Imagining a better cheerleader for Natchez and the Miss-Lou than Scott Kimbrell is difficult to do.

Gray Montgomery, the 90-year-old World War II veteran who recently decided to walk the Natchez Trace to make sure everyone knows how great Natchez, may top Kimbrell, but that’s a different story.

Jennifer Ogden-Combs would give him a run for his money, too. Her job it is to promote Natchez as executive director of Visit Natchez and who recently got Natchez promoted on a billboard in New York City’s Times Square at a very affordable $3,000, including national editorial coverage. That, too, is a different story.

Kimbrell, however, is right up at the top with them, and he doesn’t get paid for his efforts. He is just downright passionate about Natchez and the Miss-Lou and Lake St. John, in particular.

We won’t even go into his passion about Mississippi State University and its athletics. That’s a different story.

I only recently met Kimbrell, but his passion for the things he loves, including pontoon boats, is evident and his passion is contagious, evangelical even in that he wants others to know about the things he loves and for them to find something to love about them, too.

That evangelical passion is exemplified by Kimbrell’s quest to get Pontoon and Deck Boat magazine to feature Lake St. John in the publication.

Kimbrell decided the story would be perfect for the magazine, so he developed a booklet, enlisting his friends who also love the lake to help him, spelling out the virtues of Lake St. John and why it would be a good story for Pontoon and Deck Boat magazine.

Kimbrell then made a trip to Branson, Missouri, to personally put that booklet into the hands of the magazine’s editor, Brady Kay, and to bend his ear about the story idea.

Once the seed was sown, Kimbrell went on about his business and waited  — for two years — before he got news the magazine was interested in pursuing the story he had worked so diligently to pitch three years earlier.

Kimbrell, Kay said, rolled out the red carpet for the magazine’s writer/photographer Gini McKain who visited last year to work on the story, and all the friendly folks of Lake St. John had to do was to be themselves.

The result was thousands of pictures and a story so compelling Kay decided to make it the cover story for the July 2018 edition.

Oh yeah, and the magazine also did a side bar story on Natchez and the sights to see in the city, including antebellum houses, restaurants and shops.

Granted pontoon boat magazine is a niche market publication, but that niche market is 85,000-readers strong, and now they all know about the hidden treasure that is Lake St. John, Natchez and the Miss-Lou, and it is all thanks to Kimbrell’s evangelical passion for the area.

You can’t buy that kind of exposure, nor can you buy Kimbrell’s enthusiasm, which is just plain genuine.

Scott Hawkins is editor of The Natchez Democrat. Reach him at601-445-3540 or scott.hawkins@natchezdemocrat.com.