For what experiment are these grinning students preparing, and are they still in town today? If you know these answers, tell us at editor@starkvilledailynews.com and we'll put your answer in next week's edition.
Last week's picture, of a young soldier demonstrating some keyboard contraption to eight older men, released a flood of memories from 10 people.
“This has to have been a Chamber of Commerce event,” Margo Swain wrote on a copy she clipped out and brought in. “First of these (pictures) I have known.” The third man standing from the left was Clay Simmons, whom she identified as “president.” The fourth, according to Swain, is T.E. Veitch, “executive director.” We assume she means of the Chamber of Commerce.
Clark Hartness said the young man at the keyboard was Sgt. Ronnie L. White of Battery C, 2nd 114th Field Artillery. “Ronnie works at Mississippi State now,” Hartness said via email. “He is demonstrating the unit's Fire Direction Computer System, most likely at HHB 2nd 114th FA in Starkville on Highway 12. The camouflaged soldier above the computer (standing second from left) is then Lt. Col. Willis Richards. I recognize leaders of Starkville at the time. I believe it was an open house at the unit.” Hartness says the picture was probably taken between 1984 and 1987.
Jimmy Vaughan also identified White and Richards, and agreed the device is an artillery fire control computer. David Littrell named White and the computer itself: a “Tacfire Computer System,” new at the time.
Janet Howerton said the third man standing from the left, holding a piece of paper, is Clay Simmons. Larry Jones agrees, and also names Veitch; then adds that the sixth and seventh men from the left are then-Sheriff Dolph Bryan and Larry Bell. Betty Tucker, too, named Simmons, identifying him as one-time associate director of the Mississippi Cooperative Extension Service and later head of the Starkville Chamber of Commerce.
Suzanne Simmons Dressel provided the most detail – after all, the paper-holding man third from left was her father. She also named Richards, Veitch, Bryan and Bell, and says the man behind Bryan may be John Mitchell, while the last man to the right is Tommy Prentice. But the computer operator she dubs Randy Harris, as identified by Johnny Lee. Bryan, Bell and Prentice still live in Starkville, she said.
“Daddy died in September 1992 so the picture was made prior to that date,” Dressel said. “Daddy retired from MSU in 1981 as associate director of the Extension Service and then worked for seven years as director of personnel for Security State Bank/Deposit Guaranty (now Regions Bank). He then served for three years as interim director of the Starkville Chamber of Commerce. My guess is this picture was made when he was with the bank or Chamber.”
An emailer known only as “Bill” had a very different take. He says the paper-holding man everyone else identified as Clay Simmons is Dr. Ralph Sinno of MSU's civil engineering department. “Might be testing something for the metal building association,” Bill wrote.
Finally Russell Hood, news editor of the Webster Progress-Times in Eupora, guesses the picture was taken in the late '80s or early '90s, thinks the standing soldier second from left (whom others call Richards) is named Triplett, names Bryan, and gets half of Clay Simmons' name. But the seated soldier, Hood says, he knows personally: Eupora native Ronnie White at the computer. “He was full-time National Guard with the Starkville unit and we served together a few years,” Hood wrote. “The predecessor of that computer was called a 'FADAC' when I was in but the name may have changed after I got out.” White, Hood says, probably knows much more and now associate director at the MSU Center for America's Veterans.