This man's hard life is written on his face, but he's still dressed up and managing a smile of sorts. Does anyone recognize this picture from an old family album? Is it the face of a long-ago neighbor?
If you know anything about it, tell us at editor@starkvilledailynews.com and we'll put your answer in next week's edition.
The picture was provided by Perian Kerr, genealogy librarian, from a scrapbook called “Do You Know Any of These People?” in the Starkville-Oktibbeha County Public Library's Genealogy Department archives. We hope someone out there can help the library attach a name to this and other pictures.
Last week's group shot, of a crowd of men – most in shirtsleeves, but one in a full dark suit – on the street next to a bus, drew two responses.
“I saw the picture from 1968 in your newspaper and immediately recognized it,” wrote William McKee. “The man dressed in all black is my grandfather William Quinn McKee. My grandmother has the original print and showed it to me just a couple of months ago.”
Andy Gaston, East Mississippi Lumber Co. owner, came by the SDN office with a handwritten list of people he recognized in the crowd. The men were headed to a forestry event, he said.
One was L.L. “Moon” Mullins, who started tree farming in Mississippi, according to Gaston. Others included Ed Veitch, onetime head of the local Chamber of Commerce; Thomas Rice, owner of Rice Equipment; Paul Millsaps Sr., owner of Millsaps Pontiac, which once occupied the current Starkville Daily News building; A.D. Seale, of MSU; Milburn Sudduth; and – Gaston believes – Thad Easterwood. He wasn't sure, but a couple more looked familiar … including, perhaps, his own father.
“He probably would have gone,” Gaston said.