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Most Mississippi small businesses have yet to see COVID-19 relief grants from the government. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Like thousands of others, Oxford small business owner Kate Rosson is trying to keep afloat amid the pandemic while waiting on a Mississippi Back to Business grant.

“This whole Back to Business name is a joke if there are no businesses to get back to,” Rosson said on Monday. Seven weeks after applying, Rosson said she has received scant info about her application, and she deals with numerous other small businesses in the same boat.

“These businesses — I’m seeing them close, seeing plenty of them close every week,” Rosson said. “… I don’t run the chamber of commerce or anything, but I’d venture conservatively we could see 20-30% close in Oxford if we don’t see something happen.”

Mississippi, like most other states, is trying to use some of its federal COVID-19 aid money to help small businesses. The Legislature in May passed measures to provide emergency small business grants, and the program commenced June 11.

But getting that money out to the businesses has been a slow process. As of Aug. 28, less than 8% of the $240 million allocated to the Back to Business program had been approved for grants, and that’s after a major spike in approvals late last week. As of early August, only about 1% of the money had been distributed.

A Hope Policy Institute analysis in mid-August found that Mississippi was lagging behind most other Southern states in deploying CARES Act funds to small businesses, despite having another program designed to rapidly provide $2,000 emergency grants automatically to businesses shuttered during mandated shutdowns early in the pandemic. And Mississippi’s average relief amount at the time — $1,884 — was below the other states, such as Alabama at an average of $12,184.

Lawmakers in mid-August returned to Jackson and made changes to the program, relaxing qualifications and increasing potential payments in efforts to speed up the process and help more businesses amid the pandemic.

The Mississippi Development Authority, charged with running the Back to Business grant program — using a private contractor — vows to move more rapidly.

“While the review process is time-consuming, we are currently reviewing approximately 600 applications per day and issuing payments as soon as possible,” said MDA Director John Rounsaville. “In fact (Friday) we’ve processed 1,076 payments. MDA is committed to closing out the Back to Business grants by the end of September, and we are on track to accomplish that.”

Gov. Tate Reeves on Monday said administration of the grants “has been somewhat constrained by U.S. Treasury guidelines and somewhat by language the Legislature passed.” He said tweaks the Legislature made at MDA’s request should help and, “I think we will start seeing more progress.”

Rosson worries the program will move too slowly to help businesses in most dire need.

Rosson’s company, 662 Marketing, advertises and direct-markets college town small businesses’ services to parents of students, including in Oxford and Starkville. She’s dependent on universities and on fellow small businesses, both hit hard by the pandemic.

Rosson applied for a Back to Business grant on July 9. Weeks later, trying to get an update on her status, the only response she got was that it was “under review.”

Then on Friday, seven weeks after she applied, she got a “robo-email” telling her the state could not locate records of her filing and paying taxes — a prerequisite for the grant.

“I’ve paid all my taxes, on time,” Rosson said. “I’m sending them the attachments. I’ve got them digital and printed. I don’t know why they could not find them.”

Rosson said she has been forced to lay off two of her six employees.

“If this money doesn’t come we’re going to have to make more changes,” Rosson said, “and I’ve got to stare down what does four months from now look like.”

Grant programs moving slowly

The Legislature in May approved $300 million in CARES Act funding for two Mississippi small business programs.

One, funded at $60 million, was to automatically and quickly provide $2,000 grants — no application necessary — to more than 29,000 shops shuttered temporarily during a statewide shutdown mandated early in the pandemic. The state Department of Revenue was to send out the checks to a long list of small businesses including restaurants, barber shops and clothing stores.

But as of Aug. 28, DOR reported that it had issued only 14,106 grants totaling $28.2 million.

One caveat of receiving the $2,000 emergency grants was that businesses had to have filed their 2018 or 2019 state income tax returns. About 25% of the initial list, DOR reported, had not and were disqualified.

