Everyone loves to criticize their local newspaper — it’s a sport that seems to be popular in every town in which I’ve ever lived. It doesn’t matter whether the town is large or small, the sport is universal and I must admit I have participated myself — heck, its fun catching professionals in spelling and grammatical errors when I can recognize them. But we Natchezians are very fortunate in having a newspaper staff that is made up of professionals that truly care about the people in this area.

As I mentioned above, I have lived in several towns in my life and read many newspapers but this one is different. Monday of this week, I attended a function hosted by our newspaper to honor people in this area that they call “unsung heroes.” These are the people who, for reasons of their own, work for no pay, no publicity, and usually no thanks to make the lives of others better. Now the newspaper doesn’t have to do this — they could do as other newspapers and ignore these people and just report crime and sports and sell advertisements. This special project that they undertake annually adds nothing to their bottom line; in fact it costs them money to honor these special people.

Now I’m sure I’ve made some grammatical mistakes in writing this letter but then I’m not a professional and hopefully the staff at the newspaper will overlook my errors. This letter is mainly about saying thank you to a fine group of people.

Forest Persons

Natchez resident