Archie Manning's roots and legacy.
Someone, someday, should write a book or shoot a documentary about how small-town Mississippi has shaped so many of our state’s most treasured icons – people such as William Faulkner from New Albany, Morgan Freeman from Charleston, William Winter from Grenada, Willie Morris from Yazoo City, Medgar Evers from Decatur, and Leontyne Price and Ralph Boston from Laurel.
The tiny Sunflower County town of Drew spawned and nurtured the most popular and beloved athlete in Mississippi history, Archie Manning. At the close of the 20th century the Clarion Ledger, then Mississippi’s largest newspaper, conducted a poll to determine the state’s greatest athlete of the previous 100 years.
It wasn’t a scientific poll, but it was telling, and thousands upon thousands participated. The winner, with approximately 70% of the vote? Ole Miss and New Orleans Saints QB Archie Manning. It wasn’t close.
This is a state that had produced Jerry Rice and Walter Payton in football, that has produced three-time Olympic medalist Ralph Boston in track and field and so many other splendid world-class athletes. Just one guy got 70% of the votes, nearly 30 years after he moved away from the state.
There’s an old African proverb – “it takes a village to raise a child.” For Elisha Archibald Manning III – skinny, red-haired, and freckled as a child – that village was Drew, slap dab in the middle of the Mississippi Delta. Manning will tell you Drew molded who he is and rallied around him when he lost his father, tragically, as a 20-year-old.
“Drew was a little bitty place much like Andy Griffith’s Mayberry. For me, Drew was perfect,” Manning said during an interview at his New Orleans condo in June. “You literally could walk all over town. As kids, we did. Back then, Drew had four traffic lights including the one out on Highway 49. But two of the three in town had only red and green lights, no yellow or no caution light. Never seen that anywhere else.”
Manning chuckled, clearly enjoying the memory, before continuing to paint the picture of his hometown. “We had four gas stations, two drugstores, and both of those had soda fountains,” Manning said. “We had one barber shop with three barbers, one with hands that really shook. When it was your turn, you went to the first open chair. I always kinda prayed I wouldn’t get the one with the shaky hands.”
Manning, who recently turned 75, was born on May 19, 1949. According to the 1950 census, Drew was home to 1,681 folks, including one baby boy who would become one of the most famous football players and then football fathers in America.
“We had two cafes and neither one was open past 6 or 7 in the evening, so if you wanted to eat out after that, you went to Cleveland 18 miles away,” Manning continued. “You wouldn’t believe it if you went to Drew now, but we had a Main Street that was really active. I mean, every storefront was occupied and busy. On Saturday nights, when the farmers and country folk came to town it was like Mardi Gras. It was a happening.”
When we were growing up, we didn’t do much of anything except play ball – football, basketball and baseball. Archie was really good at all of them. He was gifted, yes, but he worked at it and, man, he loved to compete.
In 1950s Drew, as in much of small-town Mississippi, social life revolved around church. In Drew, the Baptist and Methodist churches were side by side. The Mannings were church-going Baptists, and Archie received a pin for his 14 years – 728 Sundays – of never missing Sunday school.
“I enjoyed it, I mean, I really liked going,” Manning said, smiling. “Now, vacation bible school, that was something else. I would much rather have been playing ball with my friends, but I did it every summer.”
“When we were growing up, we didn’t do much of anything except play ball – football, basketball and baseball. Archie was really good at all of them,” said Steve Clark of Oxford, Archie Manning’s friend since both were in diapers. “He was gifted, yes, but he worked at it and, man, he loved to compete.”
Physically, especially size- and strength-wise, Archie was a late bloomer. But when he bloomed, he was, in a word, special.
Paul Pounds, now retired and living in Columbia, moved to Drew in 1966 to become the football coach for Manning’s senior season. Pounds remembers seeing Archie for the first time in a gymnasium playing hoops. Pounds said Manning probably weighed 150 pounds at the time. And what did Pounds think?
