Utica Area News

Sharon Henriques, wife of Rev. Dr. Rocky Henriques of Utica Baptist Church, Utica, passed away on December 18, 2021, after a long and courageous battle with cancer and its complications. Arrangements are incomplete at this time, but church members report that she will be interred in a graveside service with her mother and brother in Indiana. A memorial service will be at a later time. Sharon was incapacitated for a long time due to the cancer, and Dr. Rocky was her caregiver. He himself is also a sufferer of severe arthritis. Prayers and concern for them both, and their children and grandchildren are asked for at this time.

Merry Christmas to all! I hope you had a peaceful and happy time already this Christmas and will for the remaining holiday time with upcoming New Years 2022. Most of you, at least the men, will be watching the Bowl games that have already started, and will continue well into January. A lot of us females enjoy the Bowl games of at least our home colleges, and I try to watch all of the SEC games, which have not yet begun.

Almost all of the SEC colleges earned rights to play in a Bowl. Vanderbilt is the only school I can think of that did not. I used to cut out a list of the Bowls from the paper each year, but have found none published this year. There are 42 Bowls being played by 84 teams. So far, Jackson State University is the only Mississippi team to have played, and they were defeated in the Celebration Bowl, after their magnificent season of 11-1 and the SWAC championship. Their coach Deion Sanders is already out recruiting for his next years’ players, trying to draw players to his black-majority college and away from the bigger colleges.

As the year is winding down, the Earth is seeing a new increase in the coronavirus released in China two years ago, with another variant. So far, 276,309,020 people have contracted the coronavirus and 5,371,841 have died. This variant was found in South Africa and is very fast spreading, to the point of shutting down almost all travel from Africa and Europe to the rest of the world. The bad news is it has already reached the USA and Canada. The good news is that if you have been vaccinated, you are not likely to die from it. You may be hospitalized with what is now called the Omicron variant, but it is not as bad as the Delta variant or the original coronavirus. It is just one more warning to people who are unvaccinated to get their shots.

Moderna, an American company, produces one of the vaccines, and so far by all tests run, it is the strongest in antibody production and in duration. Mississippi was one of the states that gave a lot of Moderna shots, and it has played to our advantage. The USA is reporting 51,115,304 people infected with 825,112 deaths, but Mississippi only has 524,629 infections reported with 10,387 deaths. I think this is due to our smaller population and our medics’ skills in saving us.

All of us have lost friends and family to the virus, many by not being vaccinated in time. If you have not been vaccinated, it is not too late, so go get your free shots being given by doctors, clinics, Walmart, Target, Walgreens, CVS, and other places. In my opinion, you should ask to get the Moderna shot if you can, and the Moderna booster even if you took some other kind of vaccine earlier on. It does not hurt to have taken J&J or Pfizer first then a Moderna booster later.

I am hearing all kinds of Christmas plans on facebook but none I would repeat here until all trips are done and everyone is back home. There is a reason for this that is a sign of our times. None of us can afford to let the wrong folks know we will not be home, so that our homes are wide open for trouble. Better to report after the fact vacations, homecomings, Christmas gatherings, etc. So tell me again next week, if you had a big happening at your place.

Wreaths Across America is underway right now, in which volunteers are placing a green wreath on the grave of any veteran in America for the holidays. I did this in past years at Utica and Lebanon, but am not physically able to do it this year. I am hoping somebody else is picking up the slack. Charla Lewis from Brandon is helping put wreaths there and in Crystal Springs. I asked her if she would also look at Utica, but she is not from Utica and would need help. Please, some of your Uticans place wreaths for the rest of us who can’t.

While I am thinking about such, I have always put up the flags on the big poles as well as around the memorial, at the Utica Community Veterans Memorial in the front of the Utica Cemetery since it was built in 1999. They need replacing at least twice a year, more in a bad storm year. I left al the big flags I had with the Christian Church office. Bob Currie and others picked up the slack this year and put up new flags on the big poles. The smaller flags are at my house, and were not put up for that reason. There are a lot of such details, such as cleaning out the flower beds at the front wall of the cemetery, that I worry about but at present cannon help. If anybody wanted to do the community and me a Christmas gift, please take on one of these chores that help keep the town and the cemetery looking better.

