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Community News

Potts Camp News
Dale Hollingsworth

Mary Gurley enjoys weekend of visitors

Deanna Rowland Knight from Florida visited her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Rowland, and other family members over the weekend. She came especially to visit with her Grandmother Gurley who is very ill.

We are sorry to hear that a tree fell on the house of Jan Hooper of Hickory Flat last week, causing extensive damage. Jan is the daughter of Mark and Janie Hooper and the granddaughter of the late James King of Potts Camp.

Out of town visitors of Mary L. Gurley last week were Steve Gurley and son, Luke, of Southaven; Rhonda Rowland Smothers and children, Alex and Analisa of Olive Branch; Sherry Colhoun and daughters, Rebecca Moore and Elizabeth Colhoun of Holly Springs and Collierville; Kyle, Melanie, Preston and Audrey Poole of Red Banks; Pam Gurley of Memphis; and, John and Susan Nelson of Byhalia.

The snow was lovely; it was a winter wonderland, but it sure slowed things down. Schools were closed, and the cars on the roads were few, also the visitors. Thanks to those who sent Valentines. I always enjoy Valentine’s Day! My daughter, Betty, thought she had to give one to everyone in her class at school, so she saved her change for weeks to buy the cheapest ones for everybody. They had a Valentine box.

Court was held at the Potts Camp City Hall. Several people were tried.

Henry Tutor has been on the sick list. He visited his doctor in Byhalia last week and is feeling better. He is my neighbor and friend. He is a World War II veteran, age 89.

The new Heritage News has arrived! The Marshall County Genealogical Society met Jan. 23 and plan to meet in February and March. One month, they plan to visit the newly renovated Marshall County Historical Museum. They will have a meeting there. New officers elected in December for 2010 are: president, Bobby Mitchell; vice president, pending; secretary, Martha Fant; treasurer, Marie Smith; newsletter editor, Anne Babin. One special article in the Heritage News was the history of the lovely old Aquilla and Cordelia Morgan Greer home (first settler) by Mary Frances Jones Fitts and Katherine Greer Sundstrum. It was owned by Wright Greer until his death. It was willed to A.Q. Greer and Katherine Sundstrum, who sold it to the First Baptist Church.

Thoughts

1. Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles. Isaiah 40:31.

2. He died upon the cross for me. He bore the awful penalty and now I’m saved eternally. I’m saved! I’m saved!

3. The greatest gift cannot be bought in a store or ordered from a catalog; it can be seen in the eyes of a child; heard in words of kindness or felt in the embrace of a friend. It is the precious gift of love. The ways to make your light shine is to work with joy, pray with love, share what you can, live simply, love deeply and thank God always.

My Prayer

Oh, God, when I have food, help me to remember the hungry; when I have a warm home, help me to remember the homeless; when I am without pain, help me to remember those who suffer; and remembering, dear Lord, help me to have compassion and concern enough to help by word or deed those who cry out for what we take for granted. For Christ’s sake, amen.

Matthew 25:35 says: “For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

Thoughts

Take Control

Take control of my thoughts, let my mind be stayed on thee. That I may know the perfect peace, Thou O Lord has promised me. Take control of my words today. May they tell of thy great love, and may the story of thy grace, turn some heart to thee. Keep it filled with joy and promise and gratitude for the good thou hath done for me all these days. Take control of my life today, let thy will be also mine. That in each thought and word and deed, I shall be forever thine.

Happy birthday to David Alderson on Feb. 22 and to Megan Watkins on Feb. 25 and to Karlie Pipkin on Feb. 29.

Pray for all who suffer and have lost loved ones. Also pray for Linda Thieson in the nursing home. Friends visited her last week. Also pray for Sandy Byrd, Diane Clayton, Mary Jarrett, Mary Lois Gurley, Henry Tutor, Charles Henderson, Lina Mae Rhea, Betty Fincher, Connie Work, L.D. Ford

History and Memories

R.A. Butler Scholarship

In the ’30s, a new Potts Camp principal, R.A. Butler and family, drove into town in a large, old car and moved into the teachers’ home across the road from us. Mr. Butler was my math teacher in high school; we loved him and his family. They had only three children. Bobbie was a tomboy; she and my late brother, Lindy, would get out their BB guns and get in trouble. (Jean and Sonny were the others.)

