Oakland To Celebrate America’s 250th Birthday
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
Oakland News
By Linda Aldy
I had a nice, long phone visit this week with James Caruthers. James is younger than I am, but his entire family went to Oakland Baptist Church, as did we growing. Of course, Oakland School was also small before we consolidated with Coffeeville, so I knew him in the way that small communities know each other.
He lives on the Gulf Coast now and is retired but serves as music director for his church. He also preaches on occasion and hopes to get that chance to come back to Oakland and lead some services. He is working on his Ph.D., which just tickles me that this little boy that I watched growing up is soon going to be Dr. Caruthers!
Current Oakland Baptist Church member Gay Lynn Haynes and our long-time former preacher’s daughter Rose Marie Sellers Caulder, who married Millard Caulder of Oakland, were at least two of the people I knew in the America250 Mississippi United in Song choir that performed last weekend in the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson. It was so impressive. I read somewhere that they had around 500 people in that choir.
I also had friends from the W, from Leadership Mississippi, from Chapel of the Cross in Madison, and people I have taught in management classes through the years in that choir. They came from all over the state of Mississippi. It was a celebration of Mississippi’s music history and our contribution to the world. They covered gospel, rock, blues, country, Elvis, B.B. King, Jimmy Buffett, and Tammy Wynette, plus historical presentations representing the first Black pilot in the US military from Hattiesburg and Choctaw Indian Chief Pushmataha.
Steve Azar, who wrote our state song, “One Mississippi,” sang that song with a choir of Mississippi children.
There was a fife and drum performance to open and close the program, along with a military salute in song to all the branches of the military. They asked audience members who had family members who served to stand as the appropriate military song played. I stood in memory of my Daddy as the Navy’s “Anchors Aweigh” was played. I love the military songs.
Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB) filmed the entire thing and it will air on your local station on Aug. 3, I’m told. If that date changes, I will give you an update.
Our Oakland Area will celebrate with an old-fashioned birthday party to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. It will be held July 3 at the Swearengen Walking Track and Park from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Bring a chair! We will have music provided by our DJ, watermelon, birthday cupcakes, lemonade, and just visiting with friends and neighbors. We’ll also have a small parade around the track. Just a small-town, old-fashioned gathering. Y’all come!
The summertime political season is starting a little earlier this year as the Neshoba County Fair dates were moved from late July to late June this year for the first time in my memory in hopes for a cooler fair. I will be there on Thursday with a contingency from The W and look forward to the political speeches. The best advice is wear old shoes because there is a high probability that you will either come away with red dust ground into whatever you wear or red mud that dyes everything, depending on the weather that day!
My nine-year-old granddaughter, Alice, will join me on Friday for Girls Day at the Capitol. Madison County Representative Jill Ford started this event seven years ago. It’s fun and educational as the girls get to meet Miss Mississippi and Miss Mississippi Teen plus learn how government works and how to make a difference in your community. I’m excited to share this day with Alice!
Mother (Margaret Ross) has been on multiple adventures recently! I can’t begin to keep up with everything she is doing and everyone that is visiting these days, but I know that she spent one day in Greenwood where she visited the rebuilt Turnrow Books and had lunch there with some of the Cook and Dorman family members who live in Greenwood. She made a jaunt to Oxford for an estate sale with sister Martha as her companion. They got wonderfully lost before finding it and explored so many backroads that Mother had never seen.
They also did a tour of the Farmstead Florals farm in Oxford which is a commercial flower farm. They were planning a day at the Monastery in Batesville, but I’m not sure if they did that yet or not! They saw the house in Charleston that a friend is moving into and one in Enid that Reid Stanford and his wife are building. Reid’s parents were Arnold and Jane Stanford who owned Shop Rite in Oakland. Mother loves, loves patrolling her yard and picking up sticks and then having a little burn, and she has done that several times in the last few weeks.
Cossar State Park visitors traffic is picking up as it has just reopened. Brandon Sims, the new manager, seems to be handling things with ease. Some of the Friends of Cossar group have told me the park looks great!
Put Tuesday, July 7, at 6 p.m. on your calendar as we hold a Montessori Pre-School informational meeting at the Oakland Chamber Building, 304 Holly Street, Oakland. Leading the discussion will be Brooke Fly Spears, a highly respected Montessori educator and trainer with more than 15 years of classroom experience. We are excited to be getting a new roof on our “future home,” so things are moving along. We need people who are interested in becoming teachers as well as those who want to learn more about the Montessori approach.
Our first class should open in fall of 2027 but could be a little earlier if we are ready before that. This will start with three and four-year-olds.
Let me know if you have news to include. Contact me via email at oaklandareachamber@gmail.com or text or leave a message at 601-853-3942.
