OurTupelo

Today I went to I-Heart Media to meet Melonie Kight. She has a degree in commercial art and worked with U.S. Department of Agriculture. She got to help create the slides for the scientist as they studied bowevils. When she moved to Tupelo she was working with United Way. A volunteer with United Way was a manager at I-Heart media and offered her a sales position. The rest is history.

She loves meeting new people with her job and helping a clients business grow. When she meets with any client they do a Client Needs Assessment. This will help her to develop a marketing commercial specific to that customer. Her clients range from promoting events to promotions to advertising to digital sales. Her favorites are writing creative lifestyle commercials.

Melonie has learned in her years of media sales that the strangest thing can effect your economy. She has also learned that you may think you know what a business does until you sit down to interview them. She advises anyone looking to get into media sales to work hard and always be a good listener. You get out of the job what you put into it. But number 1 is to just have fun.

She believes that Tupelo is a small city with a big attitude. There are always things going on and things to do. In fact, she is involved with a-lot of the event committees including Friends of the Park and the 4th of July Committee. She would bet that people didn’t know that their I-Heart stations have stayed the same format throughout the years. She also loves when people learn that the stations they love are played here in Tupelo, MS. Their six stations include Wizard 106, KZ103, 92.5 The Beat, Big 99.3, WKMQ and The Alt 107.7. I-Heart radio is also the biggest podcaster in the country. That’s your trivia for the day.

This afternoon I met with Fire Chief Thomas Walker. Mr. Walker is from Iuka, MS but moved to Tupelo in 1998 to be an arson investigator for the Tishomingo Co Sheriff Department. He was an investigator for 6-7 years before being promoted to Fire Chief. Mr. Walker fell in love with the job of fire fighter at the age of 10. When he was old enough he became a volunteer and the rest is history.

He advises anyone looking to pursue this career to take 2 years of community college out of HS. Sign up for public service and public safety classes. Also get your EMT license. Apply for any and all departments. Don’t be picky but get your foot in the door. You have to start somewhere. He says that Columbia Southern has firefighting degrees that you can get online.

The Tupelo Fire Departments motto is “We Help People.” This is what Mr. Walker loves about his job. He knows that firefighters see people on their worst day. It is their job to help them get through this day. Part of the departments core training is teaching value and compassion to be that shoulder someone needs. Mr. Walker says that “God is in complete control and we are here to play a small part.”

Mr. Walker loves Tupelo for their opportunities and the people. His children have grown up here and excelled in school and sports. He says that when you live in Tupelo that there is no denying the Tupelo Spirit. It will inspire you all the time.

He loves his team and loves how hard they work. They work in 24 hour shifts and are constantly working on maintenance, cleaning hoses, training or running calls. Once their daily duties are done, then they can rest. I have seen in their down time they came a pretty mean grill. There are a total of 7 fire houses in Tupelo and they are all full of heroes.

Matt Laubhan is from central Kansas. He never thought he would be living in Tupelo, MS, but as he said, “Sometimes God intervenes.” He and his wife Emily both work in the news and were able to move together to the same station.

Matt loves that they were able to move to a safe and vibrant town such as Tupelo, MS. He says that is a rarity in the TV business, but says he has really enjoyed raising his family here.

Ironically, even though he grew up in Kansas, he said he was scared of tornados. (I mean, they had the most famous tornado from the Wizard of Oz!) But luckily, what started as fear turned into curiosity and respect.

He loves that his job allows him to save people lives by keeping them up to date with the weather and upcoming storms. He very much understands that people can’t always predict the weather; that is up to science and God. But the science part allows him to predict the weather in ways that we previously weren’t able to.

He has also learned throughout this job that humility is important. “About the time you think you’ve got it all figured out, God sends a curveball, reminding you how little you really do know.”

The reason for this photo location is that this was part of the path of 2014 tornado. Matt had an amazing part in that story of keeping the city informed of the tornado’s path. I will let him tell that story because it was quite remarkable:

“We moved here in April 2011. My first day on air was April 14, 2011. On April 27, 2011, less than 2 weeks later, the largest tornado outbreak in US history occurred, including an E-F5 tornado in Smithville, an E-F5 tornado in Philadelphia, and an E-F5 tornado in Hackleburg/Phil Campbell, Alabama. There is no question in my mind that outbreak was the reason why God picked us up and moved us here. Because of the absolutely massive nature of the 2011 outbreak, people often lump the Tupelo tornado in with the outbreak.

