1.) COVID-19 shuts down Mississippi, Greenville
In March, Washington County recorded its first death from COVID-19. Schools were closed and remained so until the end of 2019-2020 school year for most after the Spring Break.
Greenville made national news when police officers issued tickets to parishioners at Temple Baptist Church in the parking lot for defying city ordinance banning all gatherings of more than 10 people. Mayor Errick Simmons later forgave the tickets.
As of the end of 2020, there were 4,231 cases reported in Washington County and 116 deaths. In the final weeks of the year, physicians with Delta Health Systems reported their treatment protocol was seeing success in reducing deaths.
Private schools and Western Line School district were open to in-person learning for most of the 2020-2021 school year as of December. Greenville Public School District remained mostly closed to in-person learning.
At the end of the year, there was still a mask mandate in place in Greenville.
2.) GPD officer fired for excessive force
An officer with the Greenville Police Department was fired for using excessive force during an arrest on July 2.
The announcement was made via Facebook Live from inside the Greenville Police Department. During the announcement, Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons and Greenville Police Chief Delando Wilson spoke on the incident.
At 2:58 p.m. July 2, Wilson said officers responded to Budget Inn, 700 Mississippi 1 S., for a domestic disturbance where a female was allegedly being assaulted.
“Once the officers arrived on scene, they determined (Richard) Miller was possibly the suspect. During the detention of Mr. Miller, this incident occurred, resulting to where we are right now,” Wilson said.
In a 17-second long video shared on Facebook, a GPD officer is shown picking up Miller, who was handcuffed, slamming him onto the pavement and then hitting Miller’s head.
3.) BOS votes to move Confederate Statue
On June 15, the Washington County Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 1 to work with the Greenville Historic Preservation committee in the relocation of the Confederate statue on the Washington County Courthouse grounds to another county site at the expense of the county.
The motion was made by District 4 supervisor Mala Brooks and seconded by District 2 supervisor Tommy Benson.
District 1 supervisor Lee Gordon voted in opposition to the motion.
The consideration for removal came after a letter submitted by Mayor Errick Simmons to the BOS requesting the removal of the Confederate statue on the grounds of the Washington County Courthouse on Thursday.
“As you know, racism in America is real,” Simmons asserted in his letter, “We have to face it and address it head on. It exists in Washington County. It exists in the Mississippi Delta...I firmly believe that it continues to exist because of people, systems and symbols.”
The statue remains on the county courthouse grounds as of the end of 2020.
4.) Tornado rips through downtown Greenville
Downtown Greenville received significant damage after storms that blew through the area on Jan. 10.
Both Mayor Errick Simmons and Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency for the City of Greenville as a result of the storm damages.
About 6,000 Entergy customers in the city lost power during the storm and as of Saturday afternoon, 3,400 customers were still without power.
Entergy customer service manager Gerald Husband said there were about 65 broken poles north of town. Meterologist Anna Wolverton with the National Weather Service (NWS) in Jackson said it is unclear whether the storms are the result of straight-line winds, a tornado or both.
According to the NWS observation site located at the Mid Delta Regional Airport, wind gusts were measured at 60 mph.
Whatever the storm consisted of exactly, several buildings in downtown Greenville received damage, including a former business on Main Street that was destroyed.
One building in particular, the abandoned, century-old Elks lodge, was pulled down by workers in a quick decision the same day as the storm.
5.) Greenville Bypass funded
Mayor Errick D. Simmons announced $71.46 Million Dollars awarded for the Greenville Bypass Freight Corridor Improvement Project on June 15.
The Mississippi Department of Transportation has been awarded $71,460,000 to complete the construction of the 15.6-mile Greenville Bypass, which will carry US 82 from near the Greenville Bridge over the Mississippi River to Leland, east of Greenville. The project builds on work initiated by Mississippi DOT to grade, drain, and bridge 6.2 miles from the Mississippi River bridge to the future interchange with MS 1, completing construction on that segment, and extending the bypass a further 9.4 miles east.
The bypass was named for Greenville businessman Anse Dees who was instrumental in the creation of the 1987 Mississippi Highway project which many have said was the largest economic development project in the state’s history. The project called for 4-lane highways to be built so every citizen in the state lived no less than 30 minutes away from a highway.
