West Alabama Watchman’s Top 13 stories of 2013
We at the West Alabama Watchman combed through 52 weeks of news as we prepared to put together our 2013 retrospective. It was our goal to assemble the Top 13 most important stories of 2013.
As we did, we were reminded that 2013 was a year defined largely by loss. Our community was forced to bid farewell to former civic leaders as well as some of its youngest and brightest over the last 12 months.
As we recount the Top 13 stories of 2013 and look back on the year that was and prepare with great hopefulness for the year that lies ahead, let us be sure to remember the families that were so profoundly impacted by the events of the last 12 months.
1. Gone Too Soon – Tragedy struck May 10 for the Demopolis community as Cody Webb lost his life in a car accident on his way to school. Beloved by his classmates at Demopolis High School, Webb had already overcome a great deal of adversity in his life and was thriving as a member of the DHS football and soccer teams. Less than six months later, our community’s sorrows increased as a Sept. 1 accident took the lives of C.J. Boykin and Anthony Robinson. Boykin was only 12 and was a well-liked seventh-grader at Demopolis Middle School. Robinson had basically been Mr. Linden during his high school career. A standout athlete in football and basketball, Robinson signed as a defensive back with the University of West Alabama in February 2013. While there will likely be debate as to why these stories top our list, we put them this high because of how profoundly they impacted the communities of Demopolis and Linden. These two stories were the most read in 2013 by a long shot.
2. Bidding Farewell – Demopolis lost two former civic leaders in 2013 with the passing of Austin Caldwell, who served as the city’s mayor for 19 years, and Dr. William Wesley Hill, who served as the city schools’ superintendent for 27 years. Caldwell passed away March 23 at the age of 86. Hill passed Oct. 15 at 73. And while both losses were impactful in their own right, it is the measure of the work these men did in their lives that has and will continue to have long-reaching effects.
3. Congress Calls It Quits – Demopolis City Councilman Mitchell Congress tendered his resignation to City Hall Jan. 10. Congress had earned re-election in August 2012 and began his second term Nov. 5 before citing health concerns as his reason for resignation in January. Less than a month later, the council appointed Nathan Hardy to fill the District 2 seat.
4. The Deliverance of Labor and Delivery – The Bryan W. Whitfield Memorial Hospital board of directors voted in April to keep the medical facility’s labor and delivery department open indefinitely. A unit that had been on the chopping block for some time got a long-term stay after an April meeting in which dozens of supporters turned out to plead the case for sustaining the unit.
5. Alabama Accountability Act – With the most controversial legislation to come out of Montgomery in decades, the state’s education community was sent into turmoil during the spring. The passing of the Alabama Accountability Act would allow parents to transfer their children from “failing” public schools to “non-failing” public or private schools and get a $3,500 per-child tax credit to boot. But what got the attention of most was a list of potentially failing schools that was circulated by Senate Republicans. That list included every Marengo County school except those within the Demopolis City Schools system. When the dust began to settle in June, it became apparent that only four Marengo institutions were classified as failing. But just what kind of long-term impact this legislation will have locally has yet to be determined. Our feeling is that it could be profound, hence the high placement on this list.
6. The New Face of Commerce – We lumped two stories into one for this one as we feel their paths will be in many ways conjoined moving forward. A group of local business owners announced in July that it was forming the Demopolis Area Business Council. In October, Demopolis Area Chamber of Commerce executive director Jenn Tate stepped down after three years. In November the Chamber board hired Michael Kennedy as its new executive director. The Chamber saw a complete overhaul when Laurie Young resigned shortly thereafter. The Chamber board later hired Mallie Quarles in her place. Suffice it to say, 2013 saw great changes to the landscape of the city’s fundraising and business development arm.
7. Realigning Principals – The Demopolis City Schools Board of Education sent a few shockwaves June 7 when it announced it would be swapping two of its principals. The board voted to send Demopolis High School principal Leon Clark to U.S. Jones Elementary School and 15-year USJ principal Dr. Tony Speegle to DHS.
8. Murder in the City – Oct. 26 saw the first Demopolis murder since 2008 when Travis Doniel Wesley shot and killed Lequinton Montrell Lomax. Wesley turned himself in five days later.
9. Missing Woman – Maggie Lean Wright, 57, of Demopolis went missing Dec. 21 after leaving an event at the Demopolis Civic Center. The Demopolis Police Department would later canvass an area in an organized search for Wright that turned up no results. Sunday, Dec. 29 saw a body found in the Tombigbee River near the Demopolis Yacht Basin. There is still no word on whether the body is Wright or what the cause of death may be.
10. Tragedy and Triumph – Local youth Denzel Robinson was riding his bicycle after school Jan. 23 when he was struck by a drunk driver. What ensued was medical trauma that left Robinson in Children’s Hospital in Birmingham for months. Robinson’s mother, Emma, was told her comatose son would never regain neurological function, much less be able to walk again. In one of our favorite stories of the year, we reported in October that Denzel Robinson is back on his feet, literally. While the 15-year-old has plenty of uphill battles left ahead of him, he has been working with our friends at Genesis Rehab and he is walking again.
11. Harrison’s Plight – Much of the Demopolis community spent a large portion of 2013 rooting for, praying for and raising funds for Amanda Harrison, a Westside Elementary School teacher who found herself fighting for her life after contracting encephalitis. Harrison’s road to recovery has not been an easy one, but the prognosis at the end of 2013 was far brighter than that which she was given during the summer months.
12. Closing the Book – The family of Demopolis native Ralph McNeill could finally get some measure of closure in August. McNeill’s murder in Jan. 2011 quickly became one of the state’s highest-profile capital murder cases. August saw the conviction of David Nash, who will spend the rest of his life in prison. Nash’s conviction followed the guilty pleas of Serena English and Jeremy Riley in the case, which came earlier in the year.
13. Pride of the Longhorns – Marengo Academy took home a fourth consecutive softball state championship in May as the Lady Longhorns drilled Lakeside School 8-2 to cap a 27-3 season. And while that would have been enough to land the school on this list, the football team captivated its community in November when it beat Restoration Academy 31-28 in the AISA Class A state title game to polish off a 13-0 season in which it never trailed.