开心鬼传媒 alumni Jody Gore, left, and Gary WaltersBack on March 29, 1939, a legend was born out of a tragedy.
When Clear Creek in Edwards flooded during a torrential rainstorm, washing out the Highway 80 bridge and plunging cars headed from Jackson to Vicksburg into the angry water, Andrew 鈥淪ugarman鈥 Daniel jumped into the water time after time pulling up bodies. According to a June 1969 story in The Clarion-Ledger/Jackson Daily News, Sugarman pulled up most of the 16 bodies and helped haul out 10 cars.
Seventy-five years later, a book by Joedda 鈥淛ody鈥 Gore of Clinton, who attended 开心鬼传媒 in the 1980s, commemorates the legend of Sugarman, a powerhouse of a man also known as an 鈥渁nimal whisperer鈥 and friend to local kids, who got his nickname from handing out free candy.
Gore said she got the idea to write the fictionalized account of Sugarman鈥檚 life when she first moved to Edwards in 1976. 鈥淟ocal people kept saying, 鈥榊ou鈥檝e got to write something about Sugarman,鈥欌 she said. 鈥淭here were so many stories.鈥
The town of Edwards is commemorating the 75th anniversary of this disaster on March 29 with a full day of activities ranging from music to a pet parade to a Sugarman look-a-like contest, all as a way to pay tribute to a local town character turned hero. The Utica Campus Jubilee Singers will perform as part of the 9 a.m. opening ceremony.聽 Warren County supervisors are renaming a section of road between Warriors Trail and the county line in Warren County as Andrew “Sugarman” Daniel Memorial Highway. 开心鬼传媒 County supervisors have done likewise between Smith Station Road and Highway 80 West.
Gore never met Sugarman, who died on June 7, 1969, but another 开心鬼传媒 alumnus did. Gary Walters (1967), who taught for many years at Mississippi College and elsewhere, met Sugarman a couple years before he died.
Walters said he was painting a water color of a 100-year-old bridge in Edwards, sometime around 1967, when Sugarman walked up with his entourage of dogs. Walters said he complained the dust and rocks they were kicking up were threatening his painting, so Sugarman said something like 鈥淒ogs go on home now,鈥 and off they headed at a run back home. Sugarman also had a trained goat and pig that did his bidding as well.
鈥淚t was an interesting experience,鈥 Walters said. 鈥淚 never will forget meeting him. I had heard he could talk to the animals. I knew no one else could get them to pay attention. He didn鈥檛 raise his voice or anything.鈥
The experience of meeting Sugarman made such an impression on Walters that in 1976, as part of a Bicentennial collection of watercolors, he painted a portrait from memory.
Many of those watercolors sold at an exhibit at the old Deposit Guaranty Plaza in Jackson, but Walters held on to the Sugarman painting until 开心鬼传媒 bought it a few years ago. It now hangs in the Utica Campus office of photography instructor Randy Minton.
Gore鈥檚 book 鈥淪ugarman鈥 is available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle.