When a neighbor approached her about an open job at a local bank in the spring of 1975, she had no idea that it would lead to a career spanning four decades.

This week, Billie Ruth Sowell officially retired from First Security bank after serving as a teller for nearly 42 years. Co-workers, customers, friends and family saluted her at a reception at the bank on Wednesday, Jan. 18.

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This week continues a series of history stories by the late Ashley Harris that were first published in 1994 and 1995. This story appeared in the December 8, 1994 issue.

We inadvertently skipped Part 4 of  the series, so we are also reprinting Part 5 this week and the final installment, Part 6, both found on Page 7.

General Pemberton did not learn of the Yazoo Pass Expedition until February 9, when he received a telegram from Commander Isaac Brown.

“The enemy have cut the Yazoo Pass levee;” it read, “contemplating, perhaps, assailing us down the Yazoo.”

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Just after the workday began on Monday, Jan. 8, 2017 workers at Tunica County based GreenTech Automotive learned that some of them would be laid off.

“When we got off work on Thursday, we were asked to come to a meeting first thing Monday morning,” a former employee who asked not to be named said. “We thought that if we were getting laid off, they would have done it then.”

Instead, employees reported to the facility and were told by management that a planned merger with a Chinese company had fallen through. Employees were told that they would receive their last paycheck. They learned that they would not receive a bonus promised to them.

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This week continues a series of history stories by the late Ashley Harris that were first published in 1994 and 1995. This story appeared in the December 15, 1994 issue.

When the one-armed Confederate General William W. Loring returned to Greenwood from a 70-mile patrol up the Tallahatchie, he had seen Yankees’ torturous progress downriver  and he knew the long-awaited battle was imminent.

Loring ordered General Lloyd Tilghman, a West Point graduate, former construction engineer, and one-time Yankee prisoner to send a battery of field artillery and an infantry regiment to Greenwood.

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