The Tupelo E-F3 tornado occurred on April 28, 2014, three years and one day later. Both outbreaks were obvious a week before and myself and our meteorologists were screaming from the rafters that bad tornadoes were possible.

When the tornado hit, some of the tornado sirens did not sound. It was clearly visible from our tower cam, and we did street by street coverage of it as it moved through the city. It cut off power throughout town including at the TV station and severed our downstream internet connection for hours, leaving us blind for an hour. It knocked out DIRECTV, Dish, and cable, yet thankfully we continued to broadcast from our over the air transmitter, and folks could watch us online because of our amazing support staff.

No one died in the Tupelo tornado, although one woman did hydroplane during the storm. It has taken parts in the city years to recover. Unfortunately others died in tornadoes that occurred in Winston County later that day.

It was not the largest or strongest tornado in Tupelo history — those descriptions go to the 1936 tornado, which is one of the deadliest on record — but the lack of fatalities was truly God’s grace, and a testament to the people of Tupelo taking the warnings seriously.”

I will leave you with this last piece of advice from Matt : “If you ask the Lord and he is willing, only you can kill your dream before it begins. People can tell you that you can’t do it, and people can shame you for it, but it’s your dream, and no one will live it and make it fly like you can.”

I met Don Knight this afternoon, the owner of Johnnies Drive-Inn. Johnnies is the oldest restaurant in town at 75 years old. Everyone knows it was one of Elvis’ favorite spots. There is even an Elvis booth. And yes they serve the peanut butter and banana sandwich.

Mr. Knight has been in the restaurant business since he was 16. He started working for his mom and dad. He learned a valuable lesson then from his friend Bill Elmore. Mr. Elmore said that it is always a 1 on 1 relationship and that you should always thank the customers to show that you appreciate them. Mr. Knight will ask you to call his hand if he doesn’t tell you thank you.

Mr. Knight loves that he gets to meet new people everyday. He will say its a very demanding business but good food and service are top key. He believes one of the main reasons they are still here is that they never forget to cater to their customer. The customer should always be first. He knows all his regulars by name and by car. He also makes sure that he never serves anything he wouldn’t eat himself.

The biggest thing he has learned from this job is that everyday is a new day. If you got mad yesterday, just forget it and start the day fresh.

He has had a lot of Elvis fans come by to see the restaurant and the booth. A lady asked him one time if they collect names of all their visitors. That’s the day they started. Anyone that stops by can sign it or write a little story. He now has 16 full books and has had visitors from all countries. He has even had a few celebrities come by like Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top and Ronnie McDowell.

I met with Police Chief Bart Acquirre today. Chief Acquirre is from Wichita, KS. His father was a steak salesman and they moved here when he was in the 6th grade.

Chief Acquirre has always been a gun collector and interested in guns so he went to be a firearms expert and study forensics. He got his masters in Science at the University of Alabama and then went to the training academy.

He started as a reserve officer, moved to dispatch with Lee County, and then was hired as a Lee Co Sheriff. He has also worked in the medical, legal, death investigation branch.

His most interesting case was being called to house where a dog dug up human remains in the front yard.

Chief Acquirre says that law enforcement has to be like a ministry. God has to lead you to it because you are there to serve your fellow man. You have to love what you do.

He says that God has been working in his life for 36 years through law enforcement. It gives him pleasure that he can serve Him and the people through this job.

Being in law enforcement has taught Chief Acquirre many things such as: patience, humility, and open mindedness.

An interesting fact about the Tupelo police department is that their building came from an undercover investigation. They worked with the FBI for 5 years to investigate cigarettes being distributed out of this building. At the end of it all, they seized airplanes, cars, bank accounts, corporate accounts. The investigation covered 26 states and over 50-60 defendants. The FBI shared some of the funds with Tupelo Police Dept to help with the building fund. The city gave the rest. And it is a really cool building.