Kathryn Rodenmeyer
Jackson native Kathryn Rodenmeyer, 37, was described to me as a filmmaker, so when I met her in her Fondren home, I first asked her about her work in film.
Mike Padilla
Mike Padilla, 20, a Millsaps College student—an actor, a director, a techie and an award-winning playwright—is involved in the theater at Millsaps on every possible level. Right now he's working backstage on "The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr: Abridged," which opens Aug. 25. Next up, he's directing Jean Anouilh's version of "Antigone." When I asked him when we could get together, he told me to "just stop by the theater any time, I'll be there pretty much all day." I finally caught up with him sitting at a makeup table in the dressing room at Millsaps, writing in his notebook. Surrounded by masks, wigs and witch hats, Padilla seemed entirely at home.
Spit McGee
I had only known Willie Morris through his books. It was his words, read in faraway places like Colorado and Manhattan and Nantucket, that helped me realize how southern I really was, that I wasn't the only Mississippian to be stung by northern condescension, that you can, and often should, go home again.
Cheryl Lasseter
Cheryl Lasseter, the weekend morning anchor at WLBT-TV3, was Cheryl Frazel when she arrived in Jackson, a Baltimore native who grew up in a suburb. While earning her communication degree at Towson University in 1992, she deejayed at the college radio station. "I always had TV in the back of my mind, but I never thought I could do that; that was for really, really talented people," Lasseter said as we talked in the children's book section of Lemuria, while her 18-month-old son Sean played nearby.
Joecephus Martin
Joecephus Martin, 24, is comfortable in his own skin. As I watch the time, he sits back in a black leather chair, and says, "I'm from the South, I don't rush." He is a teacher, a rapper, a student, a voter, a listener, a talker and a realistic dreamer.
Ann Williams
Ann Williams, 54, is a bit tough, a little hard to take in at first. But that's because she's passionate. And she speaks the truth.
Andy Hilton
Andy Hilton, with his curly-blonde locks, seems like any 24-year-old—slightly laid-back and slightly restless, ever ready to talk about ideals. What surfaces, however, is a great sense of his unique vision: "I want to use design skills to benefit the community."
Richard Weiss
Before Richard Weiss, 36, got busy providing art house and other indie films to Jacksonians, he worked in the tech industry. After cutting his teeth renting foreign films at Video Library, Weiss started making databases of the movies he had seen and ones he hadn't seen but wanted to. Even though Video Library offered a wide selection, Weiss wanted more: "I noticed that there were a lot of things on DVD that they probably could never carry."
David Dennis, Jr.
Tall, slim, wearing his hair in neat, short braids, David Dennis Jr. looks like a high school basketball player, maybe on his way to play in college—if he's got the grades. That's the stereotype, anyway.
E. Willander Wells
"Elegance" is a word that keeps surfacing in conversations with fashion designer E. Willander Wells as we sit outside Broad Street bakery.
Charles Hooker
Charles Hollingsworth Hooker Jr., 58, holds dear his faith, family, furniture—mid-century modern business furniture, that is—and jazz. After growing up in his father's downtown business, the Mississippi Stationery Company, the Jackson native now owns and operates its present incarnation—OffiSource on Old Square Road. A product of Jackson Public Schools, Hooker said he's pleased with the 36 years since he graduated with a business degree from State.
[Jacksonian] DJ Phingaprint
Timothy Washington's dreads are not a fashion statement, but a cultural and spiritual move the 25-year-old undertook eight years ago. "I always had a little Afro," he says, "but I wanted a truthful cultural image for myself." The dreadlocks gave him a sense of independence—of strength—that he could survive and create a means of living in today's society.
Denise Halbach
With an eyebrow arched and a gleam in her startlingly blue eyes, Denise Halbach captivates her audience immediately. The Louisiana-born, Jackson-raised dramatist begins our conversation with a surprising fact. "I got dragged kicking and screaming into theater," she says.
Earl Fyke IV
Sitting at the round corner table at Hal & Mal's—his team's Pub Quiz table—I realized that with young men like Earl Fyke IV around, there's reason to hope. This 24-year-old Jackson Prep graduate represents well the gamut of multi-talented 20-somethings, male and female—those grounded in the here and now and, thankfully, still here right now—who will eventually reshape and remake Jackson.
Margie Thompson
Margie Thompson's second-grade classroom blooms. Dancing bears proclaim the longness and shortness of vowels. Colors swirl, and pep-talk art tells children that they can excel in math, in literature, in social studies. This space at McWillie Elementary School is all about learning and is one of the reasons Thompson was selected Jackson Public Schools' Teacher of the Year for 2004.