Know Thy Neighbor ~ The Pattersons

Tommy and Patsy Patterson 

Tommy and Patsy Patterson moved into Woodland Hills Subdivision in 1992 and are the second owner to enjoy the “house in the woods” in the first bend of Ridgewood Drive. Patsy says, when sitting on the deck, one has the sensation of actually being in a forest, due to the woods that surround almost three sides of their house. The variety of trees includes cypress, cedar, pine, oak, and dogwood, which are plenty to provide an array of beautiful autumnal foliage and staggering blossoms of springtime.

When asked what has kept the two living in Woodland Hills so long, Patsy was quick to respond, “The neighbors. We have great neighbors, and we can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

Tommy grew up in Ripley, Mississippi, and Patsy’s childhood hometown is Carrollton, Mississippi. Patsy is an Ole Miss grad, while Tommy smiles wistfully remembering his years at Mississippi College. I wondered how they found each other, having grown up one hundred thirty-five miles apart and having attended these separate colleges.

“We met as teachers in Aberdeen High School,” they chimed, almost simultaneously.

Tommy was one of the high school coaches there and also taught math in the junior high.  Patsy was perhaps the prettiest English teacher ever to grace the halls of Aberdeen High School. While neither of them said that, I imagine it’s true.

Working together and socializing, Patsy and Tommy soon began dating.  After deciding they were meant for each other, they married in August of the following year.

Patterson Place ~ pre spring

Patsy began teaching at Meridian Junior College in the fall after she and Tommy married.  Tommy found a coaching position at Meridian Junior High.

They had scarcely settled into their new roles as educators in Meridian, Mississippi, when Uncle Sam drafted Tommy into military service.

“Since I was a college graduate, I applied for Officer Candidate School in the Air Force, but it wasn’t long until they discovered I had a medical condition that prevented me from serving. I was given an honorable discharge,” Tommy recalled.

Patterson Place ~ summer

Both Tommy and Patsy returned to the Aberdeen School system, where they worked until Tommy accepted the position of Head Football Coach in Kossuth, Mississippi.

Tommy later accepted the head coaching job in Pontotoc, Mississippi, but after a couple of years left the ranks of coaching/ teaching and started a new career in the furniture industry, working first for Brookwood Industries, and later for Action Lane as their Human Resources Manager, a job that he was tailor-made for, or so it would seem.  He retired from Action Lane after having been there approximately 25 years.

Patsy continued to teach English in the Pontotoc City School system for a few more years, retiring in 2005. She found meaningful consulting work for several more years and still serves as North Mississippi Area Coordinator for the Mississippi Alternate Path to Quality Teachers.

The Pattersons are active members of First Baptist Church, Pontotoc, where Tommy is an deacon. They have two grown children, a daughter Sidra, and a son Hunter, both of whom are married and reside here in Pontotoc. Oh, there’s a cat in the house, which goes by the name Indigo…something to do with its eye color.

Tommy and Patsy enjoy numerous activities, one of which involves yard work, though Patsy is more into plant selection and planting than into maintenance and upkeep, with the latter being something at which Tommy excels.

Until recent years, Tommy refereed high school basketball and football games. He’s also served as alderman for the City of Pontotoc for the past twenty years and is a long-time member of the Pontotoc Rotary Club. Tommy’s interests include golfing and attending sports events at Ole Miss.

Patsy’s interests include exercising, reading, playing the piano, and playing bridge. Patsy is a member of the Open Gate Garden Club in Pontotoc. Like Tommy, she loves attending sporting events at Ole Miss. The Pattersons are season ticket holders for football, basketball, and baseball. A few years ago, Patsy travelled to Europe with friends to see Rome, Florence, Sicily, Monte Carlo, Nice, Cannes, Barcelona, and even Tunisia in Africa.

The Pattersons have enjoyed visiting numerous areas of our country. They’ve been on an Alaskan Cruise, toured the Northeastern States a couple of times to enjoy the foliage of autumn, been up and down the West Coast, and attended more home games in major league baseball stadiums than you can shake a stick at, which include: Red Sox, Yankees, Astros, Braves, Dodgers, Padres, Giants, Cardinals, Cubs, Rockies and the Oakland Athletics.

