![]() ![]() ![]() I explained my cataracts theory, and this woman behind the counter looked at me and said, 'I'll take you.' And the man next to her said, 'She's too busy. So I was in Laurel visiting and was in a restaurant chatting with the family who runs it. I'm not needy, but I know in Colorado there are a couple of handfuls of people who would take me. I've always had this idea that true community comes down to one thing: Is there somebody who can take you to get your cataracts removed when the time comes? That's my measure. And I went, 'Wow, I must go there!' I actually said it out loud. I'm an HGTV junkie, so one night I was hunched over my computer, and here came a new TV show, Home Town-first season, first episode. I just thought, 'Man, I need to do something different.' I started doing research into all these different places. So it was really hard to even entertain the idea of doing something else, but I was in a high-pressure management job and beginning to deal with some ageism, kind of getting squeezed out. My son is there, and my daughter-in-law, who's like my best friend. "I'd been in Denver, Colorado, most of my adult life (though I grew up on a big farm in South Dakota). Five years ago, there were maybe four or five businesses represented in our Laurel Main Street meetings. She brought together all the people of downtown to get to know each other and become friends. The real catalyst here happened a little over eight years ago, when Judi Holifield became the director of Laurel Main Street. But there was a time in the 1990s when I felt like this was the only retail store downtown. We used to have trucks that went out and sold door-to-door till about 1995. The business hung on in those years somehow. I always said I'd never work here, but then the girl I was going to marry was here (she came in to help my mother in 1983), my family was here, and downtown Laurel was starting to die. My mother had been here for so long that after a period of time, she owned all the stock. As each person would retire, their stock would get bought by the other employees. Lott stores around the state, but he had no heirs, so he sold his stores to the employees. "My mother was working at Lott Furniture Co. He’s keeping a century-old business alive. Laurel has changed, and I'd like for people to know that." The location of that shotgun house I grew up in was 401 South Cooks Avenue. I could go to the Woolworth and buy anything I wanted, but I still couldn't sit at the lunch counter. When I was growing up, I could go by that hotel and look in the window at the coffee shop, but I couldn't walk in. Right across the street from City Hall used to be the Pinehurst Hotel. I grew up in a community called the KC in a three-room shotgun house. I was born at the South Mississippi State Hospital, known by most people as the charity hospital. I invite people to do workshops on homeownership, and I tell them where I came from to show them how much Laurel has changed. That was one of the things that propelled me to get into city government: I didn't want younger residents to say, 'I don't want to stay here.' I do everything I can now to help people know that they can stay here and make a living, be comfortable, and be happy. ![]() "When my daughter graduated high school, she said she was going to leave. Mayor Johnny Magee with his longtime barber, Richard Brown, owner of Hair World. ![]()
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