Friday Jan. 2,
2015
50 cents
Daily Corinthian Vol. 119, No. 2
BY ZACK STEEN zsteen@dailycorinthian.com
The spirit of giving this Christmas season is alive and well in the Alcorn County area. Donations are still needed this year for the 19th Annual Corinth Rotary Club / Daily Corinthian Christmas Basket Fund. A $25,000 fund raising goal was set so 1,000 food baskets could be given to local families on Saturday, Dec. 6. Baskets were given away based upon faith the goal will be reached. So far, $16,364 has been raised, meaning $8,636 still needs to be raised to make the goal. Donations will be accepted through Jan. 9. Recent donations include $100 from Frank and Katie Dalton; $200 from John U. Potts in memory of Mr. and Mrs. T.R. Dilworth and Mr. and Mrs. Leon Potts; $50 from Florence Glisson in memory of Billy Glisson. Contributions to the Christmas Basket Fund can be made “in honor of” or “in memory of” a special person or persons. The tribute will be published in the Daily Corinthian. Donations can be brought by the newspaper office 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday or mailed to: Daily Corinthian, Attn.: Christmas Basket Fund, P.O. Box 1800, Corinth, MS 38835.
Today
Tonight
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90% chance of rain
• Corinth, Mississippi • 20 pages • 2 sections
Crash badly hurts 2 Basket fund tops $16,300
Breezy, rainy
Alcohol and drugs may be to blame for a two-vehicle wreck that injured six people, including two seriously, at the Rienzi crossing in the edge of Alcorn County on New Year’s Eve. Sarah Huggins, 31, of Rienzi, was traveling west bound on HWY 356 around 5:15 p.m. Wednesday night in a 2009 Toyota Camry sedan. As she attempted to cross U.S. Highway 45, Huggins failed to yield to oncoming traffic and pulled into the path of a 2010 Nissan Armada SUV driven by Jeffery Wildmon, 31, of
Booneville. Wildmon’s family -- his 31-year-old wife, Allison, and their two small children -- were passengers inside the SUV. “Wildmon, among with his three passengers, were properly restrained and received only minor injuries from the crash,” said Public Affairs Officer and Trooper Ray Hall. Huggins was airlifted with life threating injuries to North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo. Huggins passenger, Timothy M. Brassfield, 31, of Rienzi, was also airlifted to NMMC with life threating in-
juries. One other passenger, Jennifer Thomas, 28, of Marietta, was uninjured. “Huggins nor any of the occupants in her vehicle were wearing a seatbelt,” said Hall. “Due to physical evidence collected at the scene from Huggins’s vehicle, it appears alcohol and drugs may have contributed to the crash.” Charges are pending after the investigation has been completed. The Alcorn County wreck was one of 33 traffic accidents reported on Mississippi highways on New Year’s Eve.
Legislators: Education will be the hottest topic of 2015 BY ZACK STEEN zsteen@dailycorinthian.com
When the state legislative session begins early next week, education will most definitely be the hottest topic among Jackson political figures. “Education will be a challenge again,” said District 4 U.S. Senator Rita Potts Parks (R-Alcorn, Tippah, Tishomingo). “To do what is best for our young people I believe all options, including Common Core, should be on the table.” As questions about Common Core and whether to fully fund education continue, the Crossroads area’s legislative representatives will provide their opinions during the 90day 2015 session scheduled to
Bain
Carpenter
kick off Tuesday at the capital. District 2 Rep. Nick Bain (D-Alcorn) hopes to continue to reform education in positive ways. “We recently met in the education committee and talked about a number of issues,” he said. “I expect Common Core to be discussed and debated.” The question is whether to change the current Common
Core academic standards the state Board of Education put into place in 2010. A topic of discussion for over a year, Parks Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves (R) said the state’s Common Core academic standards had been hijacked by the federal government in order to control education at the state level. Reeves said he hopes to see a task force created during the upcoming session to create Mississippi’s own academic
Qualifying start shifts to Monday BY JEBB JOHNSTON jjohnston@dailycorinthian.com
The heat of a heavy political year will begin to rise Monday with the opening of candidate qualifying for county, state and legislative races. With Jan. 1 and 2 both declared holidays this year, the start of qualifying shifts to Monday. The first day of qualifying usually brings out a crowd of hopefuls. With Circuit Clerk Joe Caldwell predicting a record number of candidates this year, Monday is likely to be no exception. Several posts anticiPlease see QUALIFYING | 2A