At that time, the little village of Winborn, two miles from here, had many students who attended our school. Now they go to Hickory Flat. The Dunn family in Winborn had one girl in high school and several boys younger. Their mother died, leaving also a small child about age 3, Worth Dunn. His dad had to work, so his aunt, Ruby Collier, kept him one year. Willie Thomas Dunn (later Wicker) was a senior that year.

Mr. Butler felt sorry for the small boy, so he let him attend school at age 4. I remember it well. They had me bring some clothes, owned by my little brother, to school for him one day.

Many years later, when little Worth grew up, he became an ear, eye and nose specialist; he remembered Mr. Butler with a scholarship in his name for a Potts Camp senior every year, who would not be able to attend college otherwise. So the R.A. Butler Scholarship was given every year for many years in honor of a special Potts Camp principal, Mr. Butler.

I’ll never forget Worth Dunn and Mr. Butler and his large family.

Did you know?
Richard Simmons

An amazing accomplishment

As we concentrate on James Madison, many of his fellow countrymen must be included. I only wish for more time and space to share with you the history of this great country.

I mentioned in my most recent article that Madison had written a goodly number of the Federalist Papers. Prior to the writing of those papers the country was having a bad time. The Revolutionary War had ended leaving the states with debts they were unwilling to pay. There were the Articles of Confederation but they provided a weak national government. Congress had few real powers. The country had no executive branch to enforce laws or a Supreme Court to interpret them. The union was in trouble. George Washington observed “something must be done, or the fabric must fall, for it is certainly tottering.”

It was 1787, just 11 short years since the Declaration of Independence when 55 delegates gathered in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention. Their intention was to strengthen the Articles of Confederation. It wasn’t very long that the delegates realized that starting from scratch made more sense. James Wilson, a delegate from Pennsylvania, observed that for the first time in history a nation’s people were going “to weigh deliberately and calmly, and to decide leisurely and peacefully upon the form of government by which they will bind themselves and their posterity.” I hope you will go back and reread that last sentence and just how profound a statement it is. Wrapped up in the results is your freedom!

George Washington presided as president of the convention. It was long and often stormy. Each delegate had his interest to protect. It is said that Washington held the convention together by the force of his character and often thought the union would fall apart. Somehow they managed to pull it off and came up with what is probably the greatest political document in world history. This document followed a plan written by none other than James Madison who became the father of the Constitution. On September 17, 1787, 38 of the delegates signed the Constitution. One other delegate, John Dickinson, of Delaware, had left the convention but left instructions for another delegate to sign for him.

At the beginning of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin had noticed that the back of George Washington’s chair was decorated with an image of a sun. At the convention’s end Franklin commented, “I have often in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”

What happened next? I’m betting that James Madison was very much involved.

Did You Know On

Feb. 10, 1942 – Glen Miller received the first-ever gold record for selling 1.2 million copies of “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”

Feb. 11, 1809 – Robert Fulton patented his steamboat.

Feb. 12, 1973 – Hanoi began to release American POWs following the end of the Vietnam War.

Feb. 13, 1635 – The nation’s oldest public school, Boston Public Latin School was founded.

Feb. 14, 1912 – Arizona became the 48th state.

Feb. 15, 1933 – President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Miami, Fla.

Feb. 16, 1852 – Henry and Clement Studebaker founded a wagon-making business in South Bend, IN, that later became the famous automobile manufacturer.

Answers to Last Week’s Questions

George Clinton served as James Madison’s vice president.

Dolly Madison’s brother-in-law was a nephew to George Washington.

The War of 1812 occurred while Madison was president.

Madison was a lawyer and planter in private life.

Madison served as president of the University of Virginia.

This Week’s Quiz

How many delegates attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787?

How many states were needed to ratify the Constitution?

Which was the first state to consent to the Constitution?

Which were the last two states to consent to the Constitution?

How many men were involved in the writing of the Federalist Papers?

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