6.) Gamble Brothers Clinic catches fire
In February, a fire destroyed Gamble Brother & Archer Clinic. The fire broke out between 9:45 p.m. and 10 p.m. Feb. 8.
The original part of the old building was a challenge to extinguish due to the different levels of roofing, which attributed to the fire spreading rather quickly.
There were no lives lost or major injuries as a result of the fire.
In the process of fighting the fires, one of the ladder trucks had a mechanical malfunction. Two firefighters were in the firetruck bucket and the other was at the base with the fire chief.
Two of the personnel in the bucket were transported to Delta Regional Medical Center for medical attention and were both released shortly after.
The Gamble Brothers & Archer Clinic played a key role of many “firsts” for Greenville, include practicing in one of the first dedicated medical practices to multiple specialties, hiring the first pathologist in Greenville, and the first radiologist and operating the first radiation therapy unit in the Greenville area.
In 1915, Dr. Hugh Gamble founded what would become a multi-specialty clinic, the Gamble Brothers Clinic.
7.) General election
The local Washington County election results showed a majority of local residents in contested elections support Joe Biden for president, Mike Espy for the United States Senate, Bennie Thompson for U.S. Congress, Latrice Westbrooks for Mississippi Supreme Court, the new design of the Mississippi State Flag and medical marijuana.
There were 10,547 votes cast on Election Day, Nov. 3, and about 7,000 absentee ballots that are not reported in these results. Election commissioners were counting many of the ballots by hand as they were unable to use scanning equipment to count them.
In Washington County, 6,218, or 59.14%, of voters elected Biden/Harris for president and vice president, and 4,114, or 39.13%, voted for Trump/Pence.
For U.S. Senate, Mike Espy won 6,596, or 62.79% of votes, compared to Cindy Hyde-Smith’s 3,810, or 36.27%.
The Leland School Board winner was Don Lee Keim with 229, or 62.40% of votes.
For the approval of medical marijuana, 6,923, or 74.74% votes were in favor of Initiative 65.
And 8,075, or 78.86% of voters said yes to House Bill 1796 — for or against the new design of the Mississippi flag.
8.) BOS removes Hooker Engineering
In January, the Washington County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to replace the county engineer and the county attorney after a motion was made by the newest addition to the board, Mala Brooks.
Brooks made the motion to approve Willie Griffin as the attorney for the board of supervisors in place of Frank Power. The motion was approved by a vote of 3-2, with BOS vice-president Lee Gordon and BOS president Carl McGee opposing.
Brooks made another motion to hire IMS Engineers, whose Mississippi office is based in Jackson, as the new county engineer and assistant county engineer, replacing longtime county engineering service, Hooker Engineering Services. The motion was also approved by a 3-2 vote, with Gordon and McGee opposing.
Several local residents voiced their concerns with the changes at a following BOS meeting and asked board members to reconsider. Gordon made the motion for the board to reconsider the appointment for county engineer, which was not seconded by anyone else on the board.
In August, the Delta Democrat-Times reported that the BOS were spending nearly $100 an hour more for IMS Engineers than they were for Hooker Engineering.
As detailed in the county’s general services agreement with IMS, the principal engineer is paid at a rate of $223 per hour and the project manager — $125 per hour. The engineering assistant is paid $52-60 per hour.
The WCBS’ general services agreement with Hooker Engineering provided the principal engineer be paid at a rate of $130 per hour and the assistant engineer, $120 per hour.
9.) Special elections for Greenville, Leland
In August, a special election was held for the Ward 3 seat that led to a runoff election between Vernon Greenlee and Stephen Poole. In the September runoff, Greenlee won with 284 votes to Poole’s 217. There were eight total candidates in the first election.
The Ward 3 seat has turned over twice now in just less than two years. Carolyn Weathers resigned her position in March 2019 and Bill Boykin, who was the only qualified candidate to replace her, resigned his seat in July 2020 due to health reasons.
In Leland, Michael Thomas joined the City of Leland’s Board of Aldermen after winning the special election for Ward 4.