I have to share a Tommy story, courtesy of my niece, Felicia Brown Pollard. At the time, Felicia was still living at home with her mom on Highland Street. She would occasionally walk and/or jog into Woodland Hills, where her route always took her by the Pattersons’ home.

One summer day as she walking, she heard someone calling, “Help, help,” from some distance away. She looked and saw nobody, so she started to walk again, this time hearing, “Help, I’m over here. Help me.”

This time she saw who was calling for help. It was Tommy, perched on the rooftop of his house. He had climbed a ladder to clean out the gutters on the backside of his house and had climbed onto the roof. In so doing his ladder fell, leaving him stranded, alone on the roof, without a cell phone to call Patsy or anyone to help him. Apparently, he has learned from this mistakes and has not climbed onto his roof since.

Stop by sometime just to say Hi. It’ll make your day.

Know Thy Neighbor ~ The Montgomerys

Billy and Charlie Ruth Montgomery 

Billy and Charlie Ruth Montgomery own the second house built in Woodland Hills Subdivision. Constructed in 1987, it is the first house on the right as one enters Woodland Hills. They had, for many years, lived on Highland Street, just a few houses down from their present location, but according to Billy, “needed a bigger lot.” He got it, and even bought the adjacent lot, thinking one of his children might want to build there. That did not happen, but his son Steve would later buy an existing home in Woodland Hills.

Billy owned the drug store on Hwy. 15 N. that still bears his name, Montgomery Drugs. He retired as owner and lead pharmacist in 2003. He keeps his license current and, right now, works one or two days each week for Med Center, New Albany, MS.

The Montgomerys have been married sixty-two years. Both of them graduated Hurricane High School in Pontotoc County. Charlie Ruth recalls upon her finishing high school that Billy still had one year of college at Ole Miss before becoming a pharmacist. They had plans to marry after he finished college. Wondering what she could do in the interim, Charlie Ruth applied for work at a factory in New Albany and also enrolled in Junior College.

“My college years, lasted one day,” she explained, “I got a call to come to work at the factory, and I dropped out of school the same day.”

Life for the Montgomerys has been good. They have three remarkable children, all of whom chose careers in the medical profession. Their two sons are physicians, Steve lives and practices locally and Joseph lives in Madison and practices in Clinton, Mississippi. Their daughter Mitzi Russell is a school nurse for the Pontotoc School district. Of their six grandchildren, three have medical careers, and a fourth is studying to become a nurse.

Theirs is a close-knit family that enjoys spending time together. Many of the Montgomery Clan are members of First Baptist Church, Pontotoc. The cars you see parked in their driveway are most often those of their children or grandchildren. Additionally, they do family vacations right. As a family they have vacationed in Yellowstone National Park, toured sites in the West and the Northeastern United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Canada.

Montgomerys on Ridgewood

Two of their three children have visited all fifty states with them, and the third has been to forty-nine states and will visit the fiftieth one, Washington, later this year when the Montgomery family flies there to board a cruise ship to Alaska.

This fall, the extended Montgomery Family will tour the Normandy region of France where American troops landed to launch a campaign to free Europe from the iron grip of the Nazi regime in World War II. They also plan to visit the concentration camps of Germany, where millions of Jews were slaughtered by the Third Reich.

Billy is the more enthusiastic sports fan of the couple, though Charlie Ruth enjoys watching basketball games locally, saying, “I don’t like sitting out in the weather to watch sports.”

Neither Billy nor Charlie Ruth are deep into a hobby, unless keeping an immaculate yard is a hobby, and in that case Billy’s hobby is working in his yard.

If you’ve lived in Woodland Hills
even a short time, surely you noticed how neatly trimmed the grounds are, and if you’ve passed by during the Christmas Season, you have no doubt enjoyed the Christmas decorations. Surely, they pride themselves in their home’s appearance, but they remain just plain good and humble folks.

Stop by sometime just to say Hi. It’ll make your day.

