Oakland Will Celebrate 250th
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Cameras rolled at the Enid Depot Restaurant on June 18 as Mississippi Public Broadcasting filmed an episode of Southern Dish. The program, hosted by Sen. Lydia Chassaniol, will showcase the restaurant and is expected to air early next year.
Oakland News
By Linda Aldy
Our Oakland Area will celebrate with an old-fashioned birthday party to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. It will be held July 3 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Swearengen Walking Track and Park. Bring a chair! We’ll have small prizes for the best decorated chair, costume or bike 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!
On July 4, Friends of Cossar will host a pop-up shop from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Vendors are invited. A golf cart parade begins at 7:30 p.m.
Visiting in Oakland recently was Linda Bland. She and her Aunt Mary Ann Johnson visited Mother recently to do some historical and genealogy research. Linda’s grandparents were Ivory and Pattie Lou Johnson. Her mother, Mary Lee Johnson, was born in Oakland. There is a great article about Linda’s family and their journey in the Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa. Linda became the first Black woman to serve on the Rock Island City Council in Illinois when she was elected in 2025. She attended school here and earned a degree in data processing at Northwest Mississippi Community College. Mother thoroughly enjoyed the visit!
The Ross family held our reunion this past Saturday at the Fish Hatchery. I don’t know how many we had, but we filled the place up. The kids loved feeding the fish, playing in the boat exhibit, seeing the aquarium, and just running around outside. There were a few children in attendance who had never been, so I walked up to a little girl and told her I was her cousin Linda.
She said, “I know that. Everyone here is my cousin. That’s why it is called a family reunion.” She was a recently turned six-year-old from Huntsville! She spoke with great authority and was cute as she could be! The adults enjoyed visiting and looking at pictures of days gone by and the history of Scotland, where a good part of our heritage originated. Many thanks to Andrea Ross for the work she puts into pulling our family together each year. She is married to Brett Ross, who is the grandson of our precious Aunt Audrey, who passed away last year just months shy of her 102nd birthday.
As part of our reunion theme, our friend Erin Roach dressed as a Scottish lady and welcomed us to the guest register and posed for many pictures. She shared with me that her book “Seven Men, Minus One” has been nominated for the 2027 Agatha Christie Award! In addition, she and her fiancé, Bertron Hamill, have completed their first joint book, “The Sea Tales of Felae, Descent.”
It is available on Amazon. They are a very talented couple. They are working to clear some land in Oakland to build a house. And I mean that literally. They are physically clearing the land themselves. They love having projects they can work on together and getting their land ready to build on is certainly a major project!
I wrote last week about attending the concert that was Mississippi’s major part of the America250 celebration and that I would update you on the broadcast date for the event. Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB) is scheduled to broadcast the televised United in Song: A Mississippi America250 Celebration on August 2. The concert itself took place on June 20 at the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson. Check your MPB station schedule for the time. They typically broadcast these types of events in the evening.
I know of two folks with area connections who were in the choir—Gay Lynn Haynes of Oakland and Rose Marie Sellers Caulder, who grew up in Oakland.
Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB) has recently been filming in our area! The Enid Depot restaurant hosted the Southern Dish show on June 18. They filmed for hours and will broadcast the show early next year. Senator Lydia Chassaniol of Winona is the show’s host. Sen. Chassaniol represented the Oakland area as our Senator until the redistricting changed the lines for the 2024 legislative session. She is known for her expertise in the kitchen and her show is going to be a great hit!
Our Oakland Mayor and Board of Aldermen, along with hundreds of other municipal officials throughout the state, are in Biloxi this week for the annual Mississippi Municipal League Conference. This is a huge conference with multiple tracks of education and training to help bring back some great ideas. Mayor Stephanie Patterson said it is an opportunity to come together to learn, network, share ideas, and discover new ways to strengthen our communities. She has served on the planning committee for several years.
Don’t forget our Montessori preschool informational meeting at the Oakland Chamber Building, 304 Holly Street, Oakland, at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 7. Brooke Fly Spears of Water Valley, a highly respected Montessori educator and trainer with more than 15 years of classroom experience, will be leading our discussion. 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 the 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.
Period dress was a popular feature of Oakland’s 1976 Bicentennial celebration, which included patriotic programs, historical exhibits and the unveiling of a marker honoring Mississippi historian Dr. Dunbar Rowland. Pictured are Mrs. William Taylor, Mrs. E. N. Frost, Mrs. Pryor Bailey Jr., Mrs. Julius Miller and Mrs. Bob Learned.
