Mississippi Today
A walk down Willow Street, and memories of old Tulane Stadium
Recent storms and resulting power outages prompted a mini-vacation of sorts to New Orleans, not that I need a good excuse to head that way.
My Sunday morning walk took me by Tulane's Yulman Stadium, where Southern Miss somehow beat the suddenly mighty Green Wave last season and where the Ole Miss Rebels will play Tulane on Sept. 9 at 2:30 p.m.
Trust me on this: You will not need a sweater or sleeves of any sort that afternoon. I suppose there could be a hotter, more humid place on earth than New Orleans currently, although I cannot imagine it.
My sun-broiled walk took me down Willow Street right by where grand, old Tulane Stadium used to stand in all its rusting glory. Yulman Stadium, a neat, modern 30,000-seat facility sits in what would be the afternoon shadow of the old Tulane Stadium, which hosted 38 Sugar Bowls and three of the first nine Super Bowls. Some of my grandest football memories took place in that old, iron and steel monstrosity which literally shook every time the New Orleans Saints scored a touchdown — which, come to think of it, never seemed quite often enough.
Please bear with me, a few memories:
- This was Sept. 17, 1967. I was 14, brother Bobby was 13. Our dad surprised us that Sunday morning in Hattiesburg when he loaded us up in that blue Dodge Monaco and told us we were going to watch the brand new New Orleans professional football team, the Saints, play the Los Angeles Rams. The traffic was awful, and we parked all the way across Claiborne Avenue. We had no tickets, so Dad scalped three as we neared the stadium. Turns out, we were in the north end zone. Turns out, that was the place to be. Funny, my second most vivid memory of that day is of the beer vendors, with kegs on their backs trudging up and down those stadium steps, hawking draught beer and sweating through every fiber of their clothing. I don't know how much they were paid, but I know it wasn't enough. Unlike those hapless Saints, they earned their keep. Older readers probably have already guessed my more vivid memory of that day. The Rams kicked the opening kickoff away from the end zone where we sat. Far in the distance, rookie running back John Gilliam caught the ball at his own six-yard line and headed toward us. And he just kept coming and coming, growing larger and larger. When the wide-eyed Gilliam crossed the goal line for the first touchdown on the first play in Saints history, we could see his jaws trembling from the effort. Boy, we thought, this is going to be easy. Boy, it turns out, it was anything but…
- This was Sept. 19, 1971. By then, I was writing sports for my hometown newspaper, and the Saints were opening their fifth season, again against the Los Angeles Rams. Despite four years of abject failure, there was new enthusiasm. The Saints had a new quarterback, a redhead from Mississippi named Elisha Archibald Manning III, Archie. Trouble was, the Saints still lacked competent people to block for him. The Rams of that vintage featured a defensive line of man-eaters known as The Fearsome Foursome, led by Merlin Olsen and Deacon Jones. I remember thinking they might literally kill the rookie quarterback. But Archie scrambled away from them enough to keep the Saints in the game. The Saints, down 20-17, were driving toward the north end zone with seconds to play. With the time for one play and the ball on the one-yard line, they called timeout. Archie went to the sidelines to talk to Saints coach J.D. Roberts. They talked at length until the referee came over to break it up. Years later, Archie would tell me he never got a play call from Roberts. So he went back to the huddle and called what he figured John Vaught would have called at Ole Miss. Archie kept the ball around the left end and barely scored the winning touchdown before getting hammered one last time by the Rams.
- I have saved the best for last. This was Nov. 8, 1970. The Saints were suffering through another miserable season. They had just fired their first head coach, John North, and hired Roberts away from a semi-pro team in Virginia. Nobody else from my newspaper even wanted to go that day, so I took one for the team. My daddy, perhaps feeling sorry for his oldest, rode shotgun. It was a humid, gray day. The Detroit Lions, led by the great defensive tackle Alex Karras, were the opponent. It was a forgettable game until the ending. The Lions, a much superior team, seemed barely interested. The Saints somehow stayed in the game, until, again, there was time for just one play, the Lions holding a 17-16 lead. The Saints had the ball at their own 44. Remember, this was back when the goal posts were on the goal line. Roberts sent out the Saints placekicker, Tom Dempsey, who was far wider at his equator than any other part of his body. More to the point, he had half of a right foot. He was going to try a 63-yard field goal. Dad and I laughed. We were not alone. A couple nights later, Karras would tell Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show that he was laughing too hard to rush the kick. The ball was placed down at the Saints' 37-yard line, which seemed like it might as well have been 50 miles away in Thibodeaux. But Dempsey swung his thick right leg and the ball exploded toward the goal posts 189 feet away. It crossed about a foot over the cross bar. At first, there was a split second of silence while people tried to comprehend what had just happened. And then grand old Tulane Stadium exploded. I remember people dancing down Willow Street. I remember people hugging strangers. I remember Dad saying, “Son, we can go on back to Hattiesburg or we can head to the Quarter. There's gonna be a party.” We chose the latter. Of course we did.