Erasing History

With regard to the removal of statues that some find racially insensitive in our modern times, because they remind them of the horrors of slavery, persons opposed to the removal of statues often claim, “You cannot erase history.”

In a sense that’s true, in that if one defines history as those things which happened in the past, then changing or erasing history cannot be accomplished.

On the other hand, if one wants to erase the historical record, then that can be done. Despots and terrorists groups have done so numerous times.

One Egyptian Pharaoh, Hatshepsut, had all mentions of her name chiseled off temple walls and statues of her were destroyed by her step-son who ruled after her.

Certain rulers of Russia had some accounts of Russia history removed from texts and/or rewritten. Stalin had 14.5 million of his countrymen literally erased.

The Taliban destroyed a centuries-old carving of Buddha on a rock wall to spite outsiders who wished to repair the damaged statue.

In our country, local governments have removed statues of Confederate generals from public view, moving them to a museum or a secure storage area, effectively hiding them from the public eye.

In so doing, all the aforementioned have destroyed or erased historical records.

All Americans should be about the business of studying our nation’s history and learning from our missteps to carve a better future for ourselves.

If Americans choose to “erase” history, we do so at our own peril and history will respect us no more than we respect those ancient Pharaohs, despotic rulers, and religion-motivated terrorists who also sought to rewrite and erase history.

Know Thy Neighbor ~ The Duffs

Cathy and George.Duff

The newest homeowners in Woodland Hills Subdivision are George and Kathy Duff. They purchased the Windham home on the corner of Dogwood Circle and Ridgewood Drive, and moved into it in January ’19, after making a few modifications to the interior.

Kathy said she and George had been helping their daughter and son-in-law shop for a home in Pontotoc, when a friend told her discreetly of a house that would soon be on the market. Without knowing the location or the owner of the house and only that it had a pool and a pool house and that it was in a subdivision, Kathy drove around various neighborhoods and concluded the house her friend had mentioned was the one in Woodland Hills. Soon George Duff and Wally Windham formed a gentleman’s agreement and sealed it with a handshake to begin the formal transition of ownership.

George describes his career as one in sales, “It’s easier to say, I’m in sales than explain the many businesses I’m involved with.”

George and Kathy are business partners with Tommy and Anita Wood and Anthony and Brenda Aaron in the company called BK Wireless and have several Select Retail Stores with Cspire, including the Pontotoc location. George also dabbles in furniture sales.

Kathy is co-owner of Martin Cardboard Co., Pontotoc, Mississippi, and is church pianist at Green Valley Baptist Church, Pontotoc.

George and Kathy are active members of Green Valley Baptist Church. Kathy is quick to let you know she loves Jesus, something one would easily pickup on in conversation without being told. Jesus may be in her heart, but He shines through her personality.

The Duffs have three children, Jarrod, Amanda, and Kasey, all by previous marriages, and a total of seven grandchildren with one more expected to arrive soon. As for pets, George and Kathy have beautiful white and gold tomcat they call Tigger. Tigger plans to keep his territory free of pests such as moles and raccoons, or the occasional stray feline.

Both Duffs enjoy healthy eating. George stills drinks a product by LIMU, daily, and Kathy, the more health-food conscious of the two, is extremely careful of what she eats and drinks. She avoids processed foods and sugars, eats only beef that is grass fed, and purifies her water with home filtration systems that remove all additives. Additionally, Kathy visits a nutritionist in Florence, Alabama.

Corner of Ridgewood and Dogwood Circle 

For fun, they enjoy games with friends; one in particular is called Dirty Marbles. Domino’s is also a favorite game that even their grandchildren enjoy.

George recalls the family vacations he went on as a child, which were basically Dental Conventions on the Gulf Coast that his father attended.

“So, once a year, we got to go the beach,” he remembered.

These days, George and Kathy enjoy occasional trips to the beach but have no plans to purchase any beachfront property. Their favorite beach is Santa Rosa, south of Destin, Florida.

They are thrilled to be a part of our homeowners association and hope, according to Kathy, this will be their forever home, at least on this side of Heaven.

Stop by sometime just to say Hi; it’ll make your day.