Tourism tax up 9 percent BY JEBB JOHNSTON jjohnston@dailycorinthian.com
Sales activity continued on a brisk pace for the new fiscal year as the city saw growth in its share of sales tax proceeds returned to the city in December. The mid-December deposits reflect sales activity in local establishments during the month of October. The sales tax diversion sent $489,097.24 to the city coffers, an increase of 4 percent ($20,190.25) from a year earlier, while the 2 percent tourism tax on prepared food and lodging generated $101,036.47, a gain of almost 9
Please see EDUCATION | 2A
Please see TAXES | 2A
Man makes lengthy recovery after wreck BY DEBORAH PUGH For the Daily Corinthian
Kevin Miles of Booneville has had quite a year. Things went from normal to devastating in an instant and now, thankfully, to a new kind of normal. On Jan. 25, Miles had just replaced the carburetor on his son’s four-wheeler and was testing it out on the paved road by his house. “I swerved to miss our dogs and the fourwheeler started flipping,” said the 36-year-old father of three. “Or that’s what people tell me what happened. I don’t remember anything from two weeks before the accident until sometime this summer.” The CareFlight medical helicopter crew flew Miles from the scene to North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo, where he underwent multiple surgeries. While he suffered few wounds and only one broken bone (collarbone), he had a traumatic brain injury because he was riding without a helmet. “I’ve wished 100 times over I would have had on a helmet,” he said. “I tell my kids now, I don’t care if you are just riding by the house, you put on a helmet.” Miles spent four months in an induced coma while his brain healed. “We went through about nine critical episodes
where we almost lost him each time,” said his father, Curtis Miles Sr., also of Booneville. “It has been a long, hard struggle. It’s bad to see your child laying there completely helpless.” His son had been a strapping young man who managed several rental properties and had just launched his own heating and air conditioning business. The accident brought all of that activity to a screeching halt. “I lost my voice and my ability to swallow, and I was blind in one eye,” he said. He received all his nourishment through a feeding tube, and he battled infections and seizures. “The first time I saw Kevin, he was non-verbal, unable to move much, and the only way he communicated with me was through blinking his eyes,” said Aurora Wong, M.D., a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician on NMMC’s medical staff. When he was strong enough to be transferred to NMMC’s Rehabilitation Institute, he worked extremely hard every day with physical, occupational and speech-language therapists. “When I first got to Rehab, I was in a wheelchair. It took three people to get me moving — two to hold me up and someone behind me pushing my legs
to walk,” he said. “I could only walk about 10 feet at a time, then I’d have to sit down and rest. Then I could get up and go 10 more feet, then rest again.” “I really expected him to go to a nursing home from the hospital,” Dr. Wong said. “Some people just get really depressed and just give up. But all of our staff believed in him. We worked diligently to improve him medically, physically and mentally.” Coming back from such a devastating injury is slow going. “Our average length of stay in the Rehabilitation Institute is about two weeks,” Dr. Wong said. “But he just kept getting better. We knew he had it in him and kept going. It paid off.” True to his personality, Miles left NMMC shooting a water gun at the staff on his way out. Everyone predicted at least a year to pass before Miles would be walking on his own, but he was determined to prove them wrong. He and his full-time caregiver, JoLeena Nance, practice walking around his property and around nearby Bay Springs Lake. By fall he was walking, or “hobbling” as he calls it, without help. “Until this, I was healthy as a horse and not scared of anybody or anything,” he said. “I’m
Index Religion......2B Classified......3B Comics......9A State......5A
Weather......8A Obituaries......6A Opinion......4A Sports....10A
Please see MILES | 2A
Photo courtesy NMMC
Kevin Miles gets around on his own now after spending months at NMMC with a traumatic brain injury from a four-wheeler accident in January.
On this day in history 150 years ago General John Bell Hood arrives in Corinth from Burnsville. He sets up his headquarters in the Verandah House where he prepares to move the army south to Tupelo. His army is in need of rest and reorganization, but they will not get it here.
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