalobusha) county did to. Its what Christmas is all about.”

Carmen Davis, Lopez Elementary’s school nurse, says the experience was a humbling one.

“We’ve had parents call us since Christmas morning, when they opened the gifts, just crying with happiness and appreciation. I really don’t think (Yalobusha county) knows what they did,” Davis said.

Cummings said that a few weeks after the group had gotten back to Coffeeville, he spent Christmas Eve night watching a re-run of the Mississippi Rising fundraiser put on by the University of Mississippi. While doing so, he said, he thought about the kids from Lopez Elementary, who would open the gifts brought to them the next morning.

“It just made me want to go back down there,” Cummings said.

Baker said that the rewards she got from the experience grow with each message of “thank you” received in the mail.

By David Howell
A bill that has made its way through the Senate and the House has stirred debate across the state and in Yalobusha.
On Jan. 11, the Mississippi House of Representatives passed a Senate bill that will phase out the state’s grocery tax by 2014 and will increase the state’s cigarette tax to a buck by July 1, 2007.
Mississippi currently charges 18 cents tax per pack of cigarettes – the second lowest in the nation, behind Missouri.
The increased tax on cigarettes will be phased in, with the first increase 75 cent increase on July 1 - when the bill will take effect.
State officials estimate the state collects $345 million from grocery sales annually. The cigarette tax increase could generate $131 million next year and an additional $50 million the year after.
Water Valley received $35,4769.90 An effort to cut the grocery tax in Mississippi has not been tried since 1995.
he bill breezed through the House and Senate and now rests on Governor Haley Barbour’s desk.
Barbour, a Republican, has been a staunch tax-hike opponent in the past.
The House approved the bill on a 90-30 vote, eight more than needed to beat a veto. House Republicans oppose the measure, wanting to amend the bill by removing the cigarette tax or adjusting the grocery tax cut.
One portion Senate Bill 2310 would reduce the sales tax levy on retail sales of certain ood each fiscal year through July 1, 2014.
The Senate approved the bill last week with a 36-15 vote, two more than needed for an override.
“Governor Barbour’s opposition to raising tobacco taxes and his ambivalance over his state’s charging the highest food tax in the nation is well know. But it will make an interesting speech for Barbour to now oppose giving families a break on their weekly grocery bill,” said syndicated columnist Sid Salter in a recent column.
Represenative Tommy Reynolds, who serves House District 33 - Yalobusha, Tallahatchie and Lafayette counties - has been an outspoken supporter of the bill.
“Either you are for it or against it,” Reynolds said.
Currently municipalities get approximately 1.36 percent of the 7 percent sales tax diverted back, according to Reynolds.
One option, outlined by Reynolds, is that let the cities continue to get their share for the next six years.
“Six years would give us a lot of time to work any problems out,” said Reynolds who admitted that the all of the details had not been worked out.
“I think the state of Mississippi is going to be in the business of collection sales tax on groceries until 2014,” Reynolds said.
Although the money from the cigarette tax increase would be put in a special account that would be used to offset the losses from the cut on grocery sales tax, opponents of the bill worry about the financial impact that reducing and eventually eliminating the sales tax on groceries would have on smaller municipalities within the state.
“It’s bad legislation,” said Water Valley accountant Joe Black, who admitted that the intent of the bill may have been good.
Black believes that the municipalities across the state, especially the smaller ones, will take a financial hit if they lose the revenue generated by sales tax generated from groceries.
“If it is to help out the very poor in the state, they are using food stamps and are not paying sales tax now,” Black said.
Local grocery owner Keith Larson has mixed emotions on the bill.
“It would be good to have relief from having to pay taxes on food,” said Keith Larson, who operates Larson’s Piggly Wiggly but also added that the reduction could hurt small towns.
“Whether or not (municipal taxpayers) have to pay that back in ad valorem or millage is another story,” Larson added.

By David Howell
Quick response and fast thinking by two Water Valley police officers resulted in the arrest of an alleged knife-wielding robber in Water Valley Saturday morning.
John L. Caldwell Jr., 27, of 804 Thornton Street, was charged with armed robbery and resisting arrest. He is currently being held without bond in the Lafayette County Jail according to Water Valley Police Captain Roger Thomas.
The robbery occurred about 5 a.m. Saturday morning when the clerk was opening Rascal’s Convenience Store on Central Street in Water Valley Thomas said.
“The suspect entered the store shortly after she opened,” Thomas said.
Caldwell allegedly entered Rascals wearing a dark-hooded jacket with a face toboggan and brandishing a 10-inch butcher’s knife.
The police department received an E-911 call from the clerk as the suspect left Rascals with $71 cash for loot.
Officers Tony Hernandez and Sgt. Marshall Jackson were on duty and at the Yalobusha County Jail with two arrestees from an earlier problem when the dispatcher alerted them to the robbery, the police captain said.
Caldwell was spotted by one officer on East Lee Street and a scuffle ensued.
“The suspect ran into a ditch (Town Creek),” Thomas said.
In waist-deep frigid water Hernandez and Jackson bailed into the creek and were able to make the arrest according to Thomas.
“They were all wet,” Thomas said about the incident.
Yalobusha Constable Randy Simmons, who had been out early for a hunting trip, heard the commotion and assisted police officers in removing Caldwell from the creek.
“These officers are to be commended for their fast response and dedication in making the arrest,” Thomas said. “The whole episode took less than 15 minutes.”
Caldwell will have an initial hearing in city court Thursday afternoon. .
“We are currently checking his status,” Thomas said, “He just got out of the state penitentiary in 2004 for a manslaughter charge.”
The last armed robbery in Water Valley occurred on July 12, 2004, when another knife-wielding robber broke into the Country Village Apartments.