So I thought about all that and more on my Sunday walk down Willow Street. I thought about 80,000 people stomping and screaming and holding up a game for 19 minutes because they disagreed with the officials. I thought about beer-bellied Billy Kilmer, a perfectly competent quarterback, getting booed unmercifully while he took his weekly beatings with the Saints. I thought about Kansas City taking apart Minnesota in Super Bowl IV with dapper Hank Stram striding up and down the sidelines. (Joe DiMaggio sat one row in front of us that day and my mama never took her eyes off him.)
I thought about how Tulane Stadium was condemned on the same day the Louisiana Superdome opened in 1975. And I remembered how, four years later, workers took it down, section by section, selling all that metal for scrap.
Gone, but never forgotten.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Renada Stovall, chemist and entrepreneur
Renada Stovall sat on the back deck of her rural Arkansas home one evening, contemplating life when she had a life-altering epiphany…
“I gotta get out of these woods.”
She heard it as clear as lips to her ear and as deep as the trees surrounding her property. Stovall's job as a chemist had taken her all over the country. In addition to Arkansas, there were stints in Atlanta, Dallas and Reno. But she was missing home, her parents and friends. She also knew, she needed something else to do.
“I thought, what kind of business can I start for myself,” said Stovall, as she watered herbs growing in a garden behind her south Jackson home. Some of those herbs are used in her all-natural products. “I know when I lived in Reno, Nevada, where it's very hot and very dry, there really weren't products available that worked for me, my hair, and my skin suffered. I've got a chemistry degree from Spelman College. I took the plunge and decided to create products for myself.”
In 2018, Stovall's venture led to the creation of shea butter moisturizers and natural soaps. But she didn't stop there, and in December 2022, she moved home to Mississippi and got to work, expanding her product line to include body balms and butters, and shampoos infused with avocado and palm, mango butter, coconut and olive oils.
Nadabutter, which incorporates Renada's name, came to fruition.
Stovall sells her balms and moisturizers at what she calls, “pop-up markets,” across the state during the summer. She's available via social media and also creates products depending on what of her ingredients a customer chooses. “My turmeric and honey is really popular,” Stovall added.
“The all-natural ingredients I use are great for conditioning the skin and hair. All of my products make you feel soft and luscious. The shea butter I use comes from West Africa. It's my way of networking and supporting other women. And it's my wish that other women can be inspired to be self-sufficient in starting their own businesses.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1954
MAY 17, 1954
In Brown v. Board of Education and Bolling v. Sharpe, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed equal treatment under the law.
The historic decision brought an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, ruling in the case of student Linda Brown, who was denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.
In Mississippi, segregationist leaders called the day “Black Monday” and took up the charge of the just-created white Citizens' Council to preserve racial segregation at all costs.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Every university but Delta State to increase tuition this year
Every university in Mississippi is increasing tuition in the fall except for Delta State University.
The new rates were approved by the governing board of the eight universities, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, at its regular meeting Thursday.
The average cost of tuition in Mississippi is now $8,833 a year, a roughly 3% increase from last year. Students can expect to pay tuition ranging from $7,942 a year at Mississippi Valley State University to $10,052 a year at Mississippi State University.
In recent years, universities have cited inflation and rising insurance costs as reasons for the tuition increases. At Thursday's meeting, the board heard a presentation on how property insurance is becoming more expensive for the eight universities as Mississippi sees more tornadoes and storms with severe wind and hail.
READ MORE: Tuition increases yet again at most public universities
But it's an ongoing trend. Mississippi's public universities have steadily increased tuition since 2000, putting the cost of college increasingly out of reach for the average Mississippi family. More than half of Mississippi college students graduated with an average of $29,714 in student debt in 2020, according to the Institution for College Access and Success.
At Delta State University, the president, Daniel Ennis, announced that he will attempt to avoid tuition increases as the regional college in the Mississippi Delta undergoes drastic budget cuts in an effort to become more financially sustainable.
“We will resist tuition increases so that our most economically vulnerable students can continue to have access to the opportunities that a college degree can provide,” he wrote in a memo to faculty and staff on Monday. “We will move beyond basic survival and into a place where we have the capacity to take better advantage of our undeniable strengths.”
Delta State didn't increase tuition last year, either. Officials have been concerned the university is becoming too pricey for the students it serves.
Tuition for the 2024-25 academic year, by school:
- Alcorn State University: $8,105
- Delta State University: $8,435
- Jackson State University: $8,690
- Mississippi State University: $10,052
- Mississippi University for Women: $8,392
- Mississippi Valley State University: $7,492
- University of Mississippi: $9,612
- University of Southern Mississippi: $9,888
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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