Society

Kay and Laura Wheeler, Mary Clay and Gene Brooks and children, Caitlyn and Grady, and Hallie Kazemba recently returned from a long vacation in Sandestin, Florida. They got to see the beautiful fireworks display from the Baytowne Wharf. The children enjoyed riding the zipline across the lagoon several times.

Heather Cupp and children, Lexi and Cade, spent the holiday weekend at Terri Woods’ home in Knoxville, Tenn. They enjoyed visiting with her sister and her family.

Happy birthday wishes go out to Maura Jane Autry! She celebrated with a slumber party on Wednesday night, followed by an afternoon of swimming at her grandmother’s, Virginia Mitchell.

Ann Yager Hamlin and Alex McCrosky of Danville, Ky., spent the weekend in Holly Springs.

(To put your news in City Personals, please e-mail maryclayb@yahoo.com; mail to City Personals, The South Reporter, P.O. Box 278, Holly Springs, MS 38635 or call 662-252-4261.

Tonya Underwood and Kevin Griffin

Mary and Odell Underwood Sr. announce the engagement and forthcoming wedding of their daughter, Tonya Underwood of Memphis, Tenn., to Kevin Griffin of Holly Springs.

Tonya is the granddaughter of Mary Etta Laudale Kirk and James Kirk of Turrell, AR, Lucille Huhes and Louis Underwood of Hernando. She graduated from Fairley High School. She is attending school to become a registered nurse; she has finished 60 hours.

Kevin Griffin is the son of Alberta and Lenwood Griffin of Holly Springs. His grandparents are Willie Mae and Roy Lee DeBerry, Voorhies and L.C. Griffin. He graduated from Holly Springs High School. He is employed with Griffin’s Security Inc.

The wedding will be July 11, 2009 at 5 p.m. at Greenwood CME Church, 3311 Kimball Ave., Memphis, Tenn. Family and friends are cordially invited. A reception will follow.

Two-hundred, thirty-two years ago, our fathers fought an important war for our American independence. If these patriots had not had the courage and fortitude to stand for what they believed, our history wouldn’t be the same and we would be marching to a different flag and a different drummer. But they had visions of a glorious nation of our own and a land of the free.

There was no draft back then, men volunteered out of their hearts to fight for their country. What a heritage we can cherish. The dictionary says a patriot is one who zealously guards his country.

If a patriot were on the arid plains of the desert, or the snowy mountain ridges, or in battling the scalp-tearing Indians, those Revolutionary soldiers might have stood in comparison with veterans of Alexander the Great, Caesar, or Napoleon. Our soldiers have been the noblest product of our teeming country.

George Washington was born in 1732 in Virginia. He was a third generation American. He was truly appointed by God, like David in the Bible was. He was the example of the perfect man - - good in every respect. He was first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen (however, he married a widow). The widow he married was Martha Custis, who came to the marriage in 1759 with two children, and 18,000 acres, among other things.

When he was twenty, he wanted to join the navy but his mother and destiny said no. He was so loved by everyone that they wanted to make him King of America. But George wouldn’t let them as he envisioned America to be a democracy, not a monarchy. Aren’t you glad he made that decision? It kept us from having a King Dick or King Bill or another King George.

In 1754, George was appointed to lead an expedition to fight the French who were doing a pretty good job of conquering America. The fracas happened right outside Pittsburgh, Pa. Some of the Indians joined Washington and helped him win the French and Indian War. In a short eleven years, the Revolutionary War had begun.

People in this new world of the 17th and 18th centuries just accepted the British monarchy until the British got greedy and began taxing us too much, then the people decided it was time to come into our own and make our own country.

One such person was on the British side, not the Revolutionaries’. He passed by a wood stand, saw a horse tethered there and heard a loud voice coming from the woods. The man went into the woods to see where the voice came from, and he discovered it was George Washington praying. He listened a moment then went home and as he got off his horse, he agonizingly said, “It’s no use! It’s no use!” His wife said, “What are you talking about?” The man answered, “ It’s no use to fight against such a man as George Washington as I know God is on his side after hearing that prayer. We can’t fight such men as this.”

The famous painting by Emanuel Leutze shows Washington on Christmas Day of 1776 as Washington crossed the Delaware to catch the Hessians at Trenton, or was it the Trentons at Hessions?

This is what Washington wrote in a letter to his mother describing his battle, “The English soldiers were struck with such panic and more cowardice than it is possible to conceive. They broke and ran as sheep pursued by dogs. I escaped without a wound but I had four bullet holes through my coat and two horses shot from under me.”

George Washington faced the tremendous task of launching a new nation which stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Missouri River and from the Great Lakes to the Spanish- held Florida, a territory equal to all of western Europe including the British Isles. The population of the United States was four million people. Ninety percent of the people were farmers.


Thursday, July 9, 2009
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