Bids opened for factory demolition

Friday
April 25,
2014
50 cents
Daily Corinthian
Vol. 118, No. 97
Partly sunny
Today
Tonight
76
48
0% chance of rain
• Corinth, Mississippi • 20 pages • 2 sections
Bids opened
for factory
demolition
BY JEBB JOHNSTON
[email protected]
Contractors entered a wide
range of bids on the proposed
demolition of the Wurlitzer
building and land clearing.
Bids were unsealed at City
Hall Thursday morning and
are expected to go to the
Board of Mayor and Aldermen for consideration in a
special meeting this morning
or the next regular meeting on
May 6.
The apparent low bidder among the eight interested contractors is Century
Construction of Tupelo at
$58,500. Bids went as high
as more than 10 times that
amount.
With the potential for contractors to recycle some of the
materials from the site, the
city wasn’t sure what to expect
from bidders.
“You don’t know what the
value of the materials is inside
the building,” said City Clerk
Vickie Roach, who conducted
the bid opening with David
Huwe, director of community
Photos Courtesy of Randy J. Williams
Reenactors bring the Battle of Rienzi to life during last year’s event.
Rienzi blasts into spring
with festival, reenactment
BY KIMBERLY SHELTON
[email protected]
History will be resurrected as
reenactors, under the direction
of the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry
and 48th Tennessee Infantry,
bring to life the Battle of Rienzi.
The battle was fought between 1861 and 1865. After the
South officially surrendered to
the Union in Appomattox, Va.,
the Battle of Rienzi raged on for
weeks before the troops were
notified the war was over.
The fourth annual battle,
sponsored by the Rienzi Heritage Committee, will take place
May 2 through May 4.
Beginning at 8 a.m. and lasting all day, each day, the threeday event will shed light on
what it was like for the soldiers
as they lived, fought and died
during the Civil War.
“Friday is a school day so we
will have it open for the school
kids to come. They will have the
opportunity to see first-hand
what it was like in the civil war
days. How the soldiers cooked,
where they lived and they survived,” said Rienzi Mayor Walter Williams.
The Rienzi reenactment is an
open reenactment. All reenactors are welcome to take part in
the battle which is sanctioned,
ruled and regulated by the Cleburmes Division.
There will be a $5 reenactment fee and a $10 fee for sutlers and vendors.
A meal will be provided on
Saturday evening.
“Fighting will begin at 2 p.m.
on Friday and will end Saturday
after the fighting at 2 p.m. We
will be feeding the volunteers at
the fire station as we do every
Please see RIENZI | 2A
development and planning.
The contract will be for six
months.
Corinth entered an agreement in 1955 with Wurlitzer,
the maker of organs and
jukeboxes,
to
build
a
100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. Once the
defunct industrial building is
gone and the land cleared, the
city wants to see it marketed
as a prime location for industry.
The other bids were:
• Edge Construction of
Tremont — $110,241
• Southern Recycling, Inc.,
of D’Iberville — $247,000
• Virginia Wrecking Co.,
Inc., of Daphine, Ala. —
$286,399
• NCM Demolition & Remediation of Marietta, Ga. —
$498,700
• National Salvage & Service
Corporation of Bloomington,
Ind. — $524,000
• Ayers Construction of
Corinth — $575,382
• Rutledge Construction Co.
of Tupelo — $686,626.94
Expert shares reality of drug addiction epidemic
BY KIMBERLY SHELTON
[email protected]
Who knew that heroin (chemical name diacetylmorphine)
was introduced by the Bayer
company in 1898 as a non-addictive alternative to morphine
and a cough suppressant for
children?
Guests at Pizza Grocery
learned this startling fact and
more as Dr. Tom Fowlkes of
The Oxford Centre gave an informative presentation on the
growing prescription-drug epidemic, currently devastating
the United States.
According to the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, an estimated one in 40 Americans
are abusing prescription drugs.
The number of drug-overdose
deaths is rising and has tripled
in the last decade.
Area mental health professionals acknowledged the problem and searched for answers
as they attended the “lunch and
learn” on Monday.
Special guests at the event
included representatives from
Region IV Mental Health Services of the Mississippi Department of Mental Health.
“A lot of people have their
heads stuck in the sand and it’s
time to start the conversation,”
said Corinth native Chad Clardy
who serves as a Tupelo-based
community relations representative for The Oxford Centre.
In his presentation, the Oxford Centre’s chief medical officer focused on three classes
of prescription drugs: Opiates,
Benzodiazepines and Amphetamines.
As a former ER physician,
Fowlkes witnessed the rampant
abuse of prescription drugs
first-hand while providing
medical care at the Lafayette
County jail and mental-health
center.
In the 1900s, Fowlkes said
the patients he treated were
more likely to choose cocaine as
their drug of choice, but by the
early 2000s, crystal meth had
become more popular.
“While getting off crystal
meth often meant simply crashing for few days of sleep, the
same was not true for those addicted to prescription painkillers, sedatives and stimulants,”
Please see ADDICTION | 2A
Green flag set to wave on new racing season
BY ZACK STEEN
Staff photo by Kimberly Shelton
Dr. Tom Fowlkes gives an informative presentation on the
growing prescription-drug epidemic.
Counselor receives
state recognition
[email protected]
GLEN — Buddy is back.
After a 18 year absence,
Buddy Ayers is returning
to North Mississippi Motor
Park Speedway. Drivers are
set to fire their engines on
a new season of racing at 7
p.m. Saturday night.
Ayers, who originally built
the speedway located off
U.S. Highway 72 in 1993,
has been leasing the high
banked oval during his time
away from the track. Now he
is back at the helm as track
promoter.
“We’re excited to be getting back into the race track
business,” said Ayers, who
also owns a local construction business. “Everyone
seems to think me coming
back is a good thing and
I’m glad. I’m ready to run
this track like I used to run
it back in the 90s. We had a
BY STEVE BEAVERS
[email protected]
Modified Street, Outlaw, 602
and Limited Late Model.
An Alcorn Career and Technology
Center counselor has been named the
state’s best.
Jennifer
Koon
was awarded the
2015
Mississippi
ACTE Career Guidance Award. Koon,
a high school CTE
counselor the past 13
years, represented
Mississippi in the
ACTE
Excellence
Awards program at Koon
the ACTE Region IV
Conference in New Orleans earlier this
month.
“I have always been fortunate to
work with people who support and
assist with guidance projects,” said
Koon. “It was an honor to be chosen
for the award and I appreciate the Al-
Please see RACING | 2A
Please see KOON | 2A
Photo compliments of Treassa Hohman Wilbanks
Ben Morrow, driver of the number 55M car, will race in the Limited Late Model division
for the first time when the green flag waves on the new season of dirt track racing Saturday at North Mississippi Motor Park Speedway.
real good thing going - happy
fans and happy drivers and
some of the best racing in the
tri-states.”
The track will offer five divisions when the green flag
waves this weekend. Those
divisions are Street Stock,
Index
Stocks......8A
Classified......3B
Comics......9A
State......5A
On this day in history 150 years ago
Weather...... 7A
Obituaries......6A
Opinion......4A
Sports....10A
Confederate troops under Gen. William Cabell capture a
vital supply train and 1,700 prisoners at Mark’s Mill, Ark. The
victory is marred when over 100 runaway slaves were captured and executed, the third such incident in April.
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