I met Nancy Green in the early 1970s when I began to do some West-area news reporting and photography for “Dub” Shoemaker, whom I had met years earlier when he was a star reporter for The Jackson Daily News and I was a college news department staffer at sister publication The Clarion-Ledger.
When I would drop by weekly at The Star-Herald office with my news reports and film for Bob Monk to develop, I would see Nancy and get to visit briefly with her. As a cat-lover, she no doubt was amused by the friendly jousting in print in which Bob and I engaged about cats. He professed to disdain them, while I extolled them.
For several years back then, I produced a monthly church newspaper, The West Baptist Herald, which The Star-Herald printed for me, and Nancy was always gracious enough to welcome a copy and comment favorably about it (as she did later when I produced a digital West community newsletter). Her words of approval and support were of tremendous encouragement to me.
In later years, when I became a less-active correspondent, Nancy knew that she could contact me as a “go-to” person for West info, and she could always be counted on to publicize West happenings. She showed up regularly each fall with her camera at the Big Black River Festival in West to take pictures. A few years ago, she called me on Monday morning after the Saturday event and said something happened with her camera and she didn’t have any festival photos for that week’s newspaper and wanted to know if I had taken any and could help her out. I did have pictures and was more than glad to email some to her. She later told me, “You saved us!”
During The Star-Herald ownership and personnel changes in recent years, Nancy provided the steady, stabilizing presence that readers needed. Her gentle, cheerful and kind, helpful nature and her edifying and uplifting stories about people and events endeared her to her “constituents.” She was the “star” in Star-Herald, and the newspaper will never again be the same without her.
If there is a Heavenly-Herald, Nancy will surely be one of its star contributors, writing glowingly and lovingly about her Lord and all the saints in glory.
Praise God for Nancy Green, an everlasting star for sure!
(Jerry Tate, a West native and retired minister and journalist, currently resides in Kosciusko.)
