— Profile Edition 2025 —

Recently, Jimmye Dale Green came to The South Reporter to take out a subscription and was collared for a feature story after he began spinning some yarns.

He said he grew up on a 5,000-acre farm in the Byhalia area and was assigned chores after school.

Green was assigned the job of shelling corn for the chickens at a very young age, and he knows a lot about how the palm screams from the pain of the rough cornels. That was the day before his dad got a mechanical corn sheller, then it was not the palms that burned but the shoulders and elbows that got a workout.

Green, now 82, recalled many fond memories of childhood. He is the second son of the late Dillard and Irene Green. His brother, C.D., was five years older than he.

“When I was eight or nine years old my parents picked cotton and they were training me to pick,” he said. “So, I filled up a whole sack full of bolls. So, I got out of the cotton picking. I still had to chop cotton and corn, but they didn’t make me pick cotton. I baled hay.”

At age 12 or 13, Green’s dad would tie down the steering wheel with a rope and put the two-ton flatbed floor shift in gear and let it roll very slowly while Green loaded bales of oat straw on the truck.

“Every so often I would stop and stack the bales and when I got a load, I took it to the barn and unloaded it by myself,” he said.

Every fall when the temperatures dropped below 10 degrees, his family would kill two hogs at a time. They boiled water and dunked the pigs in a barrel to scald the hair and then scraped the hair off.

“It was always so cold,” he said. “I was miserable.”

The houses weren’t the warmest in winter either. The Green’s heated the house with butane.

“The craziest thing about butane is it didn’t produce the heat of propane,” he said.

“I will never forget the time I had gotten a pump bb gun for Christmas and C.D. Loved to play with snakes. He was going to put a snake on me and I shot him. I can’t stand those cold, slimy things,” Green said.

Growing up, the Green family raised cows, pigs, chickens and hogs. They worked the fields with both mules and tractors.

“I detested a mule because when I was real small, Daddy always worked the small garden with a mule. When he got through, I had to ride that mule to the barn,” Green said.

The mule was skinny and had ribs sticking out and a sharp, boney ridge ran down its back.

“I had to ride that mule to the barn,” he said. “I despise mules to this day. The mule was skinny.” Green’s favorite farm memory is when he began working with angus cattle that were introduced into the area.

“My primary job was to check the angus everyday,” he said. “When I was in high school, I was on a livestock judging team for agriculture class and 4-H. We went all over the state and to many livestock shows to show cattle at the fair.”

The Greens had about 100 head of angus.

“Cows were my favorite part of the farm and I still enjoy cattle to this day,” he said. “We always kept two milk cows. One would be fresh all the time. My job was to let the calf have two teats and I took two teats.”

Green said they carried livestock to the show in Memphis, Tenn., and to Batesville, second only to Memphis.

Green remembers participating in and winning a greased pig contest.

“We were over to show cattle and I had some orange jeans and orange T-shirt,” he said. “I decided I had to get in on the contest. Actually, I won the contest. I don’t know who had more grease, me or the pig.”

Green said he loves and has always eaten country cooking.

“Any of it,” he said. “I’m not a cook – one of my stupid mistakes. I should have paid more attention to Mother.”

One of his favorites is potato salad with mustard.

“It’s difficult to find potato salad with mustard,” Green said.

On the more serious side, Green is a graduate of Ole Miss where he earned a bachelor’s in public administration.

He worked 20 years with the Mississippi Highway Patrol retiring at age 43. He said in his first year with the MHP he had to work outside the county where he lived for one year. He served in Canton the first year, then served the remainder in Marshall County.

Green worked security at FedEx for one year before he was elected and served as Marshall County Sheriff from 1988 to 1992.

Later he served as director of E-911, assisting in getting the county E-911 address system set up. He retired after 15 years as director.

Green is married to Bea Green, now the director of the Kate Freeman Clark Museum.

They are the parents of Jimmye Dale “Skipper” Jr, Rollie and John.

He enjoys spending time keeping 730 acres cleaned north of the Wall Doxey State Park. He and “Skipper” have kept the property for recreational and hunting use for the last year and a half.

Tracey Reed, who trained as a dispatcher and worked with Green began working with the E-911 Commission in March 1995.

“I started Day 1 with Jimmye Dale, the day 911 opened,” she said.

“Even though we were both hard headed, he taught me a lot about Marshall County, emergency services and about the job in general. I basically owe my career to him and a few other people.

“I have much respect for Jimmye Dale and always will. I trained as a dispatcher when none of us were certified as dispatchers when I came here. We all became certified under Jimmye Dale.”