Tombigbee Tales

Elbert Drungo Jr, Hunt High Graduate and NFL Player

Elbert Drungo Jr. born in Columbus, MS (1943) attended R. E. Hunt High School and Tennessee State University then played eight years in the NFL. 

Frances Ormond Jones Gaither - Author, Novelist, W Girl

Frances Gaither graduated from II&C (now MUW) in 1909. She is a forgotten Mississippi novelist whose work parallels Eudora Welty. Please remember to like, subscribe, and leave a review of Tombigbee Tales. 

Blanche Colton Williams - II&C Graduate and Hunter College Professor

Blanche Colton Williams would graduate II&C in Columbus, MS and teach in Natchez and Grenada for about 10 years before being granted a scholarship for graduate studies from her Alma Mater. She would leave for New York City to attend Columbia University and earn first an MA and then a PhD. She taught at Hunter College for 30 years, chaired the O'Henry and Opportunity Awards, authored multiple books, and hosted salons with fellow II&C alumni and faculty in New York City. 

Wenona Poindexter: Consummate Music Educator

Thanks to the research of two fellow "W" researchers whom I greatly respect:Dunn, C. W. (2001). Women and music in the Victorian south: The music department of the Mississippi State University for Women under Weenona Poindexter. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Alabama, 2001) Dissertation Abstracts International. (UMI No.3038856). Pieshel, B. S. (1984). Loyal daughters: 100 years of the Mississippi University for Women. Jackson, MS: Mississippi University Press.

Keep the 2% Tax Out of Carpenter's Grubby Mitts

Carpenter's got her money to finish the work at the Tennessee Williams home, and now she needs to fund her lavish spending habits. How will she do that? Write grants? Kick off a Capital Campaign? Nope, she will always go for low hanging fruit...she will see the 2% tax as hers to take a sizable cut out of and use at her leisure...Mark my words that she has it in her cross hairs. Who has the guts to stand up to her and say "Enough is Enough!"? 

More Small Town Corruption: Misuse of Public Funds by Former CVB Director Nancy Luke Carpenter

Nancy Carpenter went to the MDAH Grant Training in Jackson on Foundation business with Foundation President Brenda Willis and CVB Board Member Rissa Lawrence and charged the hotel to the CVB credit card without the CVB Board's approval or knowledge. 

Small Town Corruption: Nancy Carpenter's Messes

Did Carpenter lie to the city council about getting $100,000 from the Heritage Hills Alliance? If so, what else has she lied about? And about those CVB credit card statements, Ms. Carpenter...

Leave Her to Heaven - Sarah Ames Patty and Ben Ames Williams

Is the femme fatale in Ben Ames Williams' Leave Her to Heaven inspired loosely by his first cousin Sarah Ames Patty of Macon, Mississippi?

Nancy Luke Carpenter Lied to the City Council and MDAH At Budget Meeting

Carpenter told the City Council she still needs $54, 069.69 match share for the MDAH grant; however, when she sent in the grant she told the grant coordinator Divvya Pai that she had the grant match. Prior to beginning work in late April of 2024 Carpenter submitted a bank statement showing the matching share in the Foundation's bank account. 
Oh the tangled webs she weaves when at the City Council meeting she deceives. 

Rot - Nancy Luke Carpenter and her Continued Neglect of the Tennessee Williams Building

Carpenter has absolutely lied about the issues at the Tennessee Williams her neglect has caused. I recently did a public records request of the MDAH grants to the building and the problems the structural engineers have uncovered...that Carpenter has failed to reveal to the City as she asks for a matching grant to put lipstick on her pig.