It was an improbable trip to begin with. A struggling 68-year-old publisher and a 92-year-old private equity mogul traveling across the Mississippi Delta to warn a river city about an impending natural disaster, one which would be the greatest in the nation's history.
It seemed natural for me to drive, being younger. I had four choices: One was my 1985 Alfa Romeo Spider, a convertible, left to me by my father when he died in 1995, two weeks after we drove for hours in the Alfa through the wooded hills of Carroll County talking about life.
I remember telling him that day, “You are really the luckiest man I have ever known. Nothing bad has ever happened to you.” Two weeks later he had his first stay in a hospital — as a corpse.
For years I thought that all his good luck finally caught up with him, but I have since changed my mind. He truly was the luckiest man I have ever known. He never knew what hit him and avoided all the indignities of old age.
My other three choices were my 1965 Mustang which I bought for $500 at age 15, my daughter’s rather beat up 2016 Jeep Compass which she left when she moved to Manhattan or my wife’s 2022 Genesis. I chose the Genesis.
Memories came to me as I pulled into the Williams’ driveway and looked at the beautiful traditional Southern-style home with its massive veranda. It’s a prominent house on Eastover Drive. I can remember first driving by the house and wondering, “Who lives there?”
That question was answered when Big Kelly (as he is known) invited me to play tennis at his home, where he had his own personal clay court. I was young and new to town, writing a column and making an impression. He was sizing me up.
It turns out we would compete fiercely with one another in Hattiesburg where I had purchased a weekly newspaper in the booming suburb of Lamar County. Kelley’s brother-in-law started a competing newspaper and we butted heads for years. Kelley was one of his brother-in-law’s investors.
Slowly but surely, our paths intertwined. We became comrades in arms in the battle against the Kemper lignite coal plant boondoggle. During that long battle we discovered our minds work alike. We quickly realized the plant was doomed. Our combined efforts, mainly Kelley's and many others’, saved the ratepayers of Mississippi $6 billion. I never saw a penny of that money, but it made me feel like the money my parents spent on my education was justified.
Along the way, Kelley became a regular contributor to the Northside Sun and Emmerich websites and publications in 25 other small Mississippi markets. I never need to change a word and he is never wrong. A brilliant mind.
How brilliant? Kelley’s publicly traded company, for which he was CEO, had the greatest return of equity of any publicly traded company in the United States during his tenure. Kelley was the Bernie Ebbers of his era, without the crash and burn.
Foreseeing changes in technology and the economy, he sold his company at the top of the market and became a private investor. You can bet he’s done that well too.
Gemini AI summarizes his resume:
Initial Career Steps: After serving as a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, Williams began his corporate career as an assistant to the president at Tyrone Hydraulics in Corinth, Mississippi.
Rapid Rise: He joined First Mississippi Corp. in Jackson in 1967 as the manager of corporate planning and development. By 1971, at just 37 years old, he was named President and CEO.
NYSE Listing: Under his leadership in 1975, the business became the first Mississippi-chartered corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Diversified Growth: Williams expanded the firm's footprint across multiple sectors including industrial chemicals, agricultural fertilizer, oil and gas, and gold and coal mining.
Record Financial Returns: Throughout the 1970s, the company achieved the highest total return to shareholders among all listed U.S. companies. From 1992 to 1997, it generated a massive 631% return.
Acquisition: He restructured the company to focus on chemicals under the name ChemFirst, Inc., leading it until 2002 when the company was acquired by DuPont.
I have been blessed to have some amazing mentors over the years: Oilman John McGowan, real estate tycoon Leland Speed, insurance magnate Wirt Yerger, Greenwood’s top attorney Donnie Brock among others, but there has been no mentor in my life, save my father, like Kelley Williams, who in intellect and temperament is more like my father than anyone I have known.
During crucial stages of my difficult journey through a difficult time for a vital and challenged news industry, Kelley has given me impeccable advice.
I am embroiled in several massive copyright lawsuits at the forefront of defending intellectual property rights in this country. I was waiting on a settlement to help save my company.
After a meeting with Kelley and others on an unrelated topic, he stuck around, sat me down and shut the door. He told me a story about a speaker he heard once, a Vietnam prisoner of war. All his fellow prisoners died. Only he survived because he was the only one who accepted the fact that it would be years before he got out.
Kelley looked me square in the eyes and said, “Wyatt, you’re in prison and you’re going to die in there unless you start accepting your reality.” Perhaps the best single piece of advice I have ever received. It spurred me into action. I’m not dead yet.
Having four hours of this brilliant mind to myself was a treat. I was not disappointed. The topics swirled as we drove through the flat, expansive Delta passing just a few cars on the fine four lane Highway 49, a testament to our nation’s wealth.
Ugly, harvested corn stalks surrounded us, bronze in the mid-day sun. I remembered the days when the fields would have been as white as snow from budding cotton balls.
Walking into the Greenville Golf and Country Club, Kelley reminisced about all the lunches he had there with his mentor, Leroy Percy, the cousin and adopted son of William Alexander Percy, a true Greenville statesman and gentleman, who wrote the famous book about the Delta, Lanterns on the Levee. Leroy was chairman of the board of First Mississippi when Kelley was CEO.
“That makes Leroy Percy my grand-mentor,” I thought, marveling at yet another blessed tie to this unique chosen land.
The Rotary Club of Greenville was packed and the food delicious. Kelley’s presentation was impeccably prepared. The first screenshot of his PowerPoint was the cover of Lanterns on the Levee.
Kelley explained that men walked up and down the levees at night with lanterns to stop landowners on the other side of the levee from blowing a hole in the levee, thus flooding their neighbor and saving their land.
Kelley posed the question: Who are the men on the levee today, warning of the impending avulsion of the Mississippi River?
Every thousand years the Mississippi River changes course. It’s past due.
Congress knows. That’s why Congress authorized the Corps to build the Old River Control Complex 35 miles south of Natchez in 1954 for $564 million in today’s dollars.
It is designed to prevent the Mississippi River from avulsing (catastrophically changing course) down the Atchafalaya Basin instead of its current course through Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The complex sends 70 percent of the water to New Orleans and the rest down the Atchafalaya.
Providentially, Kelley, with land inside the levees near Natchez, noticed huge flood sediment building up, killing deer, turkeys and natural vegetation leaving barren willows and cottonwoods. Kelley became the canary in the coal mine. The flooding on his land, and throughout Mississippi, is a harbinger of impending disaster, which could kill thousands, wipe out gas pipelines, the grid, which passes through the basin, causing blackouts and destroying trillions in petro plants.
He and renowned plaintiffs’ attorney Don Barrett have marshaled 500 landowners and the state of Mississippi in a lawsuit against the Corps. If the Corps would take action now by dredging and initiating a controlled avulsion, disaster could be averted. Time is running out.
We continued to talk on the drive back to Jackson, reminiscing about our common Greenwood roots. My mind wandered back to an early, simpler time when Greenwood was home, and the newspaper business was flourishing. Talking to Kelley reminded me of the long conversations on drives through the Delta with my father.
We came to the east-west split in Highway 49. I instinctively headed toward Greenwood. “What are you doing?” Kelley blurted. “Oh, sorry,” I said. “My bad,” and I turned the car back on course to Jackson.
