Anybody who grew up in Greenville when I did had to have been aware of William Alexander Percy.
Most notably he was a writer and poet. The Greenville library is named for him. He penned “Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of A Planters Son,” his autobiography. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Alexander, pointed out that his poem “Overtones” was included in our English textbook.
William was the son of LeRoy Percy. In 1910, LeRoy Percy became the last senator appointed by the Mississippi Legislature. After that, the Seventeenth Amendment called for senators to be elected. In his race for re-election, Percy was defeated by James K. Vardaman who was backed by Theodore Bilbo. Back then I knew of LeRoy Percy because of the state park named for him, not for his politics.
The statue is a life-size figure of a man dressed in chainmail armor with a downturned sword in his folded hands. He sadly gazes past the sword as if he is remembering something from long ago.
I bring all of this up because of a post I ran across on Facebook the other day about the preparation for removal of the statue over LeRoy Percy’s grave in Greenville. This isn’t one of those protest statue removals that was so popular a few years ago. There are just two members of the Percy family left in Greenville, and they want the statue where it can be better cared for than in the city cemetery.
The statue is a life-size figure of a man dressed in chainmail armor with a downturned sword in his folded hands. He sadly gazes past the sword as if he is remembering something from long ago. There are lines from the poem “The Patriot” by Robert Browning on the back of the marble stone behind the statue. The poem speaks of the sacrifice of a misunderstood leader.
There was a ghost story associated with the statue that I heard when I was growing up in Greenville. The gist of it is the statue speaks under the right conditions. You must go there at midnight, which right away recuses me from any first-hand knowledge of what follows. I wasn’t about to go to a dark cemetery at midnight. But you walk up to the statue and place your hands on top of his hands and look him straight in the eye. You ask him, “What are you doing here?” He is supposed to say, “Absolutely nothing.” Friends of mine who tried it tell me it’s true. And it’s not just an occasional response. The statue says absolutely nothing every time you ask it.
Well, no longer will the patriot reign over Greenville Cemetery. According to a post by my schoolmate Bill Beckwith — a renowned bronze sculptor who lives and works in Taylor — the statue is going to the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. I hope it isn’t hidden away or put behind ropes. I’d like to occasionally look him in the eye and ask him what he’s up to. It’d be good to hear from someone from home now and again. Even if they have absolutely nothing to say.
