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Society

City Personals
Mary Clay Brooks

Happy 18th birthday Brittany

Kay Wheeler celebrated her birthday Saturday night with a gathering of her friends in the home of Vivian Smith, who was the hostess along with her sister, Vicki Webb. Her real birthday is Wednesday.

Sincerest sympathy goes to Margaret Ann Barruel on the loss of her husband, Norbert. “Booger Bear,” as my children fondly called him, was a wonderful man. He came to Holly Springs when he married Margaret Ann Seale. Having a heavy French accent, it took a little bit to understand him, however there was never mistaking the twinkle in his eye or his ear-to-ear smile!

Some of you may know him from his walking at Walmart, which he did frequently. I always wondered why he would park in the middle of nowhere when he would go to Walmart, then there he’d be, making his daily rounds!

I dreaded telling Grady, as Booger Bear was on the top of his favorite people list. As we drove past Christ Church Monday afternoon, the bells rang. I decide that was the time to tell Grady since every time a bell rings, an angel gets their wings. Tears welled up in his eyes and he said the night before, during the middle of the night, a grandfather clocked chimed continuously. He asked if that was the time he died. It actually was! That made Grady feel better.

If you knew Norbert, you were a lucky soul. He was a very special man who loved with his whole heart!

Happy 18th birthday to Brittany Stewart!

Wright Greer of Bozeman, Montana, visited his mother, Diane Greer, during the Christmas holidays. He also got to visit with other family and friends while here.

Caitlyn Brooks, Madison Osteen and Mattie Spencer attended the fifth annual College Softball Camp in Covington, La., last weekend. The girls received individual and group instruction by college coaches from around the country. Stephanie and Jason Osteen and Carrie and Raymond Spencer, along with their son, travelled down with the girls.

Belated happy birthday wishes go out to Jane Hubbard who celebrated over the weekend.

Phoebe and Tom Stewart of Houston, Texas, are guests of Linda and Tom Stewart and children, Brittany and Thomas.

(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. You may also e-mail your City Personal news to southreporter@dixie-net.com).

Museuming
Lois Swaney Shipp
Museum Curator

Jimmy Thomas to guide historic tour

On January 28 historians and ad-venturers are invited to a trip back in time. The Marshall County Historical Museum will be celebrating Confede-rate General Earl Van Dorn’s daring raid on the town that happened so long ago on December 20, 1862.

The raid is the biggest thing to ever happen here and it was planned to attack General U.S. Grant’s troops holding this town.

As the soldiers galloped into town that frigid morning, giving their fierce Confederate banshee yell, the town women were hanging out their windows, dressed in night dress, long hair flowing in the night breeze welcoming their deliverers. The raid happened at 3 o’clock on that icy morning.

This wonderful memory of being deliverers of these beautiful women stayed with these soldiers the rest of their lives.

Our very able friend, historian Jimmy Thomas, will be the guide. Jimmy has made a study of this historic happening and figured out the route Van Dorn took into town.

The adventurers will meet at the museum at one p.m. until we finish on Saturday, January 28. Jimmy will narrate the event at the museum, and then we will embark to the sites in our own individual cars. At our destination, Jimmy will elaborate on the fascinating event. The excursion promises an exciting and thrilling adventure.

On this trip there are no frills, no food, and no rest stops. It will last for two to three hours. Wear walking boots and dress for the weather. However, weather pending, – if it is bad the tour will be cancelled until later.

Our telephone number is 662-252-3669 and reservations must be made by January 25 as guests will be limited. Costs per person will be $10.

January is my favorite month. It is a time of rest, slowing down and catching up after the busy holiday season. I love the four distinct seasons we have here in Holly Springs and Marshall County. Trees are my favorite at this time of year. As they lift their black lacy limb silhouettes to the sky, they are a thing of beauty to savor. I particularly love the world when everything is covered in a quiet beautiful snow, in which the Presbyterian Church looks like a wedding cake with white frosting on it.

The Methodist and Episcopal churches look majestic in the snow with their steeples pointing up to heaven.

In January when days are short and nights are long, I love to sit by the fire and reflect the day’s happenings and ponder the things to come.

When we think back over the past year to stand on the threshold of 2012, let’s not forget God’s gift of time. Every year the gift of time is 12 months.

Every year the time is 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 9,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, 31,536,000 seconds, which is all a God-given gift to you and to me. You can’t stop it, you can’t add to it or subtract from it. Time just keeps on keeping on.

Sometimes, I think of how wonderful it would be if I could walk back in time to the time before the Civil War here in Holly Springs and see the town as it looked in all of its pre-war splendor. The soldiers at that time wrote of it being the most beautiful town they had ever seen.

Holly Springs was a planned-on-paper community built by the 1836 entrepreneurs. They say Madison, Georgia, was another planned community built at the same time Holly Springs was and it wasn’t destroyed.

Ten years ago we had the original paper map of the town, but it was in bad condition. We sent it to a wizard of restructuring antiquity in Biloxi and she was working on it, when Katrina hit. The mighty storm wiped out our irreplaceable map and also the wizard. That’s the way Katrina touched us.

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The South Reporter
P.O. Box 278
Holly Springs, MS 38635
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