Lawmakers in mid-August expanded the list of businesses eligible for the $2,000 emergency grants. But as of last week, less than half of that money been distributed.

The second program the Legislature funded, at $240 million, was the Back to Business grants. It allows for grants of up to $25,000 each to businesses with less than 50 employees for expenses — but not lost profits — during the pandemic.

Businesses could either apply for a minimum grant of $1,500, subsequently increased by the Legislature to $3,500, or they could itemize employees and/or costs to receive up to $25,000.

For the first 60 days of the program, $40 million was to be reserved for businesses owned by minorities and women. But the slow pace of the program, with less than 8% of the money out the door so far, has raised concerns that this priority will not be fulfilled as planned.

MDA late last week reported:

• 36,550 businesses registered for the program
• 21,066 have applied for grants
• 6,497 grants had been approved as of Aug. 28, for a total of $18.6 million
• 3,335 minority or women-owned grants had been approved, for a total of $9.5 million
• 3,162 non-minority grants had been approved, for a total of $9.1 million
• 1,578 businesses have been deemed non-eligible
• 70% of applicants, 14,802, requested the base payment of $3,500

‘It’s just been a hassle’

Some lawmakers have received calls and complaints from struggling businesses trying to get grants.

Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

Sen. Derrick T. Simmons during a corrections hearing Thursday, February 13, 2020.

Sen. Derrick Simmons, D-Greenville, said people contacting him report, “It’s just been a hassle.” He said he is particularly concerned that the priority of helping minority-owned businesses is falling by the wayside because of delays.

“I’m hearing there has just been no communication after the application is made,” Simmons said. “… time is ticking and there are so many businesses hurt by the pandemic. Small businesses are the heartbeat of our community and the intent of the Legislature was for this to be used quickly to help. These businesses started being hurt in March.”

House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, said MDA has assured him and other lawmakers that recent legislative changes will speed the program, and he said lawmakers might make subsequent changes if needed.

Lamar said he believes the grants could have been used to cover loss of revenue or profits for businesses, but he was unsuccessful in convincing his colleagues that federal regulations didn’t prevent that.

Senate Finance Chairman Josh Harkins, R-Flowood, in mid-August helped pass changes to the small business programs to speed them up and help more people. He said he’s hopeful things will speed up, but said the program, like the pandemic, is uncharted waters for the state and federal governments. Harkins also said the state has to carefully account for the spending, lest it have to repay the money to the federal government.

“I know people want it now, but you have to be realistic with the size and scope of this,” Harkins said. “There’s not really a playbook for what we’ve gone through, and I think we’ve tried to do a quick turnaround to stand this program up. But you have to have accountability, too, and we are on the hook for this if the inspector general comes in and finds something wrong … and Mississippi doesn’t have that money laying around to pay it back to the federal government if something is done wrong.”

One change that MDA requested to improve the grant program was denied by lawmakers. The agency asked to be allowed to increase administrative spending on the program from $900,000 to $3.6 million. This would allow MDA to “scale the call center” to more quickly help applicants, and to cover proper auditing of the program, Rounsaville said in a letter to legislative leaders.

Harkins said: “Everybody notoriously needs X amount to operate a program, but when it gets down to the lick log, not as much is needed. Let’s look at the actual costs. We can look at it later. The governor’s got some funds he can utilize if needed, and we can follow up with them if more is needed.”

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann in a statement last week said he had met with MDA.

“They stated to me they would finish the allocation to every person or entity who applied within the next 30 days,” Hosemann said, adding that an issue of concern for him is “the lack of applications and the small size of the requests from employers.”

“I hope more employers will apply as soon as possible,” Hosemann said.

Keeping people employed

The grant programs for small businesses are set to run through Nov. 1, with any unspent money then going into the state’s unemployment trust fund.

Matty Bengloff, owner of Delta Dairy, an ice cream shop in Cleveland, applied for a Back to Business grant in mid-June and said his inquiries for months had basically been met with “radio silence.”

