Ellington

Bill Minor is proof that the best way to keep a muscle fit is to exercise it. Rigorously. When I arrived at his Broadmoor home the Friday after Thanksgiving, the brain of this 80-year-old journalist and columnist immediately started churning, and for the next two hours, he exploded with facts, details and opinions and quirkobilia. I didn't need to ask a single question of the man who has made a career out of asking questions in the state of Mississippi.

The Hammond, La., native came to Jackson to work as a correspondent for The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune in 1947. His first assignment, and one of his most memorable, was the funeral of legendary racist politician Theodore G. Bilbo in Poplarville. "That was some introduction to Mississippi politics," says Minor, who still writes a weekly column and runs an active newsgathering business from his home on Brecon Ave.

While we were sitting in his courtyard at a wrought-iron table surrounded by greenery and geraniums, Minor's historical stream-of-consciousness began with the mention of a local inn owned by one of the founders of the White Citizens Council. That tidbit naturally led Minor to the integration of Ole Miss in 1962. On that fateful night, Minor flew into Oxford about dawn and found an eerie battlefield. "I went in the Lyceum where wounded marshals were wrapped in bandages. They were all over the 100-year-old building."

Wearing a tweed jacket and a newsboy cap, his light-blue eyes twinkling, Minor segued from Ole Miss to the tenor of Mississippi politics ("people are persuaded by media hype to vote for Republicans without their real interests at heart"), to last year's state flag referendum ("the vote brought out people who don't vote for anything else"), then to U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering: ("This guy's never held a job in his life").

Most striking, even while grousing about politics, Minor had the contented look of a man who lives every moment. He had a stroke several years ago, which has left him reliant on a cane, but, tellingly, he has a beautiful cane collection by his front door. He visibly adores his wife, Gloria, and has clearly done the type of work he was put on Earth to do.

Minor didn't start out to be a newspaperman ("my father was a drunken printer"), but a Bogalusa, La., English teacher saw his writing talent and pushed him toward journalism. He served his time on a Navy destroyer in World War II and then returned to the South to write stories. Being here paid off. "It's afforded me greater opportunities than I would have had (elsewhere)." His favorite story is set in 1966 when Gov. Paul Johnson repealed the "prohibition farce," as he called it then, one of the few times the state has acted before a federal edict forced it to. "We did it on our own," Minor says.

— Donna Ladd