Leon Stewart (Utica Class of 1961) and Bob Currie (Utica Class of 1963) have been working on Find-A-Grave projects, and they are closing in on putting a GPS ID on each identified grave at Utica. If you have any relatives, friends, or ancestors buried there (or in any other area cemetery) that may not have a marker, please let either of them, or the Cemetery Association, know and give an idea of where that grave may be located. They have been searching for lost ones people have reported, and in a lot of cases, found stones sunk under the dirt and grass. I know there are baby graves as well as adult ones that have never had stones.

I recorded some of those years ago when I recorded that cemetery in the 1970s and 1980s, and now the funeral home marker or whatever else was there is gone. Leon is doing the same thing for Bear Creek Cemetery where a lot of his ancestors are buried, so if you have unmarked or broken stones there, please let him know. His e-mail is madisonjuneau@aol.com.

There are still a lot of sick folks in our community, listed each week in the churches’ bulletins. Not all get put in there, or have been listed so many times that people have stopped noticing. Please don’t do that. People like Fred Cessna, Patsy Puckett Boyd (Utica Class of 1958), the Henriques, Bertie Mae Brown Young (Utica Class of 1950), Linda Reed Fisher (Utica Class of 1961), and a lot of others need your prayers and concern. Not just now in this special Season, but for the long haul.

Don Ray Boyd (Utica Class of 1956) just told me that his sister-in-law Patsy Boyd is coming home for a few hours’ visit most weeks, and that is helping her spirits. She has not gotten much better physically, but she is a tough lady and is fighting her paralysis in every way she can. Husband Larry (Utica Class of 1961) and kids are still not allowed to go into her rehab center because of the coronavirus restrictions.

My brother Thomas Collins III (Utica Class of 1955) and his entire family are in the process of moving from Arizona to Rankin County MS and will get unpacked in 2022. That is my good news of the season. The Landins have already had our Christmas gathering last Saturday the 18th, so Santa Claus can make it to my great grandkids’ house without wondering where they are sleeping.

How many of you in a quiet moment or in family gatherings think of your early childhood Christmases? Every year, it comes to mind at my house. Every Christmas Eve, the Collins family would go to my Aunt Eleanor Collins Wright’s home in Crystal Springs. In those days, parts of Highway 27 were still gravel, bridges bad, etc. so it was a long trip going and coming for kids. We were not allowed to open any gifts until we got home. And Santa Claus sure was not coming with us being in Crystal Springs and not on the farm at Utica!!

We all got a present each of clothes or such from our parents, and Santa Claus brought us one gift each plus our stockings. We would hang up my father’s socks so we could each have a big stocking! Stockings were filled with an apple, an orange, a banana, pecans and other nuts, and an equal number of fireworks per stocking so that Santa didn’t short anybody. We spent the day playing with our present or just playing, and that night we shot all of our fireworks. We would stand on the front porch or in the front yard to shoot roman candles, little rockets, and assorted other things and run all over the yard with sparklers. I always thought everybody else in our community pretty much did the same.

I did not find out until I was in college that Santa delivered more to some kids than others, and we at Utica got the short end of that delivery! We were happy, and we did not know what others really did. Let me know what your childhood Christmases were like. I remember one year in the late 1940s that it was so warm on Christmas Eve that we played on swings in the yard in shorts and no coats. Christmas Day was the same, and my brother Thomas got a bicycle that he and Travis took turns riding without having to worry about mud.

I watched Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus align this past week (December 17-19), with Mars and Mercury just at the horizon. At the same time, there was Comet Leonard passing through. These were so bright I spotted them with just my eyes, and told my son Tom to see what he could see. He got out the binoculars and also checked on line, then reported what I just wrote. Even with Earth’s atmosphere obscuring a lot of lights in space, I could still see these. There are a lot of nights we can see the Space Station, and at first I thought that was what it was, but the lights did not move. No movement meant no SS or no airplane, and that is when I knew it was something special. These will not happen again in our lifetimes, and most for at least another 500 years.

I am still looking to hire someone from Utica to come get me, or for somebody in Huntsville to take me hone, if you know of someone who would or you yourself would. Please let me know your happenings, good or bad, before next week, and we will make it Utica news!