“I thought the first thing everybody thought the first time they saw that skinny, red-headed kid,” Pounds said. “I thought: This kid is a natural. I didn’t know the half of it yet.”
He would learn. So would anybody who ever watched Archie Manning play ball.
Where Archie Manning was concerned, it really did take a village. He was the son of Elisha Archibald “Buddy” Manning, Jr. and Sis Manning. Buddy ran a farm supply business. Sis was a homemaker, and later a legal secretary. The Manning family, including older sister Pam, lived in a humble three-bedroom, two-bath home, across the street from Drew High School. As a toddler, Archie would stand in the front yard and watch the older kids play games.
“One of my earliest memories was that I could not wait to be out there, across that street, playing ball,” Manning said.
Many of the school’s faculty, staff, and coaches lived nearby. Often, the football, basketball, and baseball coaches were next-door neighbors.
“My daddy would always welcome them to the neighborhood, help them move in, cook steaks for them Saturday nights,” Archie said. “Those coaches didn’t know it yet, but they would pay for all that help. I’d pester the heck out of them to play catch or throw the football with me. When they’d go off to scout games, I’d beg to go, and they’d always take me. It was an ideal situation for me. I learned so much.”
Buddy Manning was the youngest of five Manning children who moved to Drew from Crystal Springs. They were a farming family until Buddy broke the mold and went into retail.
“I had two aunts, Mamie and Lucy, and two uncles, Peyton and Andy Frank,” Manning said. “None of the four of them ever got married. They lived on a farm out from Drew. They were farmers, not planters. They worked. My uncles were sweet guys, who loved sports. My aunt Mamie had dementia early on, and my aunt Lucy, who was outspoken and farm-girl tough, took care of Mamie and her brothers. She ran the show. She was a tough ol’ bird. None of them ever missed one of my games.”
Archie worked and played on that family farm. “They had a basketball goal, a peach basket, actually, nailed to the barn. They had balls and bats.”
Little Archie enjoyed the playing much more than he did the farming. “I remember telling my Aunt Lucy that I wasn’t going to be a farmer, that I was going to be a city boy,” Archie said. “She said, ‘Well, we’ll see about that.’”
And we have.
Archie and sister Pam were both active in 4H Club as teens. Archie says one of the most useful life lessons he learned came from the 4H Club.
“Every summer, they had a district talent show in 4H, and Sis insisted that Pam and I participate,” Archie said. “When I asked what I should do, she said that Pam and I should sing together as we did in church. Well, I didn’t want to get up in front of all those people and sing. Nothing against Pam, I just didn’t want to sing.”
So Sis Manning suggested Archie give a speech. “As soon as she said it, I said, ‘I’m in,’” Archie said. “I asked what I should speak on, and my mother got help on that one. She wrote a letter to Paul Harvey, the famous radio personality, and asked for a suggestion.”
Harvey wrote back and suggested Manning should do his speech about his home state, Mississippi. “So that’s what I did,” Archie said. “I wrote my speech about Mississippi, and then my mother and one of her friends helped me polish it up. I gave it, and, believe it or not, I won.”
He won the next year, too, and as fate would have it, public speaking has provided Manning with millions of dollars in income over the years.
The little skinny, red-headed kid from little bitty Drew has done well.
Rick Cleveland, a 2017 inductee in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame, is the most awarded sportswriter in Mississippi history.
Archie Manning by the Numbers
Ole Miss
- Quarterback – 1968-1970
- SEC Player of the Year – 1969
- 1st Team All-American – 1969
- College Football Hall of Fame – 1989
New Orleans Saints
- Quarterback – 1971-1982
- NFL Draft – First round pick in 1971 • Pick: No. 2
- Pro Bowl – 1978 and 1979
- Retirement: After the 1984 season
NFL sons
Quarterbacks Peyton Manning (University of Tennessee) and Eli Manning (Ole Miss)