“Every time I’ve called, they’ve been incredibly kind and gracious on the other line, but just no answers or time frame — just, ‘it’s under review,’” Bengloff said.

But on Thursday, Bengloff said, he received an email with a link for him to follow and answer a few final questions and provide a few further details.

“Then it basically said something along the lines of thank you, you’ve been approved,” Bengloff said. “That’s great. Businesses need this help right now, and the state is providing us support so we can keep people employed and keep bringing in local tax dollars.”

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Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America

Gov. Tate Reeves speaks to media after being sworn into office at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss. Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2020.

Gov. Tate Reeves, who was photographed last week without a mask at Republican events in Washington, D.C., and North Carolina, announced on Monday he was extending for the statewide mask mandate for two more weeks.

Reeves was photographed not socially distancing and not wearing a mask at events last week in North Carolina, where the Republican National Convention was hosted, and at the White House, where Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president.

“As I said repeatedly, many of us throughout this pandemic have not always worn a mask 100% of the time,” Reeves said on Monday, adding ”the vast majority of the time” at those events he was wearing a mask. “… I didn’t do it 100% of time. And looking back on it, perhaps I should have done it more often.”

Reeves, giving his first update on the COVID-19 pandemic in Mississippi since Aug. 25, extended the statewide mask mandate he first imposed in early August. He also extended all other executive orders except for the crowd limits on high school sports and other extracurricular activities.

In that particular instance, he changed the order to limit crowd sizes at high school events to 25% capacity of the venue where the event is being held, as long at the event can accommodate social distancing. The old executive order that he rescinded limited crowds at high school events to two spectators per participant.

The other executive orders, such as limiting crowd sizes to 20 people for outdoor events and to 10 people at indoor events, were also extended for two weeks.

During the hour-long news conference on Monday, Reeves bemoaned that he believes some people try to score political points by pointing out when political leaders do not wear masks. Later, Reeves was asked about the political statement being made when most of the 1,500 people attending the president’s acceptance speech were not wearing masks. The event was outdoors, but people were seated shoulder to shoulder.

Reeves said 366 people who attended the president’s speech at the White House, including himself, were tested at least once during the previous four days in North Carolina. He said he and others at the event believed the election is important and “we wanted to be there to support him (Trump). We wanted to obviously show our support and that is a decision we made.”

People attending speeches by the president have routinely eschewed mask wearing.

But on Monday at his news conference, Reeves insisted the mask mandate is working in Mississippi and urged people to continue to wear one when in crowds.

He said on a seven-day average, the number of cases in Mississippi have been reduced from more than 9,000 three weeks ago to just over 5,000 during the past week. He said the number of hospitalizations and number of people in intensive care units have also been reduced.

“What we are doing in Mississippi is working,” Reeves said. “Our numbers are coming down.”

He expressed concerns with people letting their guards down during the upcoming Labor Day weekend. Reeves and state Health Officer Thomas Dobbs have cited crowds during Memorial Day and July 4 holidays as having contributed to the large spike in cases the state experienced for much of the summer.

That spike left many hospitals and their intensive care units at near or over capacity. But Reeves stressed Monday those numbers are coming down.

There have been other instances where Reeves has not worn masks in public while mandating or urging his fellow Mississippians to do so. In many of those instances, he conceded that he should have been wearing a mask.

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Color your way through Mississippi with me! Click below to download a coloring sheet of The Mississippi Aquarium in Gulfport. 

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Stacey Abrams speaks before a Democratic presidential debate on Nov. 20, 2019, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

By the time Stacey Abrams endorsed Democratic Senate candidate Mike Espy on a virtual fundraising call in late May, her voting rights organization Fair Fight already had full-time staffers in the state for several months.

Abrams, the Mississippi native who became one of the most recognizable Black women in American politics after her narrow defeat in the 2018 Georgia governor’s race, explained why she thought Mississippi and Espy’s candidacy was worth her organization’s efforts.

