Al Hollingsworth never let go of his Mississippi quest. His noble hopes as a young man of always living in his home state did not work out as he had planned back in the late 1950s.

Now, however, the Mississippi dream has become reality. After a long and successful vocation far from home and an avocation that groomed him for a special role in the rural South, Hollingsworth and his wife, Libby, have settled into niches that suit them well.

Port Gibson, the town always described as beautiful because of its stately mansions and handsome churches set among large old shade trees, was the Hollingsworths’ destiny, a coming together of people and place the couple found as natural as saying y’all.

“I had very idealistic ideas about not leaving Mississippi,” said Hollingsworth, a Greenville native who began his career with Armstrong Tire & Rubber Co. straight out of Mississippi State in the 1950s.

“But Armstrong changed its planning, and I went from Natchez to California, back to Natchez and then to Connecticut.”

The years in Natchez were pleasant ones for the young Hollingsworths, he said. But his value to the company in industrial management and engineering sent him to corporate headquarters in Guilford, Conn., where he remained from 1968 until he retired in 1989.

They were many miles from home – Libby, also a Mississippi native, grew up in Leland – but the Guilford experience only intensified a love for history and preservation the couple always had shared.

The small community, located 14 miles from New Haven on Long Island Sound, is an old one, where the Hollingsworths bought a 1796 house and restored it as their residence. They continue to own that house because they love it and because, as Libby Hollingsworth said, “That house is still a major part of our life. Al’s hands have been on every part of that house.”

Guilford reminded the Hollingsworths of their time spent in Natchez, where they had sensed the people’s emphasis on preservation and history, they said.

“It shares the love of architecture, the wish to preserve the past that we saw in Natchez,” Al Hollingsworth said.

The couple found themselves involved from the beginning in the historic preservation spirit that was on the rise in Guilford. Threats against the town’s historic integrity brought property owners together. Hollingsworth became chairman of the preservation commission.

Then in the 1980s, their three children growing into adulthood, Mrs. Hollingsworth began to visit Port Gibson regularly, checking on aging relatives who needed her attention.

When Al retired in 1989, Port Gibson officials were poised to begin a new initiative in the town, one they hoped would preserve and protect the historic features of the town and at the same time promote business development.

Ten years ago, city officials declared Port Gibson’s commercial downtown a blighted area, setting the stage for potential renovation and restoration there.

Joan Beasley, wife of the long-time Port Gibson mayor, established a Main Street program in the town, and Al Hollingsworth became its manager.

Mrs. Hollingsworth has deep roots in Port Gibson. Though she did not grow up in the town, she spent much of her girlhood there visiting grandparents and other relatives.

So in retirement, the Hollingsworths moved into the Church Street home her grandfather had built in the 1930s.

Her family ties go back to the earliest days of Claiborne County and also to the cottonseed oil mill that still today is an important industry in the area.

“I’m kin to everyone in Port Gibson either through blood or through cottonseed oil,” she said.

Kinship and know-how combined to thrust the Hollingsworths into a whirlwind of activities, as she began giving tours and organizing festivals and he plodded methodically along well-thought-out paths to carry out the Main Street duties.

The Main Street program is one followed nationwide by many cities to help rejuvenate and maintain downtown areas. The Hollingsworths agree that the decision to take on new projects in their retirement years has been a wonderful one for both of them.

They are careful to emphasize, however, that they decided to make Port Gibson home not for their own agenda but to help promote a common one.

“We didn’t come down here to work for Port Gibson but to work for the people who wanted to save their town,” Al Hollingsworth said.

“And we haven’t done anything without a community mandate.”

He was quick to praise county supervisors for restoration of two buildings downtown and the city for its dedication to historic preservation and restoration. The Port Gibson Main Street program recently has become an official nonprofit agency, opening new doors for projects, including restoring a historic building downtown with the hope of selling it with restrictive covenants, an example he hopes others will follow, Hollingsworth said.

“We hope to show the economic potential in preservation and restoration,” he said. “We’ll restore the first floor for commercial use and the second floor for office space or residential space.”

Meanwhile, Mrs. Hollingsworth is getting into high gear to launch another Heritage Festival, a fund-raising event for Main Street that takes place in Port Gibson each year on the last Saturday of March.

Raising money and raising awareness go hand in hand, and the couple hopes the fallout from the Main Street program will include increased tourism for the town.

“One thing that will be of great importance to this town in the future will be tourism, and for that to work there has to be more cohesion in the community,” Hollingsworth said.

Mrs. Hollingsworth pointed out the strong historic ties between Port Gibson and Natchez and said that relationship should be one on which the town builds.

“We were a part of the old Natchez District,” she said. “We were so closely tied together, all the same families. You can’t help but know Natchez history if you live in Port Gibson, and, having lived in both places, I feel the very strong ties.”