VIDALIA — The mayor who has been in office long enough for a baby born the year he started to have graduated college is finishing his final term.

Hyram Copeland, 75, is leaving office today.

“I have asked the Lord to bless this community many times, and he has,” Copeland said at a recent board of aldermen meeting, giving a formal farewell speech. “We have ridden up and down the Mississippi River and all over this state to look at the communities, and I want to thank you, Lord, for what you have done for Vidalia over the last (few) years.”

Copeland was first elected to Vidalia’s board of aldermen in 1976, his initial run motivated by a drainage problem on his property that he wasn’t getting anywhere with, he said in a 2012 interview.

A Ferriday native, the mayor had attended Louisiana College and Northeastern Louisiana University and worked as a salesman at Sears before his election. He would continue to work in the private sector until 2000.

He would continue to be elected to the board — though he left it from 1984 to 1988 after a failed mayoral bid — serving as one of the three at-large aldermen for District 3 until 1992,  when he unseated two-term Mayor Sam Randazzo. Copeland was elected mayor six times in total, most of his re-election bids unopposed.

In a 2009 interview, Copeland said he remembered taking office as mayor at a time when the town had lost 1,000 people.

“We had for sale signs throughout Vidalia, empty storefronts on Carter Street,” he said in 2009. “Our goal was to do what we could to turn that around and bring more industry and people into our community.”

During his six terms, Vidalia expanded significantly westward along U.S. 84, and it’s eastern boundary — the Mississippi River — was converted from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers mat field to a riverwalk district that also hosts two medical facilities, the city convention center and a hotel. A second hotel is planned for construction soon.

Fruit of the Loom located in the area for 20 years under his administration, and Walmart relocated its Concordia Parish operations to the town that branded itself the City on the Move. BASF and Bunge also made significant investments during that time.

Outgoing Alderwoman Mo Saunders, said seeing those expansions come to fruition made for exciting times as a public servant.

“Whenever we progressed to another new thing, it was always exciting, a little more exciting each time,” she said. “I feel like, whether we agreed or disagreed, all of us had our heart in the right place, and we worked great as a team.

“I think that Hyram — and all of the board members — had the best interest of Vidalia and the residents all those years. I know he cared a lot about Vidalia and the people in it, and we all did.”

As mayor, Copeland was active in acting as a lobbyist for the town — and the region — in annual, if not more frequent, trips to meet with leaders in Washington, D.C.

Former Ferriday Mayor Glen McGlothin — who later worked for the Town of Vidalia — said Copeland was considered one of the benchmarks for what a mayor should be in the Louisiana Municipal Association.

“Everywhere he went and everything he did was about Vidalia, and they are going to miss him,” McGlothin said. “He would talk to the President or anybody about Vidalia, and he helped Ferriday, Ridgecrest and even pulled for Natchez on several projects. He was all about this area — we were thinking about regionalism before that word was used.”

In his trips to Baton Rouge and the nation’s capital, Copeland was able to partner with state leaders and former Sen. Mary Landrieu, who worked to arrange federal appropriations or grants that could serve as seed money for city projects.

Two of those projects, a center to house the town’s high-speed broadband initiative and the Vidalia Port, will continue under construction even as he leaves office.

Outgoing Alderman Vernon Stevens said Copeland had “a drive and a motivation to move the town forward and make it all it could be.”

“The energy he had — and he attacked the job with such an energy — when it is a whole lot easier to sit back and go with the flow instead of build new projects,” Stevens said. “He wasn’t just a mayor to sit back and manage the town. He definitely left his mark.”

Copeland also oversaw the move of the city government from its location in a former bank building on North Spruce Street to new facilities on the western end of town, and was part of the leadership team that negotiated a deal with the Concordia Recreation District No. 3 to build a new recreation complex partially on city-owned land next to the new municipal buildings.

Copeland was honored by the Concordia Parish Chamber of Commerce as Concordian of the Year in 2011.

That was the year that saw him lead the city in a fight against a record Mississippi River high water event, directing efforts to build walls with Hesco baskets that saved the businesses and city structures on the riverfront even as floodwaters surrounded them.

“He had a drive and a determination that the riverfront was not going to be lost, and he wasn’t going to be destroyed and all that investment sunk,” Stevens said.

Crediting cooperation between the town, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Guard, government agencies and even prisoners to what ended as a successful flood fight, Copeland said in 2011 he hoped the city would never have to face such an experience again.

“It was something that in my wildest imagination I would not have thought we would be able to accomplish,” he said at the time. “Building the Hesco basket walls, we beat the deadline by 10 hours.”

Copeland’s influence as a small town mayor sometimes outsized the office itself, and he was inducted into the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame in 2013.

The political clout the induction recognized came in handy the year, when Copeland helped lead what was ultimately a successful lobbying effort against the abandonment of a natural gas line running from Monroe to Baton Rouge that provided the only gas service to Ferriday, Vidalia and Natchez.

Instead of abandonment, the company ultimately decided to upgrade the line.

Copeland served in some capacities with — among other organizations — the U.S. 84 Commission, Concordia Economic Development, the Mississippi River Parkway Commission, the Louisiana Energy and Power Authority, the Louisiana Gas Authority and the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative.

He served as president of the gas authority, chairman of LEPA several times, and co-chair of the MRCTI, in which capacity he was able to participate in the White House welcoming ceremony for Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S. in 2015.

Even after losing his re-election bid in March, Copeland released a statement thanking Vidalia residents for allowing him to serve, saying nothing has made him prouder than serving as mayor.

“I’m extremely proud of the growth and progress our town has experienced over the years, and I am proud of all of you for being part of it,” he said at the time.

“I will always be committed to my home, Vidalia, no matter my position.”