“It was my decision, the decision of our team, that we were going to be in battleground states,” Abrams said on the May 29 call, a recording of which was obtained by Mississippi Today. “And by God, Mississippi is a battleground state. Because if we can win the Senate in Mississippi, we change the narrative of what is possible. But more importantly, we start to push back on the heart of voter suppression, a state where too much work has to be done to cast a ballot.”

Abrams, breaking down the 2020 Senate race on the call, praised Espy, who’s trying to unseat Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in November. A Democrat has not won a Senate election in modern political history, and Mississippi voters have never elected a Black man to the Senate.

“We are in this shoulder to shoulder, and we’re going to stay with this race all the way to the end because we’re going to be there on the day of victory,” Abrams said. “And that victory is going to come because we’re going to have a man like Mike Espy who sees every Mississippian, who understands the promise of our people and he will do everything in his power to bring that promise to Washington, D.C.”

Later on the call, Abrams discusses growing up in Mississippi and the values that experience instilled in her. She talks about the 2020 Senate race, and what kind of work it will take for Espy to win in November. And she talks about the necessity of statewide candidates going out of their way to reach and represent people of all races, and particularly people of color.

Mississippi Today transcribed Abrams’ comments below, and you can hear the full audio on this week’s episode of The Other Side podcast.

Listen here:

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Stacey Abrams, on the May 29 fundraising call for Mike Espy:

“I grew up in Mississippi. I grew up in Gulfport, 2020 South Street. My parents are from Hattiesburg originally. They moved to Wisconsin, which is where I was technically born. I just remember being cold and eating cheese curds. We moved back to Mississippi by the time I was 3. When they were looking for a place for us to grow up, my parents had to pick the poorest black street on the middle class side of town so we could get zoned into the good schools.

That’s not an unusual situation in Mississippi. It’s not an unusual situation that my parents — two college educated folks, graduates of Tougaloo College. My mother had a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin. And yet they struggled to make ends meet, not because they spent their money wildly, but because in Mississippi, that education didn’t get them everything. Race and gender still played a huge role in determining their capacity. 

My mom and dad taught us that we weren’t allowed to whine about what wasn’t. We had to work for what could be. They had three rules for us: go to church, go to school, and take care of each other. They taught us to go to church because they wanted us to be grounded in a faith that was larger than ourselves. They wanted us to believe more was possible because the world taught us it could be. 

They taught us to go to school because they wanted us to understand education, even if it hadn’t gotten them everything they thought it would. It had gotten them further than anyone they knew. My mother was the first one and only one of her seven siblings to finish high school. My father was the first man in his family to go to college, and he did so despite having undiagnosed dyslexia until he was in his 30s. But they knew education could transform a life, especially a life in Mississippi.

But then they taught us to take care of each other. Part of that was that there were six of us and they needed the free babysitting. But the larger part of it was that the world we lived in, the state we lived in, the community we lived in, that was part of our family and we were responsible for its success or its failure.

We would be taken to go volunteer at soup kitchens and homeless shelters and the juvenile justice center in Gulfport. We’d look at my parents and say, “Why are we helping poor people? We’re poor too.” Mom and dad would say, “Having nothing is not an excuse for doing nothing.” That’s the ethic on which I was raised. That’s the reason I do what I do.

And in 2018, when I stood to be governor of Georgia, when I became the first Black woman in the United States to become the first nominee of a major party to have that job, I did so not because I knew I would get it, but because I knew I had the responsibility to try.

I stand with Mike Espy because he has always understood his responsibility to try. Whether he was a 29-year-old upstart who decided to send a Republican back home, or whether he stood as the secretary of agriculture who helped to address the challenges facing farmers around this country. And when he stood against Cindy Hyde-Smith in 2018 and made her fight tooth and nail to steal an election by telling people lies about who she was and what she would do, he has always been a person who has stood in truth and who has fought for others.