Thomas won with 153 votes, defeating candidates Clifton King III with 29 votes, Terry Johnson with 23 votes and Tylar Sturdevant with 27 votes.
The Ward 4 alderman seat was formerly held by the late Andy Petro, who served a 16-year term. He died Nov. 2.
10.) People we lost this year
Julia Reed
Julia Reed — writer, woman of letters, connoisseur, and tireless advocate for the renaissance of her native Mississippi Delta — died Aug. 28, 2020, in Newport, Rhode Island, after a long battle with cancer. She was 59.
A tsunami of talent, charm, and energy, Julia was a unique figure—a chronicler of politics, an arbiter of style, food and drink, and a public speaker of rare accomplishment. Educated in Greenville, at the Madeira School, at Georgetown University and American University, she lived and worked in Washington, D.C., New York City, New Orleans, and Greenville. A longtime editor and writer for Vogue magazine, she wrote about politics and culture, profiling the Clintons and Bushes as well as interviewing figures as wide-ranging as Oprah Winfrey and Tammy Wynette. From 2008 until the time of her death, Reed was a popular columnist and contributing editor for Garden & Gun. She was also a contributor to The New York Times, Newsweek, Conde Nast Traveler, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, the Orlando Sentinel, The Oxford American, Southern Living, and Elle Décor.
Bill Johnson
William McKinley “Bill” Johnson, the longtime Delta Democrat-Times photographer, died Monday, Oct. 5, 2020, at the age of 62. He was fighting cancer for the second time.
Johnson was a feature at every event worth noting in Greenville from 1991 to 2019 in his role with the newspaper. He also was a part of numerous weddings as a photographer.
Johnson took photographs of everything from happy farmers with large produce to children laughing and smiling at school and a presidential candidate on a visit to the Delta. Those photographs adorn the wall in the newspaper office.
A military brat whose father served three tours in the Vietnam War, he was born in Greenville, but moved throughout the United States in his childhood and early adulthood. He attended grade school in North Carolina, Hawaii, and New York, and eventually graduated with a degree in photography, lithography and graphic arts from Fulton Montgomery Community College in Johnstown, New York.
He came to work at the DD-T in March of 1991 and became a full-time photographer later on that year in November. He became chief photographer and photo editor in January 1995. He was honored by the Mississippi Press Association in its Better Newspaper Contest in almost every year of his employment for excellency in photography.
Andy Petro
A lifelong advocate for the City of Leland, serving the Leland Volunteer Fire Department for 57 years and the Leland Board of Aldermen for 16 years, Andrew “Andy” Fred Petro Sr. died Nov. 2 at the age of 77.
Petro was employed with the United States Post Office in Leland for 33 years until retiring at the age of 55. He worked at Fratesi’s Grocery in Leland the past 17 years, where he served as a senior clerk and was the self-proclaimed owner/manager of the store. Petro served a 16-year term as an Alderman for Ward 4, and was an alderman at the time of his death.
Petro was a member of the Mississippi Fire Fighters Association and, in 2004, he received lifetime membership to the Association, the highest honor a firefighter can receive. At the time of his death, he was serving as vice president of the association’s Northwest Central District. In 2018, he was awarded the Volunteer Firefighter of the Year by the First Responders of Mississippi.
Kern Pratt
A Mississippi Delta native who loved to perform at home, blues musician Kern Pratt died Dec. 24 in Jackson at age 55. Pratt died from complications of COVID-19.
The Greenville-born blues musician played shows throughout the nation and produced two albums since 2015, “Broken Chains,” and “Greenville, MS – What About You?”
The album, “Broken Chains” debuted at No. 14 in the nation and No. 1 in the region in the Billboard blues music charts and was nominated for a Grammy award.
A GoFundMe page has been created for Kern Pratt to have a historic marker placed on the Blues Trail in his honor. Kern’s most recent album, “Greenville, MS, What About You?” is available to purchase for $20. All proceeds will go toward Kern’s memorial fund.
A copy can be reserved by messaging your name, address and phone number to @Beth Pratt Podgurski on Facebook. Payment can be made with checks, Venmo or PayPal.
