GREENVILLE, Miss. (AP) - The first thing Kerry Potter did upon learning her then-husband was being transferred to Greenville, Mississippi, was pull out a map.
“I didn’t even know where it was,” she said.
The Joplin, Missouri, native had never been to Mississippi, and truthfully didn’t know much about it other than Jackson is the capitol and Tunica is known for its casinos.
Unsure of what to expect, she and her husband, who was being transferred to manage a restaurant, packed up their belongings and headed south to the Delta, with their two children in tow.
Potter didn’t think for one second it was a permanent move.
“In fact, my oldest son was in the first grade when we moved here. For the first month, he would say, ’we are just visiting, right?’ And I would say, ’yes, just visiting,’” she said.
Seventeen years later, Potter is remarried, has a third child and is manager of Planters Bank’s downtown branch. Though her ex-husband moved after the divorce, her oldest son, now 23, decided he wanted to stay in what he now considers “home.”
Transplants to the Delta, or those who have moved here from elsewhere, like Potter, are often overlooked as the focus is on Greenville’s dwindling population.
While it’s visually evident that folks have moved away from the city by the number of vacant houses and boarded-up storefronts downtown - though the city is beginning to glimpse at revitalization - data from the U.S. Census Bureau confirms the steady decline that has been happening in Greenville, and elsewhere in the Delta, for the past decade.
From 2000 to 2012, Greenville’s population has decreased 19.7 percent from 41,633 residents to 33,418.
Despite its struggles to attract and keep businesses, which in turn impacts its population, the city, sitting on the eastern bank of Lake Ferguson with thousands of acres of farmland, has for decades been welcoming so-called outsiders, who come for reasons other than agriculture but have planted their roots here, making it home.
“I don’t know what it would take - maybe a ton of money, I might leave - but anything short of something ridiculous, no way am I leaving. This is home,” said Bill Allen, who moved to Greenville in 1972, when he was appointed district manager of the local Social Security Administration.
“I’m thrilled to see people move here, and I’m sad to see people leave.”
Allen, a Delta native who was born “over in the big town of Silver City,” as he put it, had been to Greenville growing up, shopping and eating at Doe’s Eat Place, but it was not a city he was all too familiar with, he said.
After graduating from Mississippi State University and taking a federal job with the Social Security Administration, Allen found himself traveling from Tupelo to Natchez to Atlanta before being transferred to Greenville.
“My goal was always to get back to Mississippi, and hopefully back to the Delta, but Greenville wasn’t the goal,” he said.
For many, Greenville, in the land of soybeans and cotton, blues music and storytelling, was going to be a pit stop. But in each person’s story, something kept them here, and most agreed: It’s the people.
“I’ll always be an outsider,” said Rick Byler, who moved in 1990, after taking a job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Stoneville. “But the people are the No. 1 thing about being here. Everyone was accepting, and everyone has taken me in as a friend.”
A city that at first can be deceiving, seeming quiet and mundane, is in actuality a place that has a giving community that wants to celebrate its rich history, culture and people.
“The Delta does grow on you,” said Amy Walker, a Mississippi native who moved to Greenville in 1994 from North Carolina. “It’s so different from where I grew up in South Mississippi. It’s the people here, the nice, genuine people.”
Walker moved to Greenville in the mid-1990s, when she accepted a job as an emergency room nurse at Delta Regional Medical Center, where she is now vice president of quality and interim chief nursing officer.
“I had never been to the Delta before,” she said.
New to the Delta - and unaware of the lack of stops along the highways - Walker actually ran out of gas on her trip.
“But a nice farmer came over to my car and put gas in it,” she said.
Leaving to take another nursing job in Memphis, Tennessee, Walker said she didn’t plan on returning. It was the friends she made, however, that brought her back to Greenville in 1998.
“When I left, I really didn’t think I would come back,” said Walker, who now has three children and is married to a Greenville native. “I could have gone anywhere (with nursing), but I came back here because I liked it.”
It’s not uncommon for folks to have opportunities to leave - to move to other cities or states with higher average incomes. From 2008-2012, the average per capita income was $16,333 in Greenville and $20,670 in the state, according to the census. The median household income for the same four years was $28,600 thousand in Greenville and $38,800 in Mississippi.
“Most people . have opportunities to leave,” Allen said. “I had opportunities, but I was never interested in that. . When you’re happy, you’re not looking for something else. I was happy.”
Of course, he had to go out and make Greenville feel like home, he said.
And those who couldn’t, or didn’t try and ended up moving, he called “quitters.”
“I’m not a quitter,” he said. “You’re the one who makes a place a good home. I enjoyed my church; I had good friends.”
When she moved to Greenville in 1997, Potter said it was difficult and she had to make an effort to make it feel like home.
“To be honest, when I first moved here, I didn’t understand it all,” Potter said. “We had no family here, didn’t know anybody. . It was different from where we came from.”
Now she knows what “cut the lights on” and “mash that button” mean, and she knows that a “buggy” is not an insect crawling in the kitchen but instead is used to hold groceries at the supermarket.
“I had to get used to it,” she said, “but now, I call it home. I have my new, blended family. . We could get up and move, but we stay here because of friends and family.”
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Information from: Delta Democrat-Times, https://www.ddtonline.com
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