This is an election that’s going to be hard. We know it because we’ve lived there. We have forgotten that there was a time when we could win. We have forgotten what it looks like to be successful. But we’ve seen glimmers in recent days. When I stood to run for governor in Georgia, it was after eight years of not just Republican dominion, but eight years of total Republican control. Democrats had lost the Governor’s Mansion back in 2002, but by 2010 when I stood to be leader of the House, we lost every statewide election, the Senate went to a supermajority, two-thirds majority, Republican, the House was only a few seats away, and the governor had won that election by 10%. And yet eight years later when I stood to run for governor, it wasn’t because I didn’t know how to do math. It was because I knew where I lived and I knew what had changed.

Because I lived in a state much like Mississippi, where poverty was on the rise, not falling. Where lack of access of healthcare was putting lives at risk as we left money on the table. Where we had an incarceration problem that meant the people who could be building our state were instead wasting their lives behind bars because we decided to incarcerate rather than re-educate and allow people to be reentered into our society. We believed in breaking people down, but not in their redemption. We were a state that could not see the future because we were so busy re-litigating the past.

And what I did in 2018 was not run for myself, but run with Georgia. And that’s what Mike Espy intends to do. It’s what we saw him do in 2018. Running with Mississippi, running with Mississippians of every race and every community, talking to them about what’s possible. Not about whose fault it is, and not about who did wrong, but about what can be made right.

Mike Espy stands for the values that we are taught in Mississippi to hold in our heart. That we believe in a faith that stands for everyone and is a shield for everyone, not a sword to strike them down. That we believe in education that should be available for every child, and it should not have to be a fight to ensure that our children can read and write before they’re 18 years old. We believe in a state that should not have people dying in our prisons because of our refusal to simply pay for the upkeep.

And in the midst of COVID-19, in a state that is only 40% African American, we should not have a disproportionate number of people perishing, not because they’re more susceptible to a disease, but because the systemic inequalities mean they’re going to be more vulnerable and less resilient.

We need good leaders to change that. We’re going to face a recovery in 2021, the likes of which we’ve never seen, and we must have people in the Senate who believe in our possibility and believe that recovery should reach every single person. As we watch what happened in Minneapolis and Louisville and Brunswick, we need to know that it’s not that far from what could be happening in DeSoto, Gulfport, Moss Point and Hattiesburg and Petal. We have to be willing to do the work to build the Mississippi we believed can be, and that starts today. 

I told you that in 2010, Nathan Deal, one of the original “birthers” — he was not someone we necessarily thought was heralding a new day in Georgia. But Nathan Deal became governor and won by 10 points. But eight years later, I came within 1.5 points of winning an election, not because we changed narratives and not because I was who I was. But because I said who I was and what I believed, and Georgia agreed. We tripled Latino turnout in the state of Georgia. We increased youth participation rates by 139%. We tripled Asian/Pacific Islander turnout in the state of Georgia. And as I mentioned a little earlier, we increased Black participation by 40%. 

But I want to put that into context. In 2014, Jason Carter, the grandson of Jimmy Carter, ran for governor of Georgia. He came within five points, and he turned out 1.1 million Democrats. In 2018, I turned out 1.2 million Black people because we demonstrated that if we went to their doors, if we called their phones, if we reached out to them by mail, that communities who had been told they would never be heard from would speak up and speak out and would show up if we showed up for them.

But I didn’t just campaign in all the Black communities and brown communities. I campaigned where they filmed “Deliverance.” I went to every part of Georgia, all 159 counties because I understood what Mike Espy understands — that it’s not about what race we are in Mississippi and in the South. It’s about who we want to be and what we think our families deserve. And he understands that saying that you can reach across the aisle isn’t about proving that you can speak Republican. 

It’s about proving that you can speak Mississippi. And being able to go into communities where people don’t expect to see you because they don’t look like you, when we do that work as Democrats, we win. And in fact, in the state of Georgia, I outperformed every single candidate in Georgia since Bill Clinton in increasing the white vote in the state of Georgia. I got 31% of white college educated women to vote for me. That outperformed Michelle Nunn, the daughter of Sam Nunn. I outperformed her, she got 24%, Secretary Hillary Clinton got 25%, I got 31%. We can do this work, and we can do it by showing up, by speaking authentically, but also by investing early. And that’s why I’m on this call. 

We’re now sitting in the end of May heading into June. You’ve had your primaries, and November looks both far away and way too soon. But we know that if we do the work now, that if we invest now in Mike Espy and his vision for Mississippi, that we don’t just change Mississippi, we change the South. And when we change the South, we change America. 

I began my campaign in 2018 intending to become governor. That did not happen. I ran against an architect of voter suppression, someone who put people in jail for using absentee ballots legally. Someone who purged 1.4 million voters, shut down 214 polling places, purged the single largest number of Americans on a single day in U.S. history. And yet, despite being the umpire, the contestant and the scorekeeper, barely eked out his victory. 

And instead closing my eyes and whining about what happened, I got to work. I started Fair Fight, and Fair Fight is operating in Mississippi. When I became the head of Fair Fight, when we founded that organization, I didn’t simply think about what happened to me in Georgia. I thought about what I watched my parents fight for in Mississippi. And so it was my decision, the decision of our team, that we were going to be in battleground states. And by God, Mississippi is a battleground state.

Because if we can win the Senate in Mississippi, we change the narrative of what is possible. But more importantly, we start to push back on the heart of voter suppression, a state where too much work has to be done to cast a ballot. And that’s why I’m so proud of the work of Latoya Thompson, Jarrius Adams, and of Merritt Baria. Three people who are working hard across the state of Mississippi today because we started our work there in 2019 knowing that we had to fight for every vote.

So this is not just about Mike Espy. It’s not just about winning up and down the ballot in the state of Mississippi by turning out voters who no longer believe anyone cares to see them or hear from them. It’s about fighting for what we say we believe as Americans. I believe in our process. I believe in democracy. I refuse to concede my race not because I thought that I won, and could prove it. I didn’t, I admitted he won, according to the laws. But I challenged the laws as they are because they do not serve our people, if any American is denied the right to vote. And what happens in Mississippi, when people try to speak up, is not American.

And so we’re going to fight to make certain that every vote gets cast, and every vote gets counted. We are in this shoulder to shoulder, and we’re going to stay with this race all the way to the end, because we’re going to be there on the day of victory. And that victory is going to come because we’re going to have a man like Mike Espy who sees every Mississippian, who understands the promise of our people and he will do everything in his power to bring that promise to Washington, D.C. 

So join me in making sure that we fill his coffers, we fill his heart, we fill those ballot boxes and we claim victory in November. Thank you so much.”

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Clear skies appear after emerging from tropical rain just north of Gulfport

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. 

The rain sure reminded me of Katrina; it was like driving through a car wash. Fifteen years after the monster hurricane devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I sloshed my way South to celebrate another milestone in its recovery, the new Mississippi Aquarium in Gulfport. I marveled at how much things have changed along Highway 49. Traffic lights have multiplied like rabbits and many of the medians have been cleared (helps with falling trees during hurricanes.) Civilization has moved slightly north since Katrina, too. The city of Wiggins’ population has grown. All the area along and north of Interstate 10 seems busier. There are still plenty of empty lots South of the railroad tracks – the line of demarcation for the storm surge in many places. As my son (my copilot for the trip) and I sat at a traffic light in Gulfport, I pictured all the destruction I had witnessed a decade and a half ago. I opened them again to see a green light and a new Coast.

My first cartoon after Katrina slammed the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Courtesy of the Clarion Ledger.

One of the cartoons I did after Katrina showed the Gulf Coast running a marathon, not a sprint. When I drew it, toilets wouldn’t flush, debris lined the Coast and lives remained in tatters. Volunteers were swarming in, helping pick all the other agencies and government entities whose plans had been washed out into the Mississippi Sound. I knew the Coast would come back.  But what would it look like?

On Friday, I got my answer.

Casinos are now on land (well, their barges were on lang after the storm but not on purpose), restaurants and businesses have come back. Roads and bridges have been repaired. Like I said, many homes, businesses and churches now are north of the railroad tracks. But fancy homes are now filling the long-empty lots. Even the Gulfport Library, which sat as a washed-out husk of a building for over a decade, is repaired.  And right next to it, near where Highways 49 and 90 run into each other, sits The Mississippi Aquarium.

The $100 million Mississippi Aquarium (which broke ground in May of 2018 and is partially funded with BP oil-spill recovery money) contains one-million gallons of both salt and fresh water and sits on 5.8 acres — 10 different lots were cobbled together to make the site. According to their website, it contains “over 80,000 square feet of exhibits and connected by landscaped walkways with plantings representing all seven Physiographic Regions of Mississippi.” (Although I did not see any Kudzu).

My son touches an epaulette shark in the touch tank.

So is it good? Yes. It is very good. My 13-year-old, who loves all things aquariums, enjoyed it as much as the ones in New Orleans, Atlanta and Gatlinburg. We were greeted by alligators, catfish, sharks, cownose rays and 200 other types of aquatic species. There were also numerous friendly and relieved staff members who are just thankful the opening day has arrived.

It is estimated that, as soon as the world gets back to some degree of post-COVID normalcy, it will generate $360 million a year in revenue for the businesses in the Gulfport area. Frankly, it’s a win for the whole Mississippi Gulf Coast.

My son and I listened as the politicians praised the new attraction. Gulfport Mayor Billy Hewes became emotional when he was speaking about it. What mayor wouldn’t? It’s a shining new piece to the recovering Gulf Coast puzzle that will bring visitors and dollars to his city for years to come. Still, I thought about Katrina and the damage it had caused. I looked up at the facility and wondered if it was high enough to survive the next big storm surge that would roar ashore. My guess is that it will.

As we headed home, we drove past the spot where Jim Cantore stood in front of the Treasure Bay Casino pirate ship before the storm and ominously warned us to look around because things wouldn’t look the same again.

Cantore was right. They don’t look the same. But they look better than they did immediately after the storm and are getting better by the day. When I was helping clean off a lot in Waveland after the storm, I asked a fellow coworker how the Coast would ever recover. He smiled, pointed at the debris around us and said, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

The Mississippi Aquarium, a new jewel on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, is a major bite of that elephant.

A crocodile greets you as you enter The Mississippi Aquarium. Alligators are on the other side of the walkway.

The entrance to the main Mississippi Aquarium tank.

Riding up the escalator to the top of the Aquatic Wonders exhibit.

Cownose rays swim by on the top floor of the Aquatic Wonders exhibit.

Epaulette sharks chill in the touch tank. Unlike most sharks, they don’t have to move to be able to breathe.

Next level of the Aquatic Wonders exhibit features a plexiglas tunnel so you can get up and close to the fish (sharks included.)

The Mississippi Aquarium entertains and educates.

SHARK!

A sand tiger shark meanders by the large viewing window.

A cownose ray says hello.

The Goliath grouper can grow up to 1,000 lbs.

There is as much outside as inside at The Mississippi Aquarium. The dolphins, aviary and other tanks are outside.

Former First Lady Deborah Bryant checks out a penguin.

The Mississippi Aquarium has two juvenile alligators, Bonnie and Clyde. This is Bonnie.

Expected to generate $360 million in revenue for the area around Gulfport, The Mississippi Aquarium is expected to be an economic